To the extent that "Web 2.0" remains a buzzword, it's common for users of all sorts of websites to be able to rate the content of the website or the content that the website describes. That's all well and good, but some sites go a step further and let users rate the ratings. I'm not talking about mere threaded comments; I'm talking about the ability to thumbs-up or thumbs-down YouTube comments or rate a module review on CPAN as helpful or not-helpful. These ratings can be thought of as meta-ratings.
Now, if you've ever bought something on Amazon.com, you know how it epitomizes a more-is-more philosophy. Look at a page for a book and you'll see not just a title, author, price, cover image, ISBN, and product description, but also a link to nag the publisher about releasing a Kindle edition, a reminder about Super Saver Shipping, links to third-party sellers, an ad for Amazon Student, some random special offers, a "Frequently Bought Together" set, two different descriptions of what other people who visited the page bought, tags, citations, categories, and probably a kitchen sink hidden somewhere in all those <div>s. I guess the programmers are paid per byte of generated HTML. It's then hardly surprising that on Amazon one can not only review a product or comment on a review but also vote on whether a comment on a review "adds to the discussion". (The discussion about what, the product or the review?) Thus you can submit meta-meta-ratings. And since I'm criticizing the existence of these very ratings, I suppose this post is a kind of meta-meta-meta-rating.
Too bad you can't Facebook-like a post on GameFAQs, huh? If anybody writes a book about our obsession with ratings of dubious validity, it should be entitled
Sign In to Like This.
---
Everything I know about Buddhism I learned from
Journey to the West.