Ratings and Profiles in GoogleGroups

While working on a plugin for the new Google Desktop API I noticed a couple of changes to the Google Groups interface. Each post can now be rated for quality and you can easily view the profile of each poster.

Accordingly the layout of each posts header has changed so you can see what average rating a post has received (and the number of votes as well as a link to the profile of the poster.

The profiles show a basic set of information (name, location, website/blog) as well as a detailed posting history including a timeline of when they have posted.



It's been a while since Google Groups got any changes but this is definitely a good improvement. The rating system should help point readers to the one good post that often amounts to the needle in the haystack of a flamewar.