Having (rightly) adopted a very "laissez faire" policy around "allowing" people both to rate whatever sites and and at whatever level they wish we didn't put in place a "rule" that one can only rate a site one has recorded as having visited.
Today I was looking at the full rated sites list sequenced by "rating" and was interested to note Taputapuātea Marae Complex among just 4 WHS running at an "average" rating of 5*. None has received more than 3 ratings and Taputapuātea has only received 1. Interested to discover who had visited this site and rated it so (Surprisingly in my eyes) highly, I then discovered that the rater has not actually done so (or at least has not recorded having done so and doesn't appear to have traveled in the area on the basis of his "travel map"). The 2 members who have recorded a visit haven't done a rating.
The rating MAY be because the individual has a particular "interest" in/knowledge about Taputapuātea and, perfectly legitimately within our "rules", wishes to record this using the "insights" regarding the value of the site which this "interest" has given him, or could arise from data entry "finger trouble" (I have found that it is rather easy to click on a site's stars when moving the cursor down the full list without meaning to!!).
I don't think that there are many other examples of this. These small numbers are unlikely to make much difference to our overall ratings for those WHS with many ratings and, in the case of WHS with very few ratings, can be identified quite easily by those who wish to! No doubt an analysis could be done to identify how many examples there are of "rated but not visited".
If it is "finger trouble" with data entry then an additional warning message "Rated but not visited - are you sure?" might help to prevent them - indeed Community members might actually be pleased to receive such a warning which would prevent them making date entry mistakes. On the other hand this might be regarded potentially as "supporting" ratings of unvisited sites when we would prefer this to be a relatively rare occurrence. Another possibility might be to "prevent" the rating of an "unvisited" site altogether (if someone felt VERY strongly about wanting to rate a site they hadn't visited, but perhaps knew a lot about, then they would just have to tick it as "Visited" - as they could now!). The 3rd option of course is to leave things as they are whilst, perhaps, doing the analysis of such occurrences as suggested above so as to keep an eye on the frequency!

If you are looking for a similar case on the opposite side of the spectrum, I might point out Yellowstone, which received a half star from someone who has not visited the site, according to their profile page. If this were to become a greater problem (sandbagging or score-boosting), then maybe we should consider whether members can only rate sites they have visited. In the meantime, I like Els approach, thinking that with enough ratings, the anomalies will be diluted.

There is no need to prevent data entry. I will recommend to Els (and then implement) to exclude these ratings from the community rating. You have to have visited to be included in the rating shown in the top list.

Not a choice for now, as I have stated my position earlier. First let the ratings come in. There are still only few.

I see my single Nahanni review has propelled it to #1 :)

Was looking at which are the most/least "popular" Cultural Landscapes and was interested to note Kuk as one of the "most popular" - well, on the basis of 1 vote at 4.5* ! As this is a WHS I am particularly interested in, I went to see who had visited it and given it the 4.5*. In fact that traveller has not recorded as ever having visited Kuk (and has only rated 1 visited site out of 354 - 5***** for Belfries - ah well, "chacun a son gout"!)

I think it would be interesting to have an analysis of "Rated but not Visited" and "significantly abnormal" ratings - not as a permanent "page" but at least to provide some indication of how often/in what circumstances it is occurring and on how significant it might be on the overall "community averages". I wonder how many are "mistakes" or what other motives there might be? Their occurrence isn't entirely "neutral" or of no significance to those Community Members who put a lot of effort into rating sites both for their own interest and to provide a "data base" for other members on the basis/in the hope that other members would play the same game (which isn't the same as coming up with the same rating - genuinely held differences of opinion are fully welcomed).

We seem to have some people playing hockey on the same pitch on which we are trying to play soccer! Perhaps we can let them continue to do so in a corner of the field whilst we carry on with the main game largely uninterrupted but it would be interesting to know how many such players there are! They have a right to play their own game for their own interest but do we have to include their scores in the Community averages?

How many "players" in all do we have - around 70? There don't seem to have been many new raters recently and we are "missing" a few of the "High rollers" in terms of numbers of sites visited who (perfectly reasonably) don't wish to play the rating game at all. Though it is amazing that "active" members of this community have rated (and thereby mainly "visited") 988 WHS - that is quite a "knowledge resource" about the WHS domain in "one (virtual) place"!

It's always the risk of votes. That's why we need many votes to have relevant ratings.
Maybe Els could delete their votes, at least the most obvious ones?


NB: "Chacun ses goûts" ;)

Thanks, but the "English" language phrase is as I wrote it. See the Oxford Dictionary - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/chacun_a_son_gout
Similarly of course the "English" for a "room with a private bathroom" is "en suite" and a "Voie sans issue" is a "Cul de sac". When English "appropriates" a French word or phrase it doesn't necessarily copy the French exactly!

ok really interesting, i didn't know this expression had been appropriated in this way.

Voie sans issue and cul de sac are exact french expressions

I was wondering why Angkor disappeared from the highest rates and i saw one visitor who rated only one star for this WHS. On the profile of this person, he has 0 visited WHS and 0 contribution. Probably not fair (i have never been in angkor)

I would concur here and remove the rating till the person marks sites as visited. But even discounting this outlier, the rating is not 5* straight. There are more non 5* ratings.

If I wanted to, I could quickly create the new leader by moving my vote for Rapa Nui to 5* ... Still, my thinking is that Rapa Nui put into perspective with other 15th century art pales.

What I find most incredible about Rapa Nui is how it evolved in isolation on the one hand, and to what extremity the locals were committed to constructing them. They practically diverted all their resources into building the statues without considering sustainability. At the end, they stayed with a treeless island, infertile soil and overpopulation. That's what I call conviction. This is so typically human to commit to some ideologies regardless of how destructive they may become (c.f., Taliban), but being in the middle of the ocean, the Rapa Nui makes a good story.

Assif
I think 4.5* is still a good story.

Rapa Nui is one of a small number of WHS (Goree is another) which (IMO) have been "weaponised" by pressure groups (in this case, by "environmental campaigners seeking to promote ecological collapse scenarios in order to stoke anxieties about the future of the environment" - I am not suggesting that you are one of "those" Assif!!), to transmit their own "World view" via a somewhat contentious narrative - one which isn't totally "untrue" but which needs to be evaluated and understood in a far more nuanced way in order to draw conclusions.

The weaknesses in the "unthinking Rapa Nui people" narrative have been publicised (rather sensationally) in numerous Newspaper articles which can easily be found by searches such as "Why did Rapa Nui civilisation collapse" but are rather better discussed in this academic report -
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27864/1/WP117.pdf

It raises a number of questions such as whether there was really a "collapse" and whether the erection of Moai continued during hard times etc etc.
Above all - what other factors could have played a role in the environmental changes which took place on Rapa Nui over the centures of its occupation. It concludes that
"A bit controversially perhaps, the conclusion of this study is that the adage of Easter as metaphor is far too simplistic for anything beyond superficial value, in lieu of the fact that Easter Island was a highly simplistic ecosystem that was overwhelmed with only a few variables capable of disturbing its equilibrium. The scope of the Rapanui to correctly identify and fix the problem of their diminishing tree cover was limited. Technological advancement and substitution of resources were unavailable to the Rapanui, as was knowledge from other places. This amounts to significant differences when comparing Easter Island to a highly complex and interrelated ecosystem such as that of the globe."

For sure. No criticism intended. For the sites I visited I did not give away 5 ratings generously either.