Is there a way to rate authors?

[johnwhelan]

Sort of number of books rated five* but down rated per single *.

Total number of stars divide by the number of books that have any stars.

Does that make sense?

An author with four 4 star ratings would rate higher than one with two 5 star ratings and two one star ratings.

Thanks John

[itimpi]

There is no author rating in the standard version. The current beta version has User Defined Columns and I assume you could use this to do what you want although I am not sure. I would guess it is not long now until the Beta facilities make it into the main release.

Edit: Actually on reading what you want I am not sure. It sound as if you want some automated calculation across all books by an author?

[neilmarr]

I know what you're getting at, John, so please don't think I'm being flip, but I reckon there's only one meaningful and accurate way to rate an author ... and that's personally. Relying on shiny gold stars given by readers you don't know and who may have wildly different tastes and values can be misleading. Thanks for a thought-provoking OP. Here's karma to ya. Best wishes. Neil

[chaley]

Originally Posted by itimpi

There is no author rating in the standard version. The current beta version has User Defined Columns and I assume you could use this to do what you want although I am not sure. I would guess it is not long now until the Beta facilities make it into the main release.

Edit: Actually on reading what you want I am not sure. It sound as if you want some automated calculation across all books by an author?

Even putting aside the calculation, a user-defined column won't solve the problem. They are attached to books. The OP wants something attached to authors, something that (I imagine) shows a list of authors and their ratings. For example, the list of authors in the tags browser could show the author's rating in that list along with the count (it doesn't, and I am not volunteering to implement it).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

I know what you're getting at, John, so please don't think I'm being flip, but I reckon there's only one meaningful and accurate way to rate an author ... and that's personally. Relying on shiny gold stars given by readers you don't know and who may have wildly different tastes and values can be misleading. Thanks for a thought-provoking OP. Here's karma to ya. Best wishes. Neil

As we've clearly seen here on MR, what some really like, others don't like. So it may not be an accurate rating based on your taste.

[kovidgoyal]

Well, if you've rated your books yourself, it may be useful to calculate an "average rating" for the authors of rated books.

As a matter of fact you could do it for any piece of metadata in the tag browser, not just authors and have a Sort by average rating in addition to sort by popularity in the tag browser.

It's an interesting idea. I'm too busy right now, but if chaley doesn't want to do it, I'll put it on my TODO list.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

As a matter of fact you could do it for any piece of metadata in the tag browser, not just authors and have a Sort by average rating in addition to sort by popularity in the tag browser.

Are you thinking of showing the average in another bracketed box, like the count? Would require changing the tag_browser_ views to compute the average, which will have a performance impact.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by chaley

Are you thinking of showing the average in another bracketed box, like the count? Would require changing the tag_browser_ views to compute the average, which will have a performance impact.

Not sure, will have to think about it a little. Definitely post 0.7 in any case.

[johnwhelan]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Well, if you've rated your books yourself, it may be useful to calculate an "average rating" for the authors of rated books.

That's exactly what I'm after. One day will do fine.

Thanks John