The Problem with Thumbs up...or Down

@Foxfyre,

Are you seeing a lot of malicious and vindictive nonsense?

For it seems to me that, at least in the former politics forum, the quality of the discussions has slightly gone up.... he says cautiously....

1 Reply

@Robert Gentel,

Robert Gentel wrote:

Answered questions are tracked by subject, and when enough data is available it would show who answers the most questions in a subject.

Fair enough. I wasn't even aware of this ability, so thank you for alerting me to it.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

No! Not rightly so! Because his ability to answer water questions and his ability to give intelligent debate in Politics are two completely separate things, and they are being lumped together here into one thing. I can't see any possible way that this is of utility to anyone trying to figure out whether or not someone is worth asking a question of.

Cycloptichorn

I doubt that people are logging in for the first time with a water treatment question, and checking reputations before or after asking questions. It looks more like they are directed here by google, or something, asking the question, taking the answer, and leaving.

1 Reply

@Rockhead,

Rockhead wrote:

Cyclo has always been a "Ima take my ball and go home kinda weenie, ain't ya, Left-eye...

(go drop my rep, like I give a ****, junior)

People vote me down when I call Cyclo a whiner.

Then again, maybe folks are starting to agree....

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@old europe,

old europe wrote:

Are you seeing a lot of malicious and vindictive nonsense?

For it seems to me that, at least in the former politics forum, the quality of the discussions has slightly gone up.... he says cautiously....

A lot no. Some? Yes, and it has been admitted. I have seen a LOT of feelings get hurt when a perfectly decent thread is voted down multiple times and buried without ever having a fair chance to attract much interest and discussion. (At least it seems like a lot because there has been so much discussion about that.)

I do agree that the quality of discussions have improved--at least I see a lot less of the posts specifically to insult somebody. That is refreshing.

1 Reply

@roger,

roger wrote:

I doubt that people are logging in for the first time with a water treatment question

I'm not so sure. A quick click on the "home improvement" tag pulled up these threads, among others. All of these fell within the first dozen-and-a-half or so hits. (I definitely could have kept tallying more.) The authors of these threads had between 1 and 4 posts total to their A2K résumés, which leads me to believe that they logged on primarily to ask these questions.

http://able2know.org/topic/105023-1
http://able2know.org/topic/91310-1
http://able2know.org/topic/120888-1
http://able2know.org/topic/120808-1
http://able2know.org/topic/120650-1
http://able2know.org/topic/120677-1
http://able2know.org/topic/100201-1
http://able2know.org/topic/120504-1

Whether they are checking the reputations of the people who answer their questions is another matter, of course; but if they aren't, as you surmised, this just seems to exacerbate the problem.

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@Foxfyre,

Quote:

A lot no. Some? Yes, and it has been admitted.

There you go. And some misuse obviously is to be expected. As long as the feature works well overall or renders good results, it shouldn't be a problem.

Quote:

I have seen a LOT of feelings get hurt when a perfectly decent thread is voted down multiple times and buried without ever having a fair chance to attract much interest and discussion.

Yes, that's true. It's a different argument, though. People are using the feature in one way, others are interpreting what they are seeing in a different way.

Misinterpretation, even if caused by the way a feature is designed, isn't the same thing as "malicious and vindictive nonsense", though. And I'd say that as long as we're not seeing a lot of that, why fix it if it's not even a problem?

Quote:

I do agree that the quality of discussions have improved--at least I see a lot less of the posts specifically to insult somebody. That is refreshing.

Yeah... Let's hope that doesn't change again; it would definitely be a plus!

1 Reply

@Bella Dea,

I have no wish to add to Craven 's workload,
being grateful for what he has already done in offering us a forum al all,
but if it were my choice, I 'd not include reputation controls among the features.

On a point addressing a similar principle,
I expect to be among the most ignored,
and I believe that by use of the ignor user feature
that the forum will evolve into one in which conversations
will continue among users who have mirror perfect unanimity of opinion.

David

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@old europe,

To OE:
I think it goes back to one man's treasure being another man's poison. I learned a long time ago that what was no big deal to me was in fact a very big deal to others and vice versa. So in the end, sometimes we have to accept that what makes sense to us doesn't make sense to most others and accommodate that. In this A2K friendly bruhaha over the thumbs, it could go either way.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

To OE:
I think it goes back to one man's treasure being another man's poison. I learned a long time ago that what was no big deal to me was in fact a very big deal to others and vice versa. So in the end, sometimes we have to accept that what makes sense to us doesn't make sense to most others and accommodate that.

Did Foxfyre just make sense, or did she just tell us all to go to hell?

2 Replies

@DrewDad,

I always make sense DrewDad
It's the rest of you who can't always understand that Smile

I did add a line to my post as you were quoting it though.

0 Replies

@DrewDad,

0 Replies

@Bella Dea,

I'm REALLY REALLY against this whole new voting system.

I fear it may aid the A2K elitism that has been quite prevalent in the past- new users getting dismissed when they don't present their posts in the well rounded 'A2K' format- even though they might have some very good ideas.

Plus, at the moment I'm being voted down because I started a thread on the spirituality and religion board about homosexuality (and you know me, I'm open minded, I try as hard as possible to be understanding) but evidently it's a touchy issue and people have voted against it because it offends them, not because it's an unintelligent topic or a boring issue.
This is REALLY obvious, since before the new A2K came along I'd posted the SAME thread under a slightly different name on the relationships and marriage forum- the status of that thread is now at 0 instead of -3, and is backed up with supporting quotes such as 'interesting topic pq.' etc etc.
Point proven.

1 Reply

Every single person posting in this thread has a positive reputation, including the controversial peeps like Cyclo, Bear, Lash, Foxy and myself. If someone is sufficiently disruptive to earn a negative rep; I think they've earned it. Perhaps not in every case yet, but, this will be true after the system’s been in place for a while and the wrinkles have been ironed out… so there isn’t so much of this temporary negativity.

3 Replies

@OCCOM BILL,

Didn't post that quick enough. Laughing

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@Cycloptichorn,

I think your rep SHOULD drop if your conversations don't appeal to many people. You seem to think of this as an indication of your value as a human being, not the general consensus of the readability of your posts/threads. If you want to run around voting me down because of your emotional immaturity, that's ok.

And THAT, not thumbs, affects your value as a human being...
<smiling anyway, you dork>

1 Reply

If a thread that you started is voted down, does that affect your personal rep? I rather thought it didn't.

0 Replies

@Lash,

It was just an example of ways the system can be manipulated. Nothing personal.

The problem is: what does 'reputation' mean? Does it mean 'this person is a good poster?' or 'this person is good at answering questions?' As someone pointed out above, the 'word-gamers' all will have very low reps before too long...

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

That's more a factor of a small number of votes either way thusfar. I can give her a thumbs up and negate your response and bring her repuatation points right back up. Over time, as more people vote, the effect of any one single vote will be minimized and it won't have much effect at all.

One vote out of three make s visable difference. One vote out of 10,000 won't have any noticable effect.

1 Reply

@fishin,

Not that I personally intend to do anything of the sort (no point) but what's to prevent the malicious user/troll from downrating hundreds of someone's posts?

Just trying to figure out how the system is going to work, is all.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

The Problem with Thumbs up...or Down

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