In specific, I'm referring to the votes on poemranker, so if you're tired of hearing about the site, you might not want to read further, but I find this immensely interesting.
I set a scale from 0-10 inclusive, 10 being stunningly good, 0 being horrificly bad.
The site has received a little over a thousand votes. Not a huge amount, but statistically worth looking at. Graphically, you can see the results at http://poemranker.com/site-stats.jsp
There is a gentle bell curve, centered between 6 and 7. Already, people are voting higher on average than average. ;)
But above that there are three anomalies.
The first, smallest, is that the rank "0" goes outside the bell curve with a slight spike. It is perhaps double the size it ought to be, at half a percent or so.
Going up the scale, there is a spike at 6 -- five times what it ought to be. People like "6" as an "average" -- it's "your poem wasn't horrible and while it wasn't great, it was okay."
Above that is a spike at 10 -- triple what it ought to be, the second highest voted score, which being near the trailing end of a bell curve is rather amazing. If someone's trying to choose between an 8, a 9, or a 10... it's likely they're going to give it a 10... because if they had to choose it was probably worth it, and gee, isn't it nice to give something a 10?
Okay. Just had to put that out. :)
