Version: 1.4.4 (using KDE 3.5.5, Debian Package 4:3.5.5a.dfsg.1-5 (4.0)) Compiler: Target: x86_64-linux-gnu OS: Linux (x86_64) release 2.6.19.2vmware The way to use stars to rate a song is confusing because I though adding a star was for the beter songs only. One day in a burst of change I had about rated half my music, giving a few stars here and there, but often giving one star meaning the song was above average. After a while I noticed one star actually means the song is awful! So all songs I though above average suddenly were now marked really bad. Maybe my problem is cultural, but at school we got stars because we did wel, and the bad guy got some kind of negatively looking mark. Now I'm not suggesting the current rating system itself is bad, only that visually it's confusing, as my cultural expectation clearly did not fit the intent of the system. My meaning was "stars are always good" instead of "stars can be good or bad". Assuming there are as many ways to get confused as there are cultures on this planet, I believe the star rating system should be clarified. My suggestion is purely visual. I would propose to have differently looking stars to emphasis to bad to good aspect, so one 'star' would be more of an ugly blotch (ghost buster goo ghost sticking his tong out (maybe even animate drip)), while 5 stars would kind of shine (even slowly twikkel (very slow)). This could also give a beter meaning to no image in the rating column which apparently should mean 3 stars, meaning neutral and in fact equivalent to not rated. I'm not sure if the count should permanently show or maybe just while hovering over it with the mouse. Anyway, this is just my 2c.
I'm using the ratings the same way you do. I acually don't bother about the meaning of one star. I'm not willed to give a star to a song i really don't like. ;-)
And actually there is nothing preventing to introduce that very meaning for the stars: it's just the tooltips for the stars which are inconsistent with your interpretation of them. But everywhere else, then only assumption is: the more stars the better.
Actually it's a very good idea to be able to add a way reduce the ratings too. Otherwise how would one be able to mark songs a really bad ! Many songs I have I don't really want to hear, but wont delete as they are part of an album (for example). Beside not rating a song should be a rating too!, But how many "stars" would that be ? None ? meaning we cannot downgrade a song to below average ? five ? But then why be able to give that stars at all ? I say declare the unrated songs to be "average" (5), and allow above average to excellent (6->10) and below average to awful (0<-4). Cheers, Ernest.
Currently the rating is not consistent. For example: If one rates a song with one star it means awful. The latter does not make sense to me, but fair enough, that's the way amarok uses one star. However if you play a song amarok shows you the "favourite songs by artists xy" in the context-tab. It lists the one star songs, i.e. an awful song is considered a favourite. This does not make sense at all and points to the tooltip just being wrong, i.e. 1 star means something positive.
Thank you for taking the time to report this bug for Amarok. Amarok 1.4 is now unmaintained and will no longer see any improvements. Because of this, and the massive amount of changes Amarok has undergone throughout the 2.x series of releases, we are closing bugs that no longer apply to the 2.x series due to changes in functionality, the underlying architecture, or a conflict for the vision of Amarok 2. We appreciate the time you took to provide feedback about Amarok 1.4 and will look forward to any feedback you may provided about Amarok 2. Thanks.