get rid of the post rating feature.

[Dothwacky]

I just want to say thanks again to Ran for taking the time to put something in, which he at some point made the assumption people would try and enjoy.

It works on other forums and no one's died of a minus rep, in most cases people will respond to what you've said "I agree/insert agreeable response here + have some rep". Or, "I disagree/blahblahblah + feel my wrath of one lousy point down on your rep".

I see a lot of intelligent arguments for and against it, not to say I couldn't go to that level in response... but I think its an overreaction to start worrying over about how people are going to rate you, what its going to do to new boarders... And so on.

Its not a popularity contest, its just a bit of fun, but I get the nagging sensation (which could be incorrect, I feel habitually haunted by naggers) that the main concern is that established boarders feel they won't get repped or that someone might dare disagree with them and leave them unable to respond to that disagreement.

Given that this board has long established posters and its own brand of etiquette, I doubt that would happen, unless the concern is everyone is going to be eaten by the rep button and turn into a click-monster and lose the ability to communicate.

I'm going to go into hiding now, try not to use edged weapons. :stunned:

ETA - If someone finds a post offensive, I'm sure they'll bring it up directly with a mod rather than making you count post scores.

And if you're a mod, and browse the forum regularly, surely you're going to read those posts anyway?

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I do feel sorry for Ran that he's put something in and mostly what I thought were rational people are having a reaction as if this feature has 3 heads and heralds the end.

[TheLoneliestMonk]

Sophelia,

Maybe I'm crazy, but perhaps Stranger was making a joke?

Kidding. I'm nearly positive he didn't meanto be taken seriously.

[Balefont]

BTW, Zray, you're awesome.

[Ran]

I admit, I thought the Stranger was joking too, actually. Hard to say with him, he's tricksy. ;)

[Mya Stone]

I think I've got 90% of the neg rep so far and it's all been in this thread so, make of that what you will

oh and Joss Whedon sucks.

BELOW THE BELT, HORZA. RAGE TYPING NOW!!!!! :tantrum:

*finger dangles over the Negative rating*

I CAN NOT ABIDE AND GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT.

[Datepalm]

Its not a popularity contest, its just a bit of fun,

Well, I think it is actually a little bit of misery, rather than fun. I just don't see any potential improvements, and lots of down.

Oh, and, Sophelia brought up a really good point imo - neg votes, assuming they work as they are supposed to, are actively, systematically, feeding the troll.

I thought Stranger was joking too...but i'm not 100% certain. I saw someone positivized one of my posts in Entertainment, and it made me far happier than I should be, by right, and i'm rather unhappy about that. The totally involuntary emotional repsonse to this thing is real and more significant than I expected. (Now some might say, "you felt happy! Whats wrong with that?" but it was wierd, anonymous, manipulated, consumer happiness, and clearly those people are not jewish marxists. Miserable guilt is the only moral state of existence, you know:P)

Also, its creepy. Its like playing laser tag all the time.

I think i'm bringing way, way too much into this now and I will try to stay out of it until people feel like making a decision about keeping it, one way or another. If someone catches me posting about it, please negativize me or something.:box: This system is all about pavlovian responses anyway.

[kungtotte]

This isn't to say it can't be used constructively but on the whole I can't see the pressing need to highlight good posts and bury bad ones given our relatively low traffic and smallish base of regulars.

Just wanted to add that I completely buy the argument that we don't necessarily need the system, even if I might not agree with it, but the objections have up until now been mostly that the system will be abused rather than as to the utility of the system.

As well, I think you should reconsider that last paragraph.

Why? I generally only say things that I mean to say.

[Ran]

I've taken Sophelia's suggestion of using AD&D 4E's system, with small tweaks. Solo's a paladin.

[Mya Stone]

Oh and I did a little dance for joy when Dollhouse was cancelled.

DAMN YOU AGAIN, HORZA. DAMN YOU TO HELL.

I will show restraint and not give into you, dammit. I WON'T GIVE IN!!!! :tantrum:

[Relic]

I've taken Sophelia's suggestion of using AD&D 4E's system, with small tweaks. Solo's a paladin.

Awesome. Ive always wanted solo to Lay Hands on me.

[Usotsuki]

I don't think the green or red signals would have any impact on how I approached the posts of boarders whose names I recognize, I'd still pay attention to a mormont post even if it was festooned with the scarlet spots of disapproval but it might influence the way I evaluate posts which come attached to no other history *shrugs*

Still I guess we shall see how the system copes with the next really controversial thread, perhaps it's time to re-open the delay threads in the book forum :P

[lumer]

Well, I think it is actually a little bit of misery, rather than fun. I just don't see any potential improvements, and lots of down.

