Perception Vs Adding up Numbers

The Kate McGhie People’s Choice Venue Ranking System is based on the positive AND negative perceptions and impressions our members have of the restaurants, cafés, pubs and food shops that they visit and vote on. When a member votes for a venue they make a decision based on what their expectations are of the venue before they enter the premises. This is important since it sets the neutral middle ground benchmark on which they will then vote.

Unlike some on-line and off-line voting systems which ask voters to rate venue performances out of 10, our system has a positive and negative sliding scale that we believe more accurately reflects the experience that people have when going out to a restaurant, café or pub, or purchasing fresh foods from a food shop. We believe that it is easier and more accurate to give a grading based on fulfilled expectations rather than points out of 10. We do give a final rating out of 10 overall for each subcategory but the way we arrive at this rating is far more accurate than just adding up numbers from 1 to 10 and posting a score.

Weighting the Vote

When members vote for each venue their vote is calculated against a vote weighting table and the result is displayed in a table to the left of a Venue listing.

Each of the 5 sub-categories for each of the venue types has a different level of importance and so each has a specially weighted grade to compensate or “weight” them when the overall rating is calculated.

This “weighting” depends on each sub-category’s overall importance to the total experience of dining, drinking or shopping at the venue that is being voted on.

With this in mind a rating of 10 for Atmosphere does not have the same weight as a rating of 10 for the Food in a Restaurant; the Food will be weighted far higher and contribute more to the over-all Restaurant ranking.

Our exact weightings and the formula we use have been developed to make the outcome as fair and balanced as possible. From time to time we reserve the right to alter that formula and/or weightings to improve the system’s accuracy. If the formula and weightings are changed in the future we will notify all members via our newsletter of the changes and their effects on their votes.

Time Frame

All member’s votes are dated and have an expiry date six months past their voting date. This means that old votes entered when a restaurant had high standards one year are not carried over if their standards slip or if they change owners. Eventually the votes will reflect changes over time.

Voting frequency

Members can only vote once for the same venue but they can change their vote as often as they like if during the 6 months duration (valid period) of the original vote they visit the venue again and again and their experience is different each time. Each new vote will cancel out the previous vote and will be reflected when the Voting Application next updates its rankings table.