Looked into that recently - what is interesting is that they have a rule against allowing ratings on the productions, because - due to the free effort aspect - they worry that it will make it discouraging for other producers to invest their free time in recording new productions.
I can't help thinking this is a less-than-ideal solution. What are some ways to make it easier for a listener to find a good production, while simultaneously protecting producers from discouragement?
I haven't heard of Librivox before, and I'm too lazy to actually check the site, but my thoughts:
Upvote-only, no displayed view/play count. This protects the producers by letting them assume neutral reasons for low approval ratings–maybe everyone who does listen to their reading is just too lazy to upvote–while providing a mechanism to say, "This one was good."
I could also see making the upvotes invisible and using some magical algorithm to convert raw numbers into a range from "no one has given an opinion" to "lots of people liked this".
I can't help thinking this is a less-than-ideal solution. What are some ways to make it easier for a listener to find a good production, while simultaneously protecting producers from discouragement?