3....2.....1.....Lawsuit
Title says it all.
Tired of twiddling with wiki biographes and writing unpaid reviews for Amazon? Perhaps you'd like to rate your co-worker, or boss, now that the wisdom of crowds has been applied to the great American public. In what must surely be the last gasp of Web 2.0 insanity we report the launch of PersonRatings, a site where visitors …
Class: Rogue / Fighter / Cleric etc.
Maybe you're rated out of ten for how well you fit between each class?
Don't see many paladins around these days. Maybe the advertisers want to weed them out to target them with paladin specific adverts. Underarm deodorant for the holyman who wears full plate maybe?
There is no "wisdom of crowds", merely a superficial (and inaccurate) poll of whom they like best. Whether this is driven by physical appearance, "coolness", some weird ideas about what they think, or do - or just to rebel against unpopular judges (strictly .... what? exactly), there's no objective measures of talent, intelligence, skill or value to society. There is however, money to be made.
The trouble with all these things is that it makes participants feel as if their views have worth. That somehow, the casual, superficial and offhand decision they make about another person is as valid as a professional and expert assessment of whatever that person's attributes are. Not only does this make some of the participants think they are "as good as" the experts and that somehow they "have a right to decide", but it devalues the professionals training and experience to the point where theirs is treated as "just another opinion".
Maybe we should have a TV show where the audience votes on what medical treatments a group of patients gets - rather than the dull and anonymous concept of letting the trained and qualified doctors decide. Afterall, that's the process we use to elect governments.
If that's true, why do we continue to have Big brother and X-Star-get-me-out-of-here-celebrity-factor on the idiot box?
Surely stupidity of crowds is more accurate. Those likely to push the average IQ upwards keep quiet in case they use a long word, and slowly edge their way towards the exit doors.
Terry Pratchett proposed in 'Maskerade that "the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters." My life experiences so far give me no cause to reject this hypothesis...
..so pass the popcorn, and stand by with the marshmallows!
(yes, hence the flames... ;) )
Almost all the rated individuals on the site have photos-- yet very fiew of those actually have ratings, and instead have a single post by "Anonymous" asking if anyone knows anything about the person.
I would think people who write ratings would often not have a photo, unless they're shilling for the person or the person themselves, OR if they're the site admins trying to feed enough names in initially in order to get things started.
Looks to me that they "seeded" the site with names & photos scraped from somewhere else. Seems like they could get in trouble over that. In any event, it looks like more of a scam than anything else.
Also the search is broken-- got a server error...
Wake up the trolls, they've got a new purpose in life. Does anyone else suspect the web is making us incredibly stupid and shallow, and that in only a few more recent years?
Even if we discount the trolls, it's human nature to love in the 1st person but hate from afar (hiding behind keyboard). I can't count the number of times I've read of someone calling someone else an idiot on the 'net, but how many times have I read of one person calling another person very intelligent? It's impossible for this to work out any more than libel, gossip, and dirty laundry.
Paris, because we've been doing it all along.
though it seems more likely the service will quietly disappear when the crowds decide they've got better things to do than rate their friends and colleagues for the benefit of targeted advertisers.
It hasn't done so far for facespace.
Entire populations are obsessed about how they are being perceived by others.
Bernard Madoff was missing... Unfortunately, I couldn't put a negative score for "Trustworthy"
But really, I believe they will survive without getting sued their pants off. For instance, there's been a
"Rate my professor" for years, and some professors have complained, but the site still exists.
Somebody (or maybe bodies) created a tool that does exactly this. It's called "I Build My Reputation" (no points for guessing who my employer is - hint: check the acronym).
Personally I refuse to use it as it's lacks any accountability... these sorts of tools tend to attract extreme ratings rather than filter them out.
Nearly everyone in there so far is at least slightly well known, mostly politicians and journalists, even if only locally to the area. I'm sure they just culled all the info and pics from wikipedia.
I'm somewhat disturbed by how high a rating Christine Gregoire got for sexiness.