Right from the blog post on blog.giveawayoftheday.com:

Hello everyone,
We are glad to announce our new rating system which will greatly improve both user and software developer experience with GOTD.
Starting tomorrow, there won’t be a single rating for each software. Instead, each program will be represented by several separate ratings:

Useful (0 to 5 stars)
Easy to install 0/5
Stable 0/5
User friendly 0/5
Feature rich 0/5
Reasonable price 0/5
Helpful documentation 0/5

That’s not all. Now, you will be able to comment on each of these ratings, or add a general recommendation.
We hope that the system will help both our visitors and software developers with more detailed feedback.
Please try this new rating system and let us know if you like it:), we need your opinion!

Yours,
GOTD team

Here is my two cents. As it stands, not only do I believe seven different rating categories is too much (I doubt many people will take the time to rate each one accurately) but also some of the categories are redundant and thus should be cut out.

I think GOTD should leave out “easy to install”, “helpful documentation”, and “feature rich”. It is not that I think those are categories that should not be evaluated; those are categories that should be evaluated. However “feature rich” can be inferred by the “price” (i.e. if it doesn’t have many features it won’t be worth the price the developer is asking for so the price will be rated as being too high) and “easy to install” and “helpful documentation” can be inferred from “user friendly” (i.e. if it is hard to install and lacking a good help file, it will hurt user friendliness).

What I think GOTD needs to keep in mind is that these ratings are just that: ratings. They aren’t really supposed to give a person an insight on all of the nicks and corners of a program; a full review is for that purpose. Ratings should hit on the main points. By cutting down on three categories, GOTD ends up with a total of four rating categories. Four categories are more likely to get a response than seven and will reduce redundancy, yet still hit on the main points.

Another thing I am wondering about is how the comments change will affect my ability to post my short review on GOTD letting people know what is what; guess we will see tomorrow.

What do you guys think? Is this a good, bad, or ugly change? Overall, I personally think it has potential to be a good change (with a few tweaks of course) but how successful it is will ultimately depend on community participation.

Feel free to post your comments below.