View Rating on StumbleUpon

Hello again! In this week’s tutorial, we are going to talk about one of the core functions of Stumbling: rating. Rating sites is essential to improving the quality of your stumbles - we want you to exercise this right and tell us what you liked and what you didn’t like.  Our Recommendation Engine will learn your preferences and bring you even better sites.

Thumbing UP
Why should you thumb sites up?
Thumbing DOWN
When do you thumb down a site?


Thumbing UP


Clicking on the thumbs-up button thumsbsup_mozbar.png will do three things:

  • Rate a site - If the site was delivered to you as a Stumble, it will add it to your Favorites while also training our Recommendation Engine.
  • Discover a site - If the site was reached independently of StumbleUpon and has not been discovered by someone else before you, it will open the Discovery Window, allowing you to submit the site to our directory. (Note: This is available only for the installed toolbar.)

    • discovery_quicksubmit.png


  • Label your favorites - Once a site has been thumbed-up, the thumb-up button changes color from blue to green. All your favorites to date will be labeled with a green thumbs-up icon, both on the toolbar and website. Pressing the button a second time will undo the initial rating. The site will be removed from your Favorites.

    • tutorial_rating_favorites.png


Why should you thumb sites up?


  • The primary goal of thumbing-up sites is to improve the quality of your future stumbles. By thumbing up, you are telling us what you like, so we can show you more of that.
  • You are also contributing to our discovery philosophy: your ratings help surface the best of the web. Your favorites are then shared with like-minded people, including your Subscribers.

    • stumble_top_rated.jpg


  • You are indirectly bookmarking the sites that you like, so you can access them later in your profile, from any computer, by going to your Tagsas shown in the image below.

    • tags_bookmarks.png
  • It allows you to build your own online collections of sites on a very specific topic of interest. (wine, alternative-energy, crafts, furniture, etc.)

    • favorites_furniture.png


Thumbing DOWN


Clicking this button will show that you did not like the site. Other users will not know that you thumbed-down a site, unless you also leave a review. Your “down” ratings will help our Recommendation Engine learn what you don’t like, so we don’t show you similar sites again.


The thumbs-down button has a few extra options accessible by clicking on the arrow next to it:

    thumbdown_options.jpg

  • Not-for-me - Use this whenever you receive something that you dislike (either as content or not visually appealing) or does not match your interests.
  • Report Spam - Use this option whenever you receive content that provides no value to you, nor to any other person. If it’s something you personally don’t like, use the option above. If it’s content that no one, but the author of the page could possibly like, report it as spam. You may use this option for unsolicited requests to register, sites that look suspicious or contain scams.
  • Duplicate Content - Content that has been copied from another page with no added value from the original.  Examples would be news articles taken verbatim from a news site, photos taken from a photo site, re-uploaded videos on YouTube, online games re-hosted on another server, etc. Critique, satire, remixes of content from other pages are acceptable and should not be flagged.
  • Block a Website - You can opt to block an entire domain, which means you will no longer receive any pages from that site again. You can unblock the domain at any time later if you change your mind from your Settings page.


When do you thumb down a site?


Thumbing down a site can be a tough call, especially when you are not sure from which of the four options described above to choose. To help you make the best decision, we’ve outlined a few of the most common scenarios:


  • Case 1: You don’t agree with an article from “The New York Times”. When you thumb it down, you’re only rating the individual article, you are not thumbing down the entire domain http://www.nytimes.com/.
  • Case 2: You are subscribed to the Cats topic and are getting a lot of cat sites. You thumb down a few of them. You are still going to receive sites about cats, yet not as frequently as before.

    • stumble_cats.png

  • Case 3:  You are receiving a lot of pages from the same domain. This may be either because one of your Subscriptions has rated a lot of pages from that domain or because you are stumbling in a very narrow/specialized topic. (e.g. You are stumbling in Tennis and you are receiving a lot of pages from a site in UK that invites you to local Tennis events. You live in another country and these pages are not relevant to you, even if you like Tennis.) Use the Block Website option or unsubscribe from the user sourcing those pages. You can always revert either of these two actions.

    • wimbledon.png

  • Case 4: You are receiving pages from a StumbleUpon advertiser or partner. If you don’t like the content, feel free to thumb it down, but do not use the Report Spam option. Advertiser content has already been pre-approved and passed our “spam” filter. Use the “Report Spam” option to help us identify real spammers.

  • Case 5: One of the Stumblers you subscribed to is sending you a lot of sites that don’t match your interests. Shares sent to you by other Stumblers do not come from our Recommendation Engine. Instead of thumbing them down, consider whether you want to continue to receive shares from that person.

    • acceptshares.png

  • Case 6: You received a page that is very different from your selected topics of interest. It is possible the page was mis-categorized, and if that is the case, do not thumb it down, but rather report it to us, so we can correct the category. You can report a site from the Tools > Report this stumble as menu on the toolbar.

    • reportmiscatsite.png

There may be other situations when you are in doubt about whether you should thumb down a site or not. If your particular case is not mentioned above, send in your questions and we’ll let you know the best course of action.


We hope you found this tutorial useful and we look forward to hearing your questions and comments.

~ The SU Team

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