@Eva,
Quote:I thought that's what the "Ignore" button is for.
That really only works for people who are consistently annoying. I don't think I"d ever ignore someone altogether but I'd certainly vote down a topic I'm sick of seeing at the top of my grid.
Quote:I really dislike the idea of rating others' posts. It seems very highschoolish to me...like a "popularity contest," as Roger put it.
Well if it's nothing more than a vanity metric then it would be easy to ignore, but it's not. It affects the prominence of the topics. Now that's where this concern derives a lot f legitimacy, after all I'm saying it can affect your experience. But that was always true, and in the past whatever was popular was measured in terms of replies. The only difference was that all replies, both positive and negative, were equal and a lot of times the things that most disgusted the members was the most prominent.
In the old system, whatever was most offensive to the members while still not crossing our censorship threshold was what would often dominate the site.
Quote:I foresee it driving away sensitive posters and discouraging open discussion. (People will be less likely to post an opinion if they suspect it will be unpopular.)
I imagine that these same posters who would be offput by a negative number would be just as offput by a negative comment and I guess what I'm saying is that the principles you espouse are not rooted in technological problems but social ones. I don't see the ratings as being a net negative, I think there will be downsides and upsides but I think that in the long run it is a big upside because it now represents the best way the community has to make things civil. Vote down the rude bastards! If enough of you do so, their comment disappears.
But here's the big kicker: don't like it? Kill it. You can change your settings in a way so that it doesn't affect you at all. Just don't sort by popularity and turn your threshold to collapse the posts to off. Then nobody's votes will ever be more than a number on your screen and won't affect your experience.
Quote:
Further, not all our members are models of maturity and objectivity. I have no confidence whatsoever that you can avoid "voting based on...whether or not they like the person or agree with them" and "using the ratings for character assassination."
You don't need to trust that I have the ability to prevent them from doing so, but I don't think your confidence would be misplaced if you trust that I can make that not change your user experience negatively if you really don't want it to.
At this rough launch we already have simple measures in place to prevent abuse. For example if someone were to create a bunch of accounts to vote, they'd see the votes on their account but it wouldn't show up on yours because it wouldn't be counted for the community. We'll do a lot of algorithmic stuff to mitigate the negative experience. Sure, someone may hate you and just start voting you down but it doesn't have to make a difference for you if you don't want.
Ultimately, the bottom line is this. We have a very small handful of moderators. I'd say that less than 4 or 5 are actively moderating daily. This is a tool for community moderation if you want it. Sure, the mob may not do better than the mods (I personally think they won't, the mods are great folk) did but they can scale and it's all more fair.
Democracy is not without its flaws, and sometimes there will be the tyranny of the mob but like any good democracy there needs to be measures in place to mitigate it.
Right now, the ratings can put the stuff the community likes in front of you, and hide the stuff it doesn't. If you don't agree with the community, just turn their influence off. Don't sort by most votes, and don't let posts topics collapse after a certain vote threshold.
But what I'd really rather you do is use your vote. If you and the good guys are out there voting and keeping the bad guys buried the overall experience for the whole community can be better. There's no reason to cede the vote to the bad guys.
