This forum is useless

okay, you have officially blown my mind

That's just the point, i DID join PF. but its like if a person loves chocolate ice cream, but finds out that there's a new ban on chocolate ice cream. the person would probably say, "well vanilla isn't so bad." I did choose PF, but now i'm with A2K. it's not like its radically different. it still has the same qualities of most forums, including PF; its just a different flavor.

....ban on philosophical ice cream...?

Never mind if this is true, but how would this even be done?

A
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Can U define "mind"? And is blowing it makimg you a free Philosopher ? Are we objective Observers ? Is WWW ?

If you are logged out and thus have no preferences set the default that you experience is the collapse of threads that are "below the viewing threshold" (what ever the **** that means, it is never defined). If you want to see that thread you must opt out by clicking on the thread. Because people are lazy, and because people generally assume that what others dont like they will not like either, it is highly unlikely that this thread will be clicked and viewed. I have not looked for awhile till today, but currently very few threads are pre-collapsed. There used to be a lot more, and at any time with no notice there could be again.

The popularity program also works by making the popularity of the thread the first thing you see, and very bold. A human is predisposed to click on higher rated tags than lower. You also see popularity in the tags, for instance a thread with the tag "troll" is unlikely to be taken seriously by the casual observer because they do not know that here at a2k is a person who is not liked is considered a troll, that so called trolling behaviour is often not actual thus.

and of course on every page is a list of the most popular threads of the "forum", thus making it more likely that they will get viewed.

Even before a person logs in the culture of popularity is all important is communicated. After they become members they see the rest of the popularity tools, the ignore, the "noise" sifting (the use of the word noise is telling), that even when you go to last post all topics you find out that you are no longer presented with the last posted threads in order....a2k now tries to guess as what you really want to see and does some sifting for you, which will only get worse over time, almost certainly taking into account "the wisdom of the crowd". After that a person can really get serious about optimizing their a2k experience for popularity by going into the preferences and optimizing their experience to take advantage of "the wisdom of the crowd".

The cumulative effect is to promote the popular and demote or remove from view the unpopular. This is a problem for those who are seeking truth, because as most of us know the truth is often not popular, and is resisted. This does tend to make the a2k platform hostile to philosophy work, which PF'ers have touched on even if they dont yet fully grasp what the problem is.

"Wisdom of crowds" is neither my term, nor does it refer to popularity. If you wish to understand the concept, you should read James Surowiecki's book about it and not just make stuff up.

But bonus points for staying in character.

even assuming all you say is true, there have to be default settings of some sort, just because folks are too lazy or uninformed to take control of how they use a product is not roberts fault

Well yeah, but I guess unless you were reading the specific thread that the specific post concerning this was on, how would you know to check your settings?

It's no big deal as I just did what Osso told me to do, but I have to say that all this popularity stuff is a little wearing to me too. I'm not complaining - I can live with it - I just don't really understand the need for it.

Basically, I ignore it. I think I've given Dutchy a couple of thumbs up on acronyms, but other than that - I've never voted on a post and I don't even look at the numbers on a thread - I choose to either look or not look at something by subject matter or title.

that's my method as well

What is it with you and that popularity button? I never ever click on it. I did it once, a while ago, and disagreed with the ratings of some of the posts. From then on, I stick to New Posts. I'm sure it changes frequently (the list of topics), so what's the big deal?

All this thumbs up and down nonsense really occupies a lot of people. I have never clicked up or down within a topic and don't know why I would.

Why should/would you care what others think of your stuff? Just read, write and get over / on with it.

or by poster...

When you vote down you are only removing that poster's post from your view.

that too

i even click if i see hawkeye's name, although i understand he's not very popular

I don't understand why he is concerned with popularity. It's not as if anybody would probably want to read his posts on child porn, sex with teens and some of his other out of the norm posts etc. etc.

some folks want to be the belle of the ball

Some people are really affected by the way they are voted down...

Usually for no other reason than the way they are perceived by readers, independently of the intrinsic value of their posts..

If you've already read it, why would you need to remove it from your view?
What difference would it make after you've already read it?

So future posts from that person on the thread don't show up either

Well that'd be a shame- what if the next thing that person said was more interesting or different in some way than the last thing that person said?

thumbing down a member's post does not auto collapse their future posts.
you are thinking of the ignore feature...