One last plea for allowing downvoting

[nigel_k]

I'm pleased they have allowed it but can't say I am surprised people are downvoting choices they disagree with.

[cherdano]

I'm pleased they have allowed it but can't say I am surprised people are downvoting choices they disagree with.

I assume you mean this post. Generally I agree that one shouldn't downvote posts just because one doesn't agree with them. But if someone makes a post in the B/I forum that is quite categorical, and contrary to what the majority of experts would recommend and bid, I can understand why someone would want to mark it as a minority view.

[nigel_k]

I assume you mean this post. Generally I agree that one shouldn't downvote posts just because one doesn't agree with them. But if someone makes a post in the B/I forum that is quite categorical, and contrary to what the majority of experts would recommend and bid, I can understand why someone would want to mark it as a minority view.

I don't agree with your view of what experts would do and my tone in that post was more directed at the level of certainty of the previous posters. In any case surely that post isn't a case of "this is the kind of post I don't want to see on BBF", unless you want BBF to be a much smaller and less interesting place.

[cherdano]

I don't agree with your view of what experts would do and my tone in that post was more directed at the level of certainty of the previous posters. In any case surely that post isn't a case of "this is the kind of post I don't want to see on BBF", unless you want BBF to be a much smaller and less interesting place.

Agreed.

[JLOGIC]

Now that there are downvotes it is imperative to make who repped you available to the person. There should also be a way to see which of your posts were repped so you know. But if rep is not transparent then you can easily just get downvoted 100 times by someone who doesn't like you for no reason with no reprecussions to them.

[Antrax]

I think it's a good idea to let people know what their "influential" posts were - in some ideal world, it might even offer people a chance to mend their ways. However, I'm not sure what the expected outcome of letting people know who voted how for them is. Most likely minus-vote flame wars? I think BBF staff can be notified of irregularities (by people affected by them) and can decide if someone is misusing his rights.

[JLOGIC]

No, it stops minus-vote flame wars. If someone downvotes you 20 times for no reason, you know they did it, and then it will happen to them. That may seem like creating a minus-vote war, but in fact it stops it from occurring. If someone can downvote 20 times anonymously, they can do it without fear of getting it back. If combined with a rule that retaliatory downvotes are not ok for a 1 time downvote, then you get a reasonable system.

[Antrax]

I agree people are more likely to downvote for no reason if there's no fear of retaliation. I'm not sure I agree that fear of retaliation from other users will be deterrent enough. I hesitate to bring it up, but nothing is required to sign up many times on these boards for the sole purpose of downvoting someone about whom you feel strongly. So, the potential for retribution is effectively unbounded. Hence, I think moderator intervention might be required in some extreme scenarios, and since it's sufficient, I believe that's the way to go.

[JLOGIC]

I mean, see, you just got downvoted twice for no reason (no it was not me, but it might look like it since you have no idea where it came from!). Making these things transparent would lead to silly things like that not happening. If you do not want your downvote to be seen by someone you probably shouldn't be making it anyways. Also, if someone more reputable was downvoting me that would mean more to me than some random downvoting me, so it would be useful from that point of view. I see no upside to anonymous downvotes.

 

Also, an easy fix to the "you can easily make multiple new accounts and downvote/upvote yourself" is to simply require a minimum of 100 posts on the forums before you can use the rep system. Yes people could make gimmicks with 100+ posts to do this, but it is probably good enough for BBF.

 

The BBF management seemed to want to add rep which was fine but did not seem to think of any of the ramifications when doing so. Adding downvoting is a good step but now there needs to be more safeguards in place to avoid the inevitable person x being downvoted 200 times. Maybe some people will say "who cares?" but if that is the attitude then why have rep at all.

 

A way to search users by rep also seems obviously overlooked. Right now you can search by number of rating stars, but not by rep. One of the main uses of rep is for new people to a forum who do not know anything to be able to search by rep and find which users posts to look out for/read. You can also look to see who has negative rep in order to avoid them. Presumably this is the use of search by rating, and since rep is more used than rating why not do this for rep?

[Antrax]

Oh wow, I totally didn't see that coming. I have seen the error of my ways. How ironically justified. Or something. :rolleyes:

[helene_t]

Downvoting could be useful for filtering. Upvoting too: "Show me posts liked by many people or liked by my friends".

 

Other than that it is a pointless distraction.

[Mbodell]

Now that there are downvotes it is imperative to make who repped you available to the person. There should also be a way to see which of your posts were repped so you know. But if rep is not transparent then you can easily just get downvoted 100 times by someone who doesn't like you for no reason with no reprecussions to them.

 

But they can only down vote you once per post. So they could never down vote you 100 times unless they could find 100 different messages. On second thought, I see why this concerns you. :)

[cherdano]

But they can only down vote you once per post. So they could never down vote you 100 times unless they could find 100 different messages. On second thought, I see why this concerns you. :)

There is a search function "Find all posts by Mbodell". Using that it would be trivial to spend my daily allowance of downvotes on you. If I use it on all posts, you probably won't even notice until you look at your profile the next time for some random reason.

[Rain]

I think downvoting/upvoting should both be used wisely, maybe sparingly. The hope was to include BBF posts somewhere prominent in BBO, and to include votes among the logic to determine what post should get there. If it's used for silly purposes (gwnn?!) then what's the point?

