Ok so after going through many many courses and equipment pages I really think the rating systems needs some work. For the equipment I think the 5 star system works okay, especially considering the fact that equipment really depends on the person, their game, physical structure, etc, etc. However w/ the courses I think there needs to be some type of standard to put against the ratings. I'll use myself for an example on this. When I first joined the site I rated one of my local municipal courses and overall 3 for being a municipal course it has a decent layout and is maintained fairly well. However, after a couple weeks it dawned on me how would I compare that course to a true 5 star course?...theres no way it would even come close to a 3. The cause of this is clear-I don't play (read: can't afford) 5 star courses even once a year then I'm not even going to consider that as a course to compare my joe schmo course to, therefore skewing the overall course rating system. One potential solution I thought of would be to go to a numerical 1-10 system w/ some type of guide that would give a brief idea of what a 1, 5, and 10 would be in a certain category. Then just take the categories and have them averaged out to give the course an overall score.

I would propose the use of these 10 categories:
Rates/Value
Pace of Play
Hospitality
Scenery
Teebox/Fairway Maintenance
Green Maintenance
Hazard Maintenance
Course Design
On location food/drink
Practice Facilities

Just throwin' it out there...I'll still love the site either way.

I love the ambition- and I love the idea. I'd be all for it and I agree- it's hard to rate a muni anything but a 1 or 2 star when you play a "real" 5 star joint. That said- we can't get people to do 5 ratings. I can't see them taking the time to do 10. We could do a 1-10 scale though- to spread out the disparity more. We'll consider it.
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Kickntrue-
Duffing since 1993

How about doing like a primary rating of the 'top 3 most important things' and then a detailed rating section w/ other areas to be rated & commented on (a comment box could be under each area to be rated).

Another thought: to increase the amount of reviews a course gets, why no put the review section as the last tab when you are entering a score? Or just make the note box slightly small and put the rating section below that.

Theredmission stole my idea That would be the easiest way to get more ratings entered if it was part of the score submission page. I myself would be more apt to use it.

Instead of "maintenance" though, I'd use the "condition" instead. It's basically the same thing, but even well maintained courses can't account for boneheads who wont repair divots, etc.

I realize that the intention of rating a course is for players to check out courses that they haven't been to before and the ratings allow them to get an idea of what the course is like from a players point of view verses what you see on a website or whatever. I think that ratings should also be based on the condition of the course on the day you play your round verses your overall opinion of the course. I know of many courses that overall I'd rate a "3" or "4" but those same course might be in such poor condition or great condition that day that I'd rate them a 2 or a 5. Not sure if that makes sense or not but if I was planning on golfing at Course A in the morning, and I saw a recent rating from the day before that was showing it to be in poor shape that week due to the greens being plugged, I would probably try to get on at Course B. Does that make sense? Or maybe I'm just missing the whole point of the rating system.

I thought of the same thing in regards to what you are talking about in condition, however the problem with that is there would need to be many rounds entered on every course for that to be an effective system. Considering that most courses I've seen on the site only have a few (if any) scores entered for them I doubt there would be enough continual rating of the condition to make it an accurate and usable system.

that's probably true....maybe they could throw in an extra button that says something along the lines of "overall condition on date played". That would maybe help a little.

In any case, your idea about an extra tab when entering a score would work better