 |
||
ADDING RATING TYPES
Introducing the Rating Type
Anyone who has looked at Tutorial One will see immediately that this section, and the following one, virtually duplicate the corresponding sections found there on rating attributes. So it is merely in the interest of keeping this tutorial self-contained that the discussion of rating attributes is repeated here. In particular, it should be noted that there is really no distinction between rating attributes defined for items, members, or suppliers. In fact, an attribute is basically just a question, and because a suitably general question could be posed about either an item, a member, or a supplier, rating attributes are stored in a single table without reference to the type of thing to which they might be attached. Thus if you have already read the rating attribute discussion in the earlier tutorial, you can skip this one. Else read on...
A rating type, or attribute (the term is used interchangeably in this tutorial and the Red Queen User Manual), consists basically of two parts: (1) a question, and (2) a numeric scale, which usually will consist the values 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (though the scale can have as few as 2 and as many as 10 selections). If we want a member to rate an artist (another member) we place a rating type of one kind or another on the review form. If we want the member to rate several qualities associated with the artist in question, we place several of these attributes. Collectively, we call this set a "rating template".
In this section we will see how Luke goes about defining the following rating template, which he intends to use specifically for the team Digital Art > Human Illustration. If displayed as it would appear on the review form, the intended rating template would look like this (click on the menu for each rating type to see the possible member responses):
We can see from this that Luke has four rating attributes in mind: Commercial Appeal, Originality, Execution, and Versatility. These he intends to apply to the team he has created named Digital Art > Human Illustration. Any number of attributes can be assigned to a team, though common sense suggests that users may look negatively on a review form that requests a rating for more than about 5 of these attributes. The 4 rating types chosen by Luke will be displayed with the submitted review once the review has been approved. On pages listing artists, only the average of these 4 ratings will be displayed. So there is no need for Luke to add an overall rating attribute (though when seeking reviews that carry a single rating attribute, an overall rating type may be exactly the one you want).
Creating a Rating Type
Before assigning a set of rating types to a team, each of the types must first be created. Here we consider the steps necessary to create the Commercial Appeal rating type seen above in the first position of the rating template. The process is covered in more detail in the manual.
To create a rating type Luke needs to click on the Database link in the middle of his admin navigation bar. The Database control panel allows the Red Queen webmaster access to all of the editable tables in the application. In order for Luke to add a new rating type, he needs to "edit" the RatingType table. To begin, he selects the table in the menu on the left of the page, and chooses Add for the database action. When he submits the request, the right side of the page loads the form used to add a new rating type. Here is what it looks like, with the appropriate fields filled in for the Commercial Appeal attribute:
To understand the various form elements better, see the corresponding page on this subject in the manual on Creating a Rating Type. In short, Luke chooses "Commercial Appeal" as the short attribute descriptor, he adds the question that will be asked of the user rating an artists on their potential to go commercial, and he adds the 5 possible responses that the user may choose from. The Rating Scale (here 5) must match the number of user responses he types in--the numbered choices--or Luke will simply get an error message when he attempts to submit. He has chosen a Default Choice of "none" for this rating type to force the user to select a rating rather than have a default value filled in already when the form is presented on the review page. He has also provided a Level, or priority for the attribute. Level is used to order the rating attributes on the page. If Luke wanted the Commercial Appeal attribute to appear at the top he would have to ensure that the other 4 attributes he adds later each had a smaller Level than 10. Attributes without a Level are treated as though the they had a Level of zero.
Finally, Luke has filled in the Rank DESC field which will appear in a menu which allows visitors to sort the reviews from highest to lowest Commercial Appeal rating. Likewise the Rank ASC field is used to indicate the choice to sort reviews according to Commercial Appeal rating, but in the reverse order--from lowest to highest rating.
IMPORTANT: Once Luke starts collecting reviews that make use of a given rating type it is important that the meaning of that rating type does not change. Otherwise displayed ratings which depend on it, and display the Rating Question along with the numeric value, will convey the wrong interpretation of the data. If you decide you need a similiar rating type to an existing one, and are tempted to slighly modify the meaning of the existing rating type to cover the old and new meanings, you will almost always be better off simply creating a new rating type and using it in the new rating template that you have in mind. That way there is no possibility of "skewing" your existing ratings data.
Once the Commercial Appeal rating attribute has been saved, it is ready for incorporation into a rating template, which will be covered next.
Next Section: CREATING RATING TEMPLATES
Copyright © 2004 Random Mouse Software. All Rights Reserved.