Thumbing up and down: Abuse already?

I'm beginning to realize that. I was probably prejudiced when I equated A2K voting and Abuzz voting in my mind.

Is there a problem with doing both? For example if I tagged this thread "Voting, Folksonomy, Subscribed" doesn't that serve both purposes? It applies descriptive labels to describe the topic for others and also bookmarks it for me so I can follow it in the My Tags list. Then I don't need to weed through all the other topics labeled with "Voting" to find this singular topic I wanted to watch.

But what then? Saying that people may have less noble uses for popularity metrics than the ideal isn't as good as using your vote for the ideal.

For example, I see some esl topics, and a religious topic that people are voting down. I get it, they aren't interested. But I voted them up because I want them to have a place here. We can criticize the vapidity of the result of the community's say on the matter or we can try to contribute non-vapidly to it.

I really do believe that if the majority of the voting critics were using the system and not letting the other people's votes matter too much the whole system would be a net positive. This is a site with a very high level of maturity in its core members and I've seen much more immature sites do well at this with scale. If you vote, you cancel out one vapid voter roger. Thomas, you get another one. That's two neutralized.

The bad voting isn't going to change if we just criticize it. But we can actually directly contribute to change if we vote ourselves. If enough of the good guys do this we won't have as bad of a problem as you guys imagine. But if you give up on the system before giving it a fair shot you'll make a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy and your ideal community culture will be under-represented in the ecosystem.

I'm beginning to realize this, too. In this context, I'm happy to report that the "ignore user feature" works on my home computer.

(On a tangent: Some buttons don't work, or work wrongly, on my work computer. And it's not the company network as I thought earlier; it's the settings on the computer itself. From the top of your head, can you tell me what settings on a user's computer might affect how the A2K buttons work?)

If it's just about interest ... why not remove the thumbs and offer an interested or not interested option.... and why tie these votes directly to a person's "reputation" ? What does it accomplish that is positive?

It really depends on scale. If enough people don't do that it's not a problem. If enough people do then "subscribed" would be the most popular tag on the site and you'd see it at the top of the related tag cloud and the popular tags cloud.

So I guess what I'm saying is that for the specific purpose of categorizing the sites, and serving as a replacement for forums it'd be unhelpful, but I do see how it's individually useful for organizing your tagged topics.

Boohoo. Behave like a fool and you'll be called one. Behave like an idiot and you'll be called that too... so what do you expect to be called when you behave like a troll?

It's an IE bug that we are working on. They screw up when you use the <button> element in legitimate ways and that's the cause of the ignore and preview bugs.

That makes sense. I use Firefox on my home computer. (Sorry for the digression, littlek.)

None of my threads have any rating to speak of. It's not only you (I know you don't really think that). But, I believe in having patience and working at it until it gets sorted out.

Thomas wrote-



That's a sort of small-scale itsy-bitsy Kremlin security perimeter.

What if a poster accumulated a large amount of ignores then just registered as another person ..... instant born again A2K member with no consequences.
Which would be worse, an ignore or thumb down?

ed. wrote-



I never said anything needed sorting out. That would imply I thought this was a bollocks-up job which I am nor persuaded it is. Thanks to Thomas.

And they call me names. Sheesh!

Can Americans read properly or not?

I haven't read this whole thread yet (took a break today, hey!) but already as I get to page 2 it is helping me understand things better. Thanks, all.

commenting further, I'm on page 3 now. Have been interested for quite a while about piazzas, squares, whathave you, both re design and the places' import to the cities around them, including, cough, mob rule.

I think I misjudged at first re what were hoped for modes of voting; one, that past a lot of personality stuff, it would eventually come around to what is good for the site sociology, say, no votes for streams of expletives with no point, and promote really useful questions and responses from some; the second, re customizing. From this thread, I'm getting it more info about the customizing experience. Interesting mix, there. Sort of like some piazzas..

All this yabber and I'm only on page 3.

Which reminds, me, I like the typeface.

Okay, now I'm on page 4, moving right along.

In defense of at least some trivia/word games, I played a bunch to start with. Secreted in that netherworld are some posters with wit and points of view.. I remember Cav and some complex haiku thread. I still tune in to the less complex haiku thread once in a while with a certain sort of expectation of brains working. I know that sounds snotty, but most of us don't use them most of the time - but on some of the word threads I watched early on, some sharp observations were made within wordplay, hilarious or trenchant, or poetic.

So, as with many subjects, I won't be voting word threads down, nor up. People will learn to tag.

My post was in reply to phoenix, genius.

i agree !
i have yet to use the "thumbs" option . i really don't think my judgement by just using "the thumb" can be of any use to any other a2k user .
one should either bypass the thread/answer or give a reasoned (or even unreasoned) reply .
using the thumb is the cowards way out , imo .
DISCUSS , EXPLAIN , ARGUE , IGNORE - anyone has that choice already .
hbg

The thumb is a way to bypass/ignore the thread. It makes it disappear from your view henceforth, so you dont have to scroll past and consciously ignore it over and over and over again. You dont like it, arent interested, ok - thumbs down and you never have to think about it again.

Its just a tool to make it easier to navigate the site, without having to wade through the same clutter of threads that dont interest you every time again. Its not an insult, and only carries that kind of emotional load if you let it.

No...all your posts are preset to have one green thumb.