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Comment by jellicle | Hacker News Reader

This is a similar problem to the ratings of religious books on Amazon and similar sites. Appeal to a very narrow niche, disappeal to anyone else, satisfy that niche, and your percentage ratings will be very high (even though almost all customers know, correctly, that they dislike your product).

This is also what allows targeted attacks against products - annoy (instead of appeal to) a limited segment of the population, they all come and rate your book a "0", now your rating has dropped to near-zero despite it APPEALING (instead of disappealing) to most of the population.

Rating systems should try to figure out if a product is being boosted or attacked by a narrow slice of fans/haters.

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"This is a similar problem to the ratings of religious books on Amazon and similar sites. Appeal to a very narrow niche, disappeal to anyone else, satisfy that niche, and your percentage ratings will be very high (even though almost all customers know, correctly, that they dislike your product)."

That makes the ratings more useful, I think. The rating is only really interesting to those who don't know if they'll like a book, and those are the people in the niche.

It's not really that similar -- Amazon and similar sites have an audience that is mostly not interested in religious books.

BGG has an audience that is mostly interested in board games.

Suggesting all boardgames are similar? Those are fighting words.

Personally, I write off Gloomhaven because it's a tactical miniatures game (something I've never cared for). There are other high ranked games, like Caverna, which I write off for similar reasons.

> Suggesting all boardgames are similar?

Entirely not what I suggested.

Amazon has a large registered user base (who can apply ratings), and only a tiny percentage of those are interested in religious books (or, these days, you could probably say only a v.small percentage of Amazon customers are buying books of any sort).

BoardGameGeek has a user based almost by definition exclusively of people who are interested in board games.

GP's suggestion that niche product ratings could / are skewed by people unfamiliar with the topic doesn't apply so well to niche communities, especially ones with effective moderation.

Disclaimer - I've been on BGG since 2012, own Gloomhaven (but haven't played it), and consequently haven't rated it.

My comment was meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek. Sorry I didn't convey that well.

I do think the boardgame community has enough subniches that it's not immune to this problem, though.

Ah, okay - apologies that I didn't pick up on that.

I wouldn't self-describe as a board gamer. I monitor the forums & reviews a bit, and have been going to a local meetup for a little while.

But it does feel like board gamers tend to be quite familiar with games outside their 'preference zone' -- perhaps more so than other work & hobby areas I've experienced. Anecdotal, to be sure.

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