Oh, and, Sophelia brought up a really good point imo - neg votes, assuming they work as they are supposed to, are actively, systematically, feeding the troll.

I thought Stranger was joking too...but i'm not 100% certain. I saw someone positivized one of my posts in Entertainment, and it made me far happier than I should be, by right, and i'm rather unhappy about that. The totally involuntary emotional repsonse to this thing is real and more significant than I expected. (Now some might say, "you felt happy! Whats wrong with that?" but it was wierd, anonymous, manipulated, consumer happiness, and clearly those people are not jewish marxists. Miserable guilt is the only moral state of existence, you know:P)

Also, its creepy. Its like playing laser tag all the time.

I think i'm bringing way, way too much into this now and I will try to stay out of it until people feel like making a decision about keeping it, one way or another. If someone catches me posting about it, please negativize me or something.:box: This system is all about pavlovian responses anyway.

There, I gave you +1 in the ratings. Happy? :P

I'll just add taht I don't like this ratings thing either. -1

[Datepalm]

There, I gave you +1 in the ratings. Happy? :P

I'll just add taht I don't like this ratings thing either. -1

gah, suicidal. :) So, yeah, delighted. Complicated being me.

I'll admit i'm amused by the D&D ratings - but mostly because they take some of the seriousness and fake-objectivness out of the system and make it (even more) like a game, and so easier to ignore.

:leaving:going now.

[Sophelia]

It's too bad that none of you can see the benefits behind a system that allows us to mark really informative replies, and to bury really disruptive posts, but rather focus entirely on the potential for abuse. The system doesn't encourage things in either direction, it's not easier to abuse it than it is to use it correctly, and the guiding principle doesn't really require a massive FAQ. It can even be summed up in a single sentence, and here it is: Do not use votes as "I Agree"/"I Disagree" buttons.

Right now I'm starting to believe that those of you who are dead set against it just don't want it to work out, for whatever reason, and you're not really considering the system with any sort of intellectual honesty. So, I will take my leave of the debate. If there's one thing that my years on the Internet have taught me, it is to never argue with people who are firmly convinced of the correctness of their opinions.

kungtotte, I think your exasperation is equally much causing you to think in black-and--white terms too. You say "It's too bad that none of you..." when there are many degrees of acceptance/rejection expressed in this thread, and your statement is false (exaggerating).

The guiding principle you suggest doesn't actually say what people should use votes for. Although I don't think it would take a 'massive FAQ' I don't feel it is at all obvious. I also think it's quite difficult for people to make a sharp distinction between agreeing with content and agreeing with tone (I certainly can't always separate the two, even when I'm trying hard to do so).

I also think that accusing the objectors of being intellectually dishonest is, well... at the very least lacking in empathy. Possibly there are some people who just have a kneejerk reaction against change, but if you read people's posts, and respect who they are, they have explained their reasons. Some may come across as simply emotional reactions, but they are grounded in conscience. Scientists and intellectuals take into account ethical considerations when planning experiments.

Just as theres no purpose to posts that say nothing but "I dis/agree", theres no point to the rating either. Thats all they are, and if you were to see a post followed by a half dozen posts going "I agree" you would not feel anything has been added to the debate at all.

I disagree :P

Well, first, as you know, I think there is some value to agree/disagree feedback.

Secondly, the ratings are supposed to be on a different dimension (I guess "more posts like this please" versus "fewer posts like this please").

In terms of winnowing things out - again, that only works if people use the other part of the system and actually filter things, otherwise you're still seeing the offensive posts anyway.

:agree: :P

(I won't be using the filter, partly because I don't get apoplexy when I see awful posts, and partly because I don't trust other people not to neg out posts I would find interesting. I actually do find it interesting to hear how everyone thinks, not just people I like ;) )

Indeed. Further, the system will not help with moderation -- if a post is delete- or edit-worthy, then merely downrating it does not actually address the problem of it being offensive, it just sweeps it under the rug. Worse, instead of reporting the offensive post, I fear people will just give it a negative rating, which now breaks the reporting system as well. And if people downrate something because they disagree with it, well, they've just abused the reputation system. Instead of one somewhat-functional system, we will have two broken ones.

