A short while ago I found myself giving an unreasonable high rating on a screenshot. I thought it was a mediocre shot to which not much thought had been given. But the current rating of 1.5 seemed a bit harsh to me. So, instead of rating it a 3 (which I would have done if I hadn't known the current average) I gave 4 points to raise the average faster towards 3. Not the biggest crime in my life, but still it felt like having cheated. So I started to ask me why it had felt wrong.

The reason is a very simple one. While my own vote (in this case: 3) reflects my own opinion, the average score (here: 1.5) reflects the aggregated opinion of several persons. By giving a vote that was not true to my own feeling (the wrong 4) I did not only add my voice to the public reception, but I had manipulated the "true" average rating. I wanted my opinion to count as more than other voter's opinion, so my tactically wrong rating had an increased effect on the "objective" average. It brought it nearer to my personal rating. If you wanted to achieve such kind of manipulation at an election you would need to put two votes in the box instead of one - which is considered rigging a voting in democratic societies. So now I knew what mischievous deed I had done.

Immediately the story section came to my mind. A screenshot is easily done and easily forgotten, so I doubt giving slightly incorrect ratings will do any real harm. But usually the work and time one has to put into a Sims story is much larger, but rating a story (and the emotional temptations behind it) remain the same. Giving "tactical ratings" for a story can have a profound effect on the creator, because so much more time and effort is at stake and the emotional binding to the story is much higher. BTW this is not only about RAISING an average score. Imagine three people have given 5 stars to a story when a fourth reader reads it. (S)he thinks it's only worth a 4 but sees the appearantly way too high average score of 5.0, so (s)he rates it a "1" instead and the average will come tumbling down to 4.0, because (5 + 5 + 5 + 1) / 4 = 4.0. A rating job well done?

I know there are much more important matters in life than rating a Sims story and I am pretty sure there are some people giving random ratings at the TSR site without reading the story they rated at all just to collect some daily kudos. So no matter how you rate yourself you have to take every rating with a grain of salt. Still I find the issue interesting, so I have started a poll on rating. As soon as I have figured out how to create a poll correctly (my first attempt at my mini-site was garbage), feel free to participate.