THINQon : How many stars would you assign to me?

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Assaf Prague, http://www.opinionstage.com

How many stars would you assign to me?

Latest Post: December 20, 2009 at 10:27 AM

10 followers

I recently returned from a family visit in NYC. NYC is arguably one of the worlds most influential and trend setting cities, so when I visit the city, I try to probe around to discover what are the new interesting things going on. The most notable trend I encountered in this visit is that the physical world around you in NYC is being deeply evaluated using the star system. Obviously grading by stars in it-self is not a new trend. Amazon and others have been providing grades to books and other products for many years now, but the volume in NYC seemed to have tipped. I would attribute this largely to the introduction of location based services and smart phones. These make you feel that everything around your physical presence is graded: the restaurant around the corner, the supermarket you casually passed by, and not far will be the day that the Tomato on the vegetable stand will be graded for its juiciness and the person I ask for directions will be graded for his sense of direction. This can raise a few different types of questions, but the question I wanted to address in this post is what would make a star grading based system better.

Anyone ordering books in Amazon regularly is familiar with the disappointing discovery when a book that was graded 5 stars by a bunch of anonymous people reveals itself to be a bluntly nicknamed bummer.

So how can we improve this system? I guess we could achieve that by taking the factor of the person assigning the grade more seriously. So if Scorsese or Copula is intrigued by a movie, if Dylan or Leonard thinks a song is meaningful, if Morante or Aitmatov are moved by a novel, their opinion should be taken with more respect than mine or yours by someone that doesn’t know neither of us personally. Maybe we should approach these craft experts more actively to get their thoughts. On a different dimension, if a friend, whom I trust to have a similar taste in music to that of my own, recommends a band, a singer or a song, that review is often worth more than any recommendation made by one of the abundant music discovery services. And there is the bonus that I will also be able to discuss it with him later.
So we need a system that better takes in account the person who makes the review, how we are connected to him in the physical world, his understanding on the topic at hand, and his past review successes.

How do you decide what movie to view, book to read, music to listen, countries to visit, chocolate to consume, hobby to pursue, etc, etc, etc?

Reply to:

Edna Stern

November 23, 2009 at 5:49 AM

87 followers

Hi Assaf,

Whenever I want a recommendation, I ask the people around me that I know are gourmet in the field. People with a strong appetite (whether it be in books, food, movie and so on) are usually more apt to explain well what they like and what makes it special. Usually I take advice from people I know well, though since I’m reading THINQon, I noticed myself following the recommendations of people I never met, but whose posts I like reading. I thus joined the reading group of Watchmen which I discovered here (and very happy I did, it was a new kind of reading for me, both through the enlightening comments and because I’m not used to reading comic books), I didn’t go to see Harry Potter 6 in the cinema (thanks Hanna, you’ve saved me 3 hours) and I’m on to reading some other excellent recommendations from here as well. I find the star system pretty bad, as you can’t understand from it the criteria of judgement. The general choice of criteria and its hierarchy changes with each person, and the star system is just so easy to rate and therefore easy to mislead. To summarize, I think it’s better to know the person’s taste before accepting the recommendation, or to be able to understand the rating through objective facts (i.e. the hotel is this close to the station, the rooms are small but tidy, it is a noisy environment and so on).

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Assaf Prague, http://www.opinionstage.com

December 19, 2009 at 6:00 PM

10 followers

Hi Edna,

So it would seem that that there are two ways you usually get recommendations. The first, actively requesting them from people you personally know, trust their opinion on the topic and feel comfortable to ask. The second, in something you could call “serendipity mode” in which you encounter by chance recommendations made by people you don’t necessarily know, but value their opinion for some reason (be it because you read other posts they wrote on THINQon, because they are publically known figures in their field or other).

Thinking about it further, it could be really nice if people which we value their opinion on specific topics, be it from the physical world or the online one, would maintain some kind of recommendation lists on different topics of life, which you could browse through in your free time. In that way, you would improve the chances “serendipity mode” would produce more valuable recommendations. To set an example, I created a recommendation section in a blog I recently opened. One of the first recommendations I made there is of a list of 10 music pieces I played over the years that had special meaning for me personally:

http://www.septachord.com/?p=195

Other than that, I generally agree with your observations of the stars system, although in some categories of products, especially those in which (like you nicely said) the criteria doesn’t differ too much from person to person and or/and are mostly based on objective facts, I do deem them helpful to some extent.

Reply to: or

Linda OReilly

December 19, 2009 at 7:57 PM

88 followers

FIVE STARS, ASSAF--

I just checked out your site--very, very nice. I have Argerich's Rach 3, which I adore. Thanks.
As for recommendations I would trust the people on this site--not with my bank account--but musically, gourmandishly (?),
literarily (?), certainly--lots of good books referenced here.
Pandas are tasteful people evidently.