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Using Star Ratings and Comments in Knol

How to rate knols


When you visit a knol article, please let us and the author know what you thought of the article. You can do so by assigning "Your rating:" between one and five stars. The ratings are on the right hand side of the page, below the author profiles.


 Stars Interpretation
 None No opinion
 One "Hated it"
 Two "Didn't like it"
 Three "Liked it"
 Four "Really liked it"
 Five "Loved it"

If you want to express your opinion in more detail, write a comment (described in the next section) or write a review.

Understanding What the Article Rating Means

Knol will show an "Article Rating" of one to five stars only after several people have rated a knol. The number of stars shown is calculated by an algorithm, it is not necessarily the same as the average star rating. We will adjust the stars shown to reduce the effect of abusive or fraudulent ratings.

Note that "No rating" doesn't imply a bad rating. It simply means that we don't have enough data to make a good case for any one rating or another.

Advice when leaving comments

 
Do
  • Sign in and leave a comment, if you have any encouragement to offer, any constructive criticism, or any relevant additions to make to what's said on the knol. We do not currently allow anonymous comments.
  • Add a picture to your profile. Your comments are more likely to be noticed and read if you use your picture and not the anonymous "shadow" picture.
  • Remember that comments need to follow our Terms of Service and Content Policy.
  • Remember that the comments you leave are all searchable and visible on your "My Bio" page. Your comments help establish your reputation, whether good or bad. If you have a trend of repetitive or promotional comments, you are more likely to gain a bad reputation with other knol authors, and more likely to have your account taken down & blocked if your content is flagged as abusive.
  • Use the "+" button to indicate that you like an existing comment, or that you found it useful.
  • Use the "-" button to indicate that you disagree with or did not appreciate an existing comment.

Don't
  • Don't leave irrelevant comments
  • Don't use ALL CAPs. Don't ignore punctuation.
  • Don't think comments are a good way to promote your blog or website. Knol marks all links appearing in comments with "nofollow". Trying to promote a website in such a fashion does not get you any benefits with Google or other search engines -- and it may be deemed in violation of our Content Policy.
 

Advice for authors being commented upon

Use notifications to keep track of comments arriving on knols you own. Respond to comments promptly, even if it is a simple "thanks" or "no thanks". It helps everyone see that your knol is well maintained, and encourages others to interact with you.
 

Dealing with abusive comments

Knol offers you many ways of dealing with unwanted comments. Choose whichever best suits your needs.
  • If a visitor leaves a spammy (commercial, promotional) comment, you may delete it. If their comment is not badly written, but merely critical of your work, please leave it! Doing so shows a mature tolerance for the different perspectives of others.
  • If a visitor is abusive, use the "block this user" option. This will permanently prevent any of their comments from appearing on any of your knols. If a user has a history of offending authors, Knol is likely to block that user from further actions on the site.
  • Any user can report a comment as abuse. Knol administrators may choose to investigate, and may block a person who is violating our Terms of Service from using knol.
  • If you cannot afford the time or energy to respond to comments, as may happen if you have a popular knol on a controversial subject, you may turn off comments entirely, as described here.

Dealing with comments with some sensitive or objectionable content

Sometimes you will receive a comment which contains objectionable language, or perhaps sensitive or private material (such as email or personal addresses). You may not want to delete the whole comment.

Instead,  you can write create a comment, paste in the original's comments but deleting the sensitive/objectionable portions. Attribute it to the original writer. Then, if you like, reply to it with your own response.

    John Doe left a comment (some portions deleted):
    ....
    ... (John's text, cleaned up)
    ...
    My response to John is,
    ...

 

Advice for everyone

If you see a comment which is abusive, flag it!
 
If you see someone who might be leaving low quality comments, point them to this Knol.
 

FAQs about Comments

The statistics on the right hand side of my knol do not match the number of comments I see when I scroll down

The statistics show the total number of top-level comments left on your knol plus the total number of replies.

So, for example, the total may say 10 comments if you had 5 comments posted to your knol, and you replied once to each of them.

How do the plus-and-minus, green and red numbers in the right corner work?

Readers can use the "+" to indicate that they appreciated or agreed with the comment, or the "-" to indicate that they did not appreciate or disagreed with the comment. Comments with large positive numbers shown in green were valued or liked by many people, comments with large negative numbers shown in red indicate the opposite.