I'm also concerned (nay, convinced) that it is going to make my job as a moderator much harder and much more unpleasant. Instead of spotting problems myself or having them reported to me, I'll have to spend the majority of my time wading through down-rated posts looking for the truly offensive ones.

Yes, this seems a huge flaw in the system. I just checked the search function and there is no way to look for posts based on votes. So unless there is some auto red alert system in the mod forum which lists heavily negged posts, it does seem that we will end up with a board which allows more offensive posts, rather than less. But as kungtotte says, I guess we wait and see. Maybe Ran's idea will pan out, and in the long run people who want to gain approval on the board will learn to express themselves more acceptably. I suppose it is quite a magnanimous assumption, that nobody wants to be a troll, and will actually take neg points to mean "I have offended somebody" and that this is undesirable.

I think its an overreaction to start worrying over about how people are going to rate you, what its going to do to new boarders... And so on.

Its not a popularity contest, its just a bit of fun, but I get the nagging sensation (which could be incorrect, I feel habitually haunted by naggers) that the main concern is that established boarders feel they won't get repped or that someone might dare disagree with them and leave them unable to respond to that disagreement.

People are genuinely worried, and/or people love to speculate. Ultimately everyone in this thread knows it is Ran's decision, and he has his own wisdom to take what he wishes with a pinch of salt. However as I said, I think it's important to consider ethical and practical implications before, during and after carrying out an experiment. And note that this is an experiment that nobody was able to give informed consent to. There are some measurable outcomes (change in number of posts, numbers of views, numbers of posts reported to mods, bannings) but lots of unknowns as well (psychological effects). Why not discuss it and have opinions before the time is up? It's what we do all over the board. ;)

Sophelia,

Maybe I'm crazy, but perhaps Stranger was making a joke?

Kidding. I'm nearly positive he didn't meanto be taken seriously.

I wondered that, but there wasn't anything to indicate he wasn't serious. I hope he was joking, because I would like Ran to get a proper testing period in. (without anyone's feelings getting hurt)

Gah. It's taken me ages to write this post because it keeps jumping all over the place as I'm editing. I'm having real trouble with the editing window at the moment. (I'm on IE which is maybe why)

[Ixodes]

I've taken Sophelia's suggestion of using AD&D 4E's system, with small tweaks. Solo's a paladin.

Sweet.

There is a flaw in the system, however. Solo is designated lawful good whilst his title boasts of hanging leaders from lampposts, bitches. What to believe?? What do I believe???

[Ran]

The revolution of the proletariat is always a good, and when the people seize power, whatever they do is the law.

[kungtotte]

The people I've been discussing with, and thus the people I directed that statement at, haven't really expressed any shades of grey in their objections over the system, Sophelia. They're pretty unequivocal in their disapproval. And it really is more important to detail what you shouldn't use votes for, since it is that kind of voting that leads to abuse of the system. If people don't vote in an abusive way, they are left with either not voting (which is perfectly OK too) or voting in a non-abusive way. In other words, the ways you shouldn't post are fewer than the ways you should post, so it's simpler to list the DON'Ts and have everything else be an implied DO.

Quite a few people responded immediately with knee-jerk* objections to the system, and most of those who object seem to not even entertain the possibility that it could work out. This is what I mean with lack of intellectual honesty. I admit every step of the way that it could be abused, but I also know that it can work out. And I know both from personal experience on other forums and sites.

I mean hell, I was the first one who said that the system was vulnerable to abuse. I know exactly what happens when the system gets abused. I know exactly how easy it is to abuse it. I know exactly how easily a "cool kids club" gets formed by way of such a system, and I know how many people start doing everything to get positive karma. You want to know the unifying trait between all the sites I've seen these karmic systems applied to? It always worked out in the beginning, when the community was small, close-knit and respectful of the etiquette. Then the big influx of users began as the site grew in popularity, and people started disregarding the voting etiquette and the abuse was a fact.

But this forum has been fairly small and close-knit for the entire time that I've been here (two years), and I can't imagine that it has been anything but in the years preceding my arrival, and barring a huge influx of people from the TV-show I can't imagine that it will be anything but in the years to come. I said as much in my first post on the subject, and I still believe it now. We are much more resilient to abuse of this system because of the community we already have, and that's why I believe it can work out.

Of course, this is all tangential to the issue of whether or not we really need this system, or if this system will make the moderator's jobs more difficult. We don't need the system in the sense that it would be essential to the forum experience, and if that is the qualifier for what new features gets added to the forum then by all means take it out. However, there are two strong scenarios in which the system is useful.

