Garden Watchdog suggestion

Dave, your top 10 is a great idea. How about listing the worst 10 (or maybe more since there are so many Plantron shops out there)?

Also, how about making the neutral rating some + or - percentage of the total comments. As it now stands, all positive, neutral, and negative ratings have to add up to 0 for an overall neutral rating. A company that has something like 18 positives and 17 negatives ends up with a positive rating. A company that had 17 positives and 18 negatives would have a negative rating, when both companies are probably very similar. I think creating a bracket for neutral ratings would more closely represent what the average rating ought to be.

For the Watchdog to have statistical relevance it needs to have specific categories of performance for each rated vendor and then weigh these against other vendors.

Further, the resulting ratings need to be "normed" against other businesses which may have obtained a greater number of votes due to larger advertising budgets, etc.

The use of absolute numbers is, in fact, not a useful guidline when measuring the sorts of perceptions and experiences the Watchdog seeks to measure.

This sort of statistical work is relatively straightforward and is done in the relational database Dave is already using to serve the Watchdog & the DG site itself.

When Dave is able, if he'd like to rope me into helping out with this aspect he knows where to find me ;~)

Adam.

Aotearoa, for a statistician that probably makes a lot of sense. For me, I want a quick way of seeing whether or not a vendor is considered really good, really bad, or somewhere inbetween which the current rating system does not really address. I think what you are proposing would end up having a lot of meaning for a statistician, but little meaning for anyone else.

Aye, there's the rub, to quote the Bard. The current system, as overly-simplistic as it is, is just that - simple. Easy to understand and verify (for those so inclined to check our math.)

However, we are looking at calculations that balance the need to keep the calculation easy to use and understand, while culling out those companies that enjoy a top ten spot simply because they have a LOT of feedback (the problem is more pronounced in the Plants By Mail site, where some companies have been accumulating feedback for several years.)

Well, here's a suggestion.

Compute the percentage of positive, neutral, and negative. The ones with the highest percentage of positive votes are the ones eligible for being included in the top 10. This would allow comparison between a company with 100 ratings and one with 10 ratings. You would probably need to ensure a minimum number of ratings to be eligible.

The most important part, to me, would be bracketing the 'neutral' ratings. It's just very misleading to see a green star beside, say, Wayside Gardens, when it has 18 positives and 17 negatives. If someone decided not to go and read all the ratings, they could get burned.

Anyways, just a suggestion.

Copperbaron, I feel that you have brought up a valid point - in fact it has crossed my mind too. I have a feeling that when the garden watchdog was originally started the top ten list it was a great idea, but with the current growth and publicity there should be a better way to improve the information for folks, or should I say the average consumer who is utilizing it as a tool before making a purchase. I also agree that when a person automatically sees several positive remarks they will take them at face value instead of looking further and seeing the negative remarks that also have been added.

As for statistics being used I can also see your point. Most of us want a good product for our hard earned dollars and just want an honest report before we spend them. If I was that concerned about the statistics mentioned above, and for some reason probability crosses my mind, I could just pitch pennies towards my doorstep or toss dice to guess results.

You brought up a valid point and I'm glad you did.

Carol

Personally I ignore the numbers entirely and go by the comments. I tend to give more credence to comments made by known members. Some of whom are not paid subscribers but who I recognize from their vast contributions to the PDB.

I agree with all of the above, however...one thing I have noticed is that people interpret a given rating in different
ways. (in the PDB and garden watchdog).

Tha main one is "neutral". Mebbe you hcould have a fourth
selection - along the lines of "never have purchases from this source" or " I have no experience with this plant."

I could not quote you a specific instance, but have noticed that some people post neutral even though they have had experience with it, mebbe because they dont HATE it but dont LOVE it either.

I am with Zony I read the comments, and then try to make a judgment, altho since I am a "plant ho" it does not take much cogitating on my part to get the thing in question.

Some will testify that ones man's weed can often be my treasure! And even then, a plant which I dont care for,
CAN convince me to change my decision without much convincin

I'd like to see a (good, OK or ugly) percentage rating in the GW too but I don't use it often enough (but I ought to).

Lavanda

I always rate a GW comment I make but never a PDB entry. I only add GW comments to companies I've used personally and the majority of the PDB entries I make are of plants that I've personal experience with. I use the PDB comments box for my experiences with the individual plants.

I'm keen on the conservation of all plants regardless of their behaviour in my garden. I'm not keen on the conservation of companies who give me a poor service and plants.

Some companies do keep up with the GW and act on some of the comments, which is great stuff! The plants wouldn't have the same chance to prove my negative rating wrong. Have a read of the Urtica dioica comments if you have a spare moment, it might help explain my reasoning for not rating plants.

Okay..., as I said in my first post, those are the things that need to be done to have the collection of votes / ratings, etc, make real sense in the real world.

Since the things I am speaking about would happen in the underlying database (behind the scenes), they would be invisible to the users of the Watchdog. All the GW user would see is the final result.

These things could be expressed as a "satisfaction index" or as two or three related ratings "on a scale of 0 ~ 10," let's say, with 10 being the highest.

However, if the underlying mathematical work is not done, these numbers will be meaningless.

To quote from my first post:

"When Dave is able, if he'd like to rope me into helping out with this aspect he knows where to find me ;~)"

Adam.