 

I was not sure downvoting was a good idea initially (still not convinced). I like it when BBF has a BBO analogy. To me, this is like how in BBO rules we say it's okay to complement people for playing the hand well, but to refrain from making comments about bad play. So upvoting for a particularly insightful post while refraining from downvoting seem correct to me. But all you frequent BBFers seem to prefer both options, so why not?

 

 

Although it's persuasive to think if newbies shouldn't have as much right to up/downvote and this will take care of the "register new name for mindless voting" problem, this kinda conflicts with the goal to increase participation in BBF. We would like more newcomers to come in and start talking, not give them less rights and be intimidated. On the other hand, having a broad group for most people, and then an advanced group for some of the most prolific posters where advanced posters get more mailbox space could work. Voting rights seem peripheral to this because unless regular members are very vote restricted, why would advanced members need many more votes? (Since the number of posts, hence number of quality or bad posts, must be the same?) Right now regular members are not vote restricted by the way - both advanced and normal get the same rights everywhere. Please try to convince me if you care, though keeping in mind we don't want newcomers to feel excluded from BBF.

 

Displaying who voted...hmm.

It is an easy option to toggle. I think turning this option on would cause a lot of + vote, a lot less - vote, as voters are held somewhat accountable for their choices. This also solves the problem of mindless voting by using new names. But would it cause an excessive fear of downvoting or vote wars? I think this option is possible in the near future, especially if everyone understands it could be experimental, since I have no idea how this would play out.

 

This voting thing is a minor BBF issue, I hope. Trying to get BBF posts in a prominent place in BBO + getting our attachments and files back :( + Better filter options on the right hand side are what we're trying to do...gradually...

[JLOGIC]

It is an easy option to toggle. I think turning this option on would cause a lot of + vote, a lot less - vote, as voters are held somewhat accountable for their choices. This also solves the problem of mindless voting by using new names. But would it cause an excessive fear of downvoting or vote wars? I think this option is possible in the near future, especially if everyone understands it could be experimental, since I have no idea how this would play out.

 

Rain, you are absolustely right, being held accountable for your votes leads to less frequent downvoting. But, as you indicated in the first paragraph of that post, that is a good thing. I agree with you that downvotes should be less frequent than upvotes. I also think that you should not be making a downvote that you wouldn't want someone else to see.

 

As far as vote wars, communities seem to correct themselves and if you receive a non frivolous downvote from someone and your options are to suck it up and post better (presumably since you care about rep), or otherwise engage in a vote war that cannot end well for you, usually you suck it up. Vote wars only end up happening if someone is downvoting a person an excessive amount of times because they don't like them, however the threat of a vote war is enough to stop people from downvoting someone all the time simply because they don't like them. This works well. This is much better than a system where you can downvote someone you dont like 100 times without worry, that is not what the rep system is supposed to be about. I think anonymous vote wars are much more likely to happen in the given system.

 

I'm not sure how this is supposed to work if you can just sign up for 5 new accounts and get 100 votes a day to work with though. If you don't like someone, you can still simply make anonymous accounts and give someone 100 downvotes. That is a lot, I'm not sure if I have the most rep but I have about 260 so it would take 3 days to get me to -40 with only 5 accounts, and of course I'd never know who you are.

 

I do not understand how failure to have the ability to downvote or upvote until you have 100 points would intimidate new users, and make them less likely to participate because of their lack of rights. Honestly that seems ridiculous, most new users won't know anything about rep yet, and if they did it would incentivize them to make 100 posts so they could rep people. It is like video games that unlock certain features after a certain amount of play (pretty much every video game has this). Can you really imagine a scenario where people sign up, make 50 posts, realize what rep is and that they cannot use it and say "wow, that sucks, I wanted to rep but I'm being opressed, I'm quitting the forums." Most likely it won't matter at all to them, a few will try harder to get 50 more posts and that's fine. And it basically solves the problem of someone being able to have enough ifluence with new accounts to kill the entire rep system (I will assume no one would be pathetic enough to try and make 100 posts on gimmick accounts just for this).

 

The difference between a regular member and advanced member doesn't mean anything, as you can have unlimited accounts if a new account can get 10 votes a day instead of 20, all it means is creating 10 accounts instead of 5. It does not mean anything at all. If it took 100 posts before you could use rep, that would mean a lot.

[JLOGIC]

Downvoting could be useful for filtering. Upvoting too: "Show me posts liked by many people or liked by my friends".

 

Other than that it is a pointless distraction.

 

Yeah, have you ever used a site like reddit.com or lesswrong.com? They use it for exactly that purpose.

[PassedOut]

If you do not want your downvote to be seen by someone you probably shouldn't be making it anyways. Also, if someone more reputable was downvoting me that would mean more to me than some random downvoting me, so it would be useful from that point of view. I see no upside to anonymous downvotes.

 

Also, an easy fix to the "you can easily make multiple new accounts and downvote/upvote yourself" is to simply require a minimum of 100 posts on the forums before you can use the rep system.

I agree with these suggestions. They would definitely make the rep system more useful.

[jjbrr]

We would like more newcomers to come in and start talking, not give them less rights and be intimidated.

 

Rain, I agree totally that we want newcomers to come in