A number of websites aren't selling things or collecting personal information, although they wind up with ratings in those categories, anyways. Quackwatch.org is one notable example - it's yellow in Vendor Reliability, despite the absence of a shop or anything like that. Perhaps the scam artists it covers are trying to drag it down? Anyways, when submitting a testimony, we should be able to request that a site not have a rating in those categories, methinks.
Re: Suggestion: "Not applicable" ratings
Thanks for the suggestion, we'll have to think about it.
Jup
Very useful. Good idea
I agree
I agree with this comment. I waste a lot of time trying to figure out what's wrong with sites with low ratings for "Vendor Reliability" and "Privacy" when they are sites with "read only" capacity such as sites containing only product or movie reviews, etc. but which don't have any capability to conduct business transactions. There should be a N/A category for these types of sites.
N/A ratings
I agree. It is a good idea. I hardly buy anything online, so it would be inappropriate for me to either inflate or degrade someones reputation just because I may have done so in other categories. "Privacy" can also be a touchy issue. They may have a solid privacy policy printed on their page(s) but not adhere to it in real life. I don't want to give a site a good rating, and then have to delete 246 spam mails from my inbox over the next month. Until you have a history (30 days?) of spam, it's hard to know what the real rating should be. It should always be possible to change ratings after the fact. Only time can tell in some instances.
@ Seattle John: That's
@ Seattle John: That's something different, and in fact it seems WOT already lets you submit partial testimonies and update them afterwards. What I'm saying as that we should be able to submit a testimony saying that a site shouldn't have a rating at all for a particular category.
I agree
In many sites that I want to rank and I know that they are trusted, I do not know if I have to evaluate also the vendor, because the sites are only informative.
not applicable?
In a particular instance, the "privacy" rating (ala SiteAdvisor) may reflect the submitter's experience of having received spam email "apparently sent from, or containing links to" the site they are rating.
Regarding "spend time trying to figure out why a particular site has received such a rating": as the rating community grows/matures, the number of "detailed, commented" entries AND the number of "I agree" checkmarks for commented entries will provide greater (faster) clarity.
Reliability?
Suppose a site is read-only (non-interactive). Still, the rater might consider its content to represent intentional MISinformation, unintentional misinformation (misguided opinion/commentary), or might click to rate the site out of frustration, having followed a link to the site only to find that the linked material is no longer available. HOPEFULLY, we each will typically take a moment to provide a contextual comment to clarify a "reliability" rating... but for anyone who doesn't provide a comment, should their rating be considered any less valid?
Good customer experience?
As with "reliability", to preclude the existence of (or perception of) biased / vague / subjective motivations of the rater(s), the comment field is available for a rater to provide specific details. Commented entries should not automatically receive more weight (newest ratings are displayed first in the list; reader can sort by column) because the rater, in a given instance, may be someone who felt compelled to "post a gripe" about a *product* purchased from the (*merchant*, not manufacturer) site being rated! The rating mechanism provides equal opportunity for placement of "Buyer beware!" and "Buyer, be aware..." ratings. Regardless how the mechanism is utilized, weighing the merit of each comment is necessarily in the hands of each reader.
N/A
Who, for each of the myriad domains, will spend the time to assess whether a site merits a N/A (an exemption from rating) in one, or multiple, scales? Who would recheck / followup to determine whether each exemption is still valid and, with what frequency???
Indeed, at a glance, some "domains" -- sites that fail to police user-submitted content which is served from "hostname" or subdomain sites (e.g. badcontent.blogspot.com, or malwaredistro.tripod.com or yomama.ath.cx) -- may seem to "merit" N/A exclusion (e.g. "blogspot.com N/A for customer experience") but, on the other hand, arguably they SHOULD be held accountable when they fail to police their ranks.
"Who, for each of the myriad
"Who, for each of the myriad domains, will spend the time to assess whether a site merits a N/A (an exemption from rating) in one, or multiple, scales? Who would recheck / followup to determine whether each exemption is still valid and, with what frequency???"
Who, for each of the myriad of domains, will spend the time to assess whether a site merits a good rating, a bad rating, or somewhere in between? Who would recheck / followup to determine whether each rating is still valid and, with what frequency???
I believe the same system can work for both - decisions made by the WOT server, using data collected from the community, with the reliability of each individual member taken into account.
In case my point wasn't
In case my point wasn't clear in the long-winded post above, I respectfully disagree with the suggestion that "we should be able to request that a site not have a rating in those categories"
Simple solution
If you feel a site should have a N/A in one (or more) fields, just skip those fields, and only rate those you feel are applicable. I seldom rate a site in ALL fields. I often skip the privacy field until I have a reason to lean towards my red crayola, or the green one. I actually was on a site that recommended that I give them my email address AND password so they could check out my contacts list ! Needless to say, I did give them a privacy rating.
Not that simple...
Thing is, scam artists will use irrelevant ratings to make their exposers look like the scam artists, as with Quackwatch. Quackwatch's Vendor Reliability rating has risen to 65 since I started this thread, but it shouldn't have one of those ratings at all.