Ratings: Love 'em or leave 'em?

I'll reserve my opinions untill there have been some responses. I'm hoping that the poll is presented in a way that is not biased one way or the other.

point is - what's being rated? Getting people to rate things is a nice way of making them feel involved and interactive, like viewer voting on television - but music? the arts?

(Can't speak for the US but) in the UK there's a heck of a complicated set of exam criteria/syllabubs/procedures that aim to "grade" or rate people's musical abilities/output through many dimensions of music production in its broadest sense.

Is this poll somehow related to the recent disabling of topic ratings in the upload forums, by any chance?

We only really ever enabled topic ratings in those forums on an experimental basis, thinking it might be nice to be able to look at a forum full of topics and see a rating for each, complementing the comments already added. However, the ratings weren't really used all that often, for starters, and their existence was deemed likely to put off inexperienced composers who might only get one or two stars. Composing is not a competition, not in the upload forums on YC anyway, and considering our policy in the Major Works forum is that actual reviews should be provided as opposed to simply a rating or ratings, why have it any different elsewhere?

Is this poll somehow related to the recent disabling of topic ratings in the upload forums, by any chance? [/b]

No, it isn't. Rather, it's related to the fact that some people choose to give ratings in the body of their reviews. - i.e. 7.7/10 or 3/5, etc. And on occasion, some people have responded to this by telling the rater that it not a good idea - even suggesting that the practice should be outlawed in these forums in general.

I wasn't aware of the policy in the Major Works forum, but then I don't post there. It apparently is not a policy elsewhere, certainly not enforced, and in some ways, encouraged by the format IMO.

First of all, the very word "Review" is associated with ratings. Pick up a newspaper and read a review on any movie, restaurant, play, book, etc. and many of them include ratings, be it as simple as thumbs-up and thumbs-down.

Second, the mere fact that there was a