Aaron

However I think the comparison to Yelp and the App Store isn’t entirely apt, as the people who are rating those businesses/apps are past clients/end-users. Ratings on your site come from, it seems, the freelancers themselves as well as clients (anybody who has an account.)

However, as I’ve said – the ratings on your site do seem to correspond to quality, so maybe this is all moot and your system works anyway. I certainly wouldn’t think that any honest freelancer would “sabotage” the rating of somebody else, but I do get a little concerned.

Once again I’d like to thank you for coming up with this site. It’s really a great resource and I certainly hope that it becomes very successful, both for my sake and yours. Good job!

..It if fairly common for sites that offer a wide selection of goods/services, to have some kind of system to inform the shopper as to what their most popular/highest rated options are. Think of yelp.com, or even the iPhone app store. Without being able to sort for “highest rated” mechanic or “most downloaded” game, it would be more difficult to use these tools. In a way our site is similar – but rather than mechanics, we’re helping visitors find creatives. While the star rating may not be the perfect solution, we think that it is necessary to have something like it to help visitors.

As far as your suggestion that star ratings being meaningless to potential employers, I would again reference sites like yelp.com, where millions of people are hired – usually based on their positive ratings.

Also, as a potential employer myself (at DK), I frequently hire freelance creatives and use the star ratings to aid in my search.

..Of course, there are many other ways to narrow the results on CL, using the search: searching by location, availability, skill set keywords, etc. But those are all user defined attributes. Like with yelp.com, we think that the quality rating should be determined by others, or else it would be irrelevant. A popularity contest? Perhaps it is to a certain extent – We like to assume that our members are honest people who won’t spend their time “sabotaging” others due to a competitive conflict of interests. Also, you’re correct, the ratings don’t reflect the # of votes, they just reflect the average vote. It’s like a GPA in school.

Thanks again for your feedback – it is valued and being seriously considered

We’ll be looking into a way to improve our system thanks to yours and these other comments. If you have specific suggestions, we’d love to hear them via email team(at)creativeleague.com

Frankly, though, ratings are a bad idea. I read the rationale in the comments above, but it sounds like you’re trying to justify their inclusion, rather than explaining why there’s a *need* for them. Work speaks for itself. A star rating on a demo reel on a web site is pretty meaningless to any potential employer. There’s much more that goes into a hiring decision.

Other problems with this: ratings are subjective; there’s a de facto conflict of interest amongst site members; ratings do not seem to be weighted in accordance to number of votes (?); ratings systems encourage popularity contests and cliques; etc.

When there are so many cons and so few pros, it’s time to rethink your decision.

Anyway, again, it’s good of you guys to put this out there and try to do something different. You’re on the right track, but I suggest you shoot for professionalism, a la Krop, rather than the YouTube-esque star rating standard.

re: the other stats, that could be really nice as well, we may be able to integrate that kind of thing down the road.

thanks for the great feedback!

Overall, I always welcome new ways to find work, cheers.