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how are add-on ratings calculated?

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  • Last reply by James

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So I thought, gee I'll sort the add-ons from a search. Then I drilled down a particular add-on that showed an average of "4" for the ratings. But how could "4" even be possible? There were 18 reviews, 7 1-star, 3 2-star, 2 3-star, 0 4-star, 6 5-star. High school math of "average" comes out with a result of 2.72. The "median" is 2. Perhaps a weighted average is used? I weighted by the number of days old for the review and came up with 2.78. Perhaps some reviews are omitted as questionable, then (for this particular add-on) I would have excluded the 3 5-star reviews that all showed up on 12/17/11, even the prose is similar between them.

Ratings are a great way to weed out the junk and find the best. But it needs to have some base in reality. If you want to check out my numbers, the add-on that I'm randomly picking on is "MediaPimp - Internet Radio, Save Videos, and more".

Please clarify.

So I thought, gee I'll sort the add-ons from a search. Then I drilled down a particular add-on that showed an average of "4" for the ratings. But how could "4" even be possible? There were 18 reviews, 7 1-star, 3 2-star, 2 3-star, 0 4-star, 6 5-star. High school math of "average" comes out with a result of 2.72. The "median" is 2. Perhaps a weighted average is used? I weighted by the number of days old for the review and came up with 2.78. Perhaps some reviews are omitted as questionable, then (for this particular add-on) I would have excluded the 3 5-star reviews that all showed up on 12/17/11, even the prose is similar between them. Ratings are a great way to weed out the junk and find the best. But it needs to have some base in reality. If you want to check out my numbers, the add-on that I'm randomly picking on is "MediaPimp - Internet Radio, Save Videos, and more". Please clarify.

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If you have a question about something such as Extension ratings on the addons.mozilla.org site then https://forums.mozilla.org/addons/ would be more appropriate.