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[Peter Engrav]

From almost the beginning of my use of Media Center I've found myself frequently clicking on the little row of stars in the rating column to rate a particular song when the last thing I had done (say, fixed the name of an album) had left a whole bunch of tracks selected.  Poof, I've just obliterated the (varied and valuable) ratings of a whole bunch of tracks.  Usually I catch myself and undo in time, but it does happen that I "discover" big swaths of tracks all suspiciously with the same rating.

I'm trying to get the habit of "fiddling" with the rating column as I listen to stuff (rather than during setup/acquisition) - 'tis the only way I can imagine really ended up with a high-value "rating" column.  But that encourages quick "alt-tab to media player, click on the rating, alt-tab back" which is when you're likely to make this mistake.

When you click on an unselected track exactly the right thing happens - you update its rating and you don't change the selection.

Two possibilities.

1. Tweak things such that the "click on a star" UI never respects the selection - it always just modifies the track you clicked on. When you want to "rate" a whole bunch of tracks at once you can use either "edit selected field" on the right click menu or F2 (as you would any other field) or you can use the property browser widget.

2. Add another "star bar" for the currently playing track somewhere up in the playback controls specifically to support the scenario of "I want to quickly confirm/change the rating of the thing that's playing right now" without having to do any navigation or selection at all.

Thoughts?
I'll defer to 
So either I'd like to see

[zxsix]

#2 can be accomplished by editing the display area at the top that shows the current track.  Add the [Rating] field up there and if the currently playing track is alread rated, it will be displayed but not editable.

Also there are some track info visualizations available in the download area that display the current playing track in a star format.  Some allow editing of the rating and others are display only.

There's also the Playing Now plugin, that displays the currently playing track in a popup window separate from MC.  Rating is displayed and can be changed.

My method:
Multimedia keyboards can be used to edit ratings.  The microsoft wireless keyboard I have has 5 buttons numbered 1-5 that are for favorites.  I've mapped MC commands to these buttons so that if I press 1 while a song is playing, the rating for that song is changed in MC to 1 start, etc. etc.
No chance of multiple rating changes using this method.

[risingdamp]

Another solution:

Just click away (e.g. on a single track) to unselect what you want to rate before you rate it!  Basic computer literacy should tell you not to attempt an action on something when multiple items are selected in case the action applies to all items.  Ok you made the mistake once and hopefully used undo, so you won't make it again right?  I can't imagine this is a big problem as it's not been reported before afaik.

[Peter Engrav]

Well now that's just not nice (the basic computer literacy comment).

I was attempting to observe that despite my being a seriously experienced computer user, the rating bar somehow manages to defeat my instincts in a way that leads to data loss. That's basically the definition of "not great UI". No?

While it's true that the one might expect the basic select+command model to be intuitive for most users at this point, the rating bar is unique in that it edits data right when you click on it. Whether or not the list entry was previously selected or not. So it trains you to just click it for tracks you happen to be scrolling by, regardless of the selection. It's only if you happen to click on one of the already selected rows that it applies to all of the selected rows. That's pretty far from a standard UI.

No?

[KingSparta]

That Was 3 Years Ago

[Peter Engrav]

I'm very patient. 

Or rather, I only just found the "show new replies to your posts" link.