The first is for positive votes, and it's when someone asks a question and gets a really informative and exhaustive response, or if there's a discussion thread in Literature/Entertainment and someone writes a really cogent review of the book, movie or TV-show. So for me, if I've just read Best Served Cold months after everybody else has read it, I can quickly scan the thread for the replies that have gotten the highest rating and as such quickly summarize the most important things in the thread. Saves me having to read every post for 15 pages before I am caught up.

The second is for negative votes, and it's when someone writes a really offensive or disruptive post. Say someone comes into one of the equality threads, or the racism thread, and just gets balls out offensive yet doesn't really break the rules of the forum. They just have a really offensive opinion. So naturally most people will vote them down, because there's no reason to debate with such a person. Someone who thinks all black people are inferior to white people will think that no matter what arguments you put before them, someone who thinks women belong in the kitchen isn't going to be swayed no matter how persuasive you are. So it is easy for people to disregard posts that have a very low rating (they could even get the forum to do this automatically by filtering out negative posts), and so they don't even have to get fussed by these offensive posts. This sort of self-policing also sends a strong message to the policed posters, it's what the rest of us boarders won't stand for in terms of post. When a moderator comes along and deletes or edits a post it's easy to rationalise your behaviour with being oppressed by 'the man', but when you're shown unequivocally that your behaviour isn't tolerated by the community most people have an easier time adapting rather than trying to rationalise things.

As for making the job of the moderators more difficult... I can't really say. I think the report button will get used almost as much as it is today. People's opinions on what constitute appropriate and non-appropriate posts aren't going to change just because we can vote on the posts. Maybe a handful of posts will end up getting voted way into the negatives and never get reported, but odds are those are posts that wouldn't have been moderated in the first place. I am of course only speculating with regards to moderation, as I have no insight into how this particular forum is moderated, but I am extrapolating from my experience moderating other forums and I don't think it will end up much differently here. Also, I've always found that moderating was much easier when I was presented with a list (or a clear symbol) of controversial posts. Instead of scrutinising every reply in a 15-page thread you can skim most of the posts and only really read the 'red' ones. Where is the additional work-load in that?

PS.

Try enabling/disabling the RTE editor in your user control panel (from here) and see if it helps out with your jumpy editor. The RTE editor doesn't behave like a normal browser editbox.

* - I don't know if they truly are knee-jerk reactions or if they actually considered things before posting, but since they went immediately to the objections it certainly looks like knee-jerk responses.

ETA I think I might disable the RTE editor too. It's hard to predict how it will handle paragraphs and such :|

[Relic]

Sweet.

There is a flaw in the system, however. Solo is designated lawful good whilst his title boasts of hanging leaders from lampposts, bitches. What to believe?? What do I believe???

You can be a Lawful Evil Pally too...

[Ixodes]

The revolution of the proletariat is always a good, and when the people seize power, whatever they do is the law.

Ahh. My concept of lawful and good have been corrupted by the propaganda of the ruling class. Apologies to Solo. I shall commence deprogramming:

*dons Che t-shirt and puts on headphones blasting Rage Against the Machine*

[The Stranger]

Aww, Sophie!

Don't worry my feelings aren't hurt, but neither is my hate-engine.

A problem I was thinking about: if someone tends to wade into the big centerpiece heated threads (minarets, world politics, dogs playing poker) and not participate in the feel-gooders (now including panda extinction, apparently), I think reputation will come to have less to do with quality and more to do with how much people disagree with you.

From what I've noticed, really combative threads tend to have a minimum of 2-3 sub-battles occurring between small teams at any one time, often down to parsing sentence by sentence why the opposition is a d-bag. So from now on, is the first step of a rejoinder going to be '-'ing the point you're refuting?

Also--once in a while someone comes out with an opinion which is simply against all human logic or decency, and the entire world will jump on their back. I think that minority opinions--even the most RhaegarTargastic of them--are a perfectly good springboard for better debate, and I don't want to stymie people from feeling comfortable making them.

Of course none of this system could be objectively proven to do this--it's a really inoffensive thing that's been introduced which I kind of like in theory--but as you said Ran, you're going for more Web 2.0 effects here, and Web 2.0 is run by 13 year old girls; a big part of my fondness for this board is its squareness in terms of the glitzy new Web; just people arguing online, nothing flashy about it.