dsource and ranking vs. rating

[Manfred Nowak]

Knud Soerensen wrote

> Sorry, of cause you can also put the project at the top or at the
> bottom of you list.

That is still overly restrictive.

In essence you require voters to impose a total ordering on the set
of items they choose to vote on. 

But voters usually only have a partial knowledge of any such set and
therefore only a partial ordering available. Every imposed total
ordering then forces the voter to give out already distorted data. 

The evaluator of such a poll then goes off with this distorted data
and some algorithm that is believed to produce a reliable result on
undistorted data.

The evaluator then preents some pseudo acribic ranking/rating like 
"item1 has score 0.393, item2 has score 0.374, ..." and requires the 
audience to conclude that item1 should be their choice.

But Walter got it right when he wrote in this thread: 
| By and large, they are successful at separating the ones worth a
| second look from the ones not.

Everyone who is able to improve this outcome has found a philosopher's 
stone---and a future without qualms.

-manfred