Comments


Alberto Auné

Very useful explanation

This knol explaines us important themes about Star Ratings and Comments in knol.
I write and read comments. In the comments I have read sometimes the same text in several knols and/or a short phrase as, for example “Very good knol”, “An interesting work”, and others.
I suggest that the comments must have a minimum of text, for example 100 or 200 characters, and also contain the “same content” comment to obtain comments with quality and to know who does copy & paste.
Y see also that Knol grows each day. ¡Congratulations to google and all the collaegue authors that work with responsability!

Alberto Auné

Last edited Oct 14, 2009 7:36 AM
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Bob Reece

Ratings Disappeared

Reading the comments below, I understand that you've been making changes to your ratings policy. I also read some posts where you corrected inaccurate ratings.

I believe two of my knols might have had the star ratings deleted. Where there were ratings before, now there are 0. Would you please check into this?

Knols are:

http://knol.google.com/k/bob-reece/dust-to-dust-interments-of-custer-and/3dzjja4fs26pw/4#

http://knol.google.com/k/bob-reece/history-of-the-warrior-markers/3dzjja4fs26pw/2#

Thanks,
Bob

Last edited Jun 19, 2009 3:27 PM
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Murry Shohat

Interpreted vs. straight average

I thought your use of language interesting: "interpreted" ratings rather than straight average. Since stars are easy to game by using sockpuppet accounts, "interpreted" sounds like an anti-gaming measure, and I favor that. Could you explain how "interpreted" is implemented? Or would you prefer to keep this in the secret sauce, allowing people like me to speculate endlessly in our Knols about metrics?

My current speculation: you detect and eliminate sockpuppet ratings, then average the ratings. Example: If a Knol receives ten ratings, seven of them 5-star and three of them 2- star, a straight average score is 4.1. If "interpretation" determines that five of seven 5-star ratings came from sockpuppets, they are removed. Now, the remaining five ratings are averaged, producing a score of 3.2. Because of the gaming, you then penalize the author by subtracting one point, resulting in a visible rating of two lit stars. Am I right?

Last edited Jun 13, 2009 7:33 AM
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Peter Baskerville

Comments working well

Some positive feedback for a change. The new structure of the comments system is working great. I see as a default under my tag, all comments made on my knols plus all comments made on my comments. I am not missing any of the necessary interaction with readers or my Knol peers. Also when I go and see what other author's are commenting on, I see that default as standard. So, no suggestions here just praise at getting the comment system right.

Last edited Jun 8, 2009 8:16 PM
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Murry Shohat

Star ratings not appearing

My team notes that star ratings are not visible for two of our newer Knols that are getting substantial page views and comments: Who's Who and Content Violations. None of the stars are lit and we know this is an error. Is there a new policy in force to repress stars for a period of time?

I moved this comment over from another Help Knol where it has gone unanswered. Hope it gets an answer here.

Last edited Jun 3, 2009 12:13 PM
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Peter Baskerville

Hidden comments

I may have mentioned this before but it continues to catch me out. ....

Scenario
Someone comments on a Knol - understandably, it is not flagged for me.
I add my comment to theirs - it gets flagged on my comments tag
They reply - It does not get flagged anywhere for me.

I am missing the chance to respond to replies.

Last edited May 9, 2009 10:42 PM
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Peter Baskerville

Comments Deleted

I notice that some of my comments on other author's work have been deleted. While I accept that this is an author's right I think that the deleted comment should be recorded in full somewhere. Currently I only have access to the first line of the deleted comment – the rest is lost. I think a third button could be added to the comment tag in the home page called "Comments Deleted".

The deleted comments should be displayed in full allowing scrutiny by others as to the reason for the author's action to delete it. I think it would be a metric that would reflect on the quality of the author who deleted the comment as well as the person who made it.

Last edited May 9, 2009 8:56 AM
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Krishan Maggon

Cancel or block Star ratings

Is it possible for authors to delete or block star ratings from work in progress type of knols?
One of my unfinished knol has got lots of ratings and a Quality badge? Another unfinished one has recived 1 star rating.

Last edited May 11, 2009 9:05 AM
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Murry Shohat

Top Authors issue

I noticed that Sara came up as a Top Author today. Sara and Sara K. have their entire body of work under investigation for plagiarism at our same-name Knol. This is one of the largest bodies of work at Knol, so it's important. The early evidence suggests wholesale copy and paste scraping, sometimes with credit to another author, sometimes not, and virtually all from Mahalo.com. Is there some way to keep authors under investigation from appearing in the Top Author list on Knol's landing page, pending completion of an investigation? It would be a small incentive for our work and for authors to resolve matters quickly.

Last edited May 8, 2009 3:55 PM
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