YouTube needs to change their ratings system

Many online have been working very hard to bring news of Iran and the events after the election, and one of those methods is to upload and spread news of videos of the protests and other related events. One nearly effortless way to promote a video is to give it a high rating which may result in it making this list for example.

At first glance, the ratings system seems pretty straightforward: videos go from awesome to pretty cool, to worth watching, then nothing special, and finally poor.

There's a problem with this though - take a video like this one. It's a somewhat grainy video called Basij Militia driving truck through the Iranian protesters". It's definitely a video that the world needs to see, but it just doesn't feel right to give the video an Awesome! rating. There's nothing awesome about a truck being driven into protesters, and the image quality is not awesome; nevertheless, it's a video that needs to be promoted.



When you think about it, giving a video five stars simply means "more people should see this video" and one star means "I wouldn't recommend this to anyone". At the moment there's a bit of confusion when you see a video of something you don't like but think should be seen by others -- as another example, let's say you're a supporter of a political candidate and you see his opponent saying something dumb - do you give it five stars because others should see it or do you give it one star because you don't like the person?

Therefore the ratings should probably be replaced with something like the following:

***** Must see video
**** Recommended
*** Worth watching (this one can stay the same)
** Not recommended
* Stay away

Now the ratings system is clear - you're either telling others to watch the video or not.

As for where to suggest this - perhaps here? Let me know if there's a better place to make the suggestion.