Reader Rater Greasemonkey Script

I wanted a script to rate feed items within Google Reader, and decided to write my own. My hope is that I'll be able to identify which feeds I never really read, so that I can remove them. We'll see how that goes. I expect that Google will come around sometime with some better trend reporting within Reader, and make this script irrelevant. Or change their interface and break everything.

Install

This is a greasemonkey script, so you'll have to have that installed first. After that, you should just be able to click here. In the window that pops up, you can install the script, and view the source.

Usage

In 'List View', when an item is open, pressing 'z', 'x', or 'c' will rate the item as 0 (poor), 1 (ok), or 2 (nice), respectively. If you'd also like to star the item, you can used the capitlized versions of these letters. These keyboard shortcuts also move to the next item (like pressing 'j' would). Additionally, pressing 'R' will show you the ratings you have made. You should also have a 'Ratings' link, showing beneath the 'Trends' link in the navigation panel (left side). Clicking that will also show your ratings. The usual keyboard shortcuts should be unaffected (see Known Issues, below).

As items are rated, the item is also colored. A greyish color is used for '0', yellowish for '1', and redish for '2'. The same colors are used to help indicate overall rankings of feeds in the 'Ratings' view. Feeds with an average below .5 will be shown in greyish, while those above 1.5 will be redish. That leaves yellowish for the feeds with an average ranking between .5 and 1.5.

No effort is made to remember the specific rating for each item, just overall ratings for each feed. So it is entirely possible to rate an item several times. Also, if you both rate and star an item, you can not tell the rateing it was given when looking at 'Starred Items'. You can rate an item from the 'Starred Items' view.

Known Issues

If you try to tag an item, and the tag uses the 'z', 'x', or 'c' letters, my script steals that keypress and rates the item. Annoying. Also, I had forgotten that 'X' is the Reader shortcut to expand a folder. When you press 'X', the item is rated, and starred, and the folder is expanded.

Modifications

If you don't like the colors, the HTML color codes are stored at the top of the .js file for easy editing. The keyboard shortcuts could be easily modified, from within the keyPressEvent function.

Suggestions

Future versions, if they occur, might sort ranked items in the 'Rankings' view. Future versions might also incorporate user suggestions/bug fixes. If you've got any, please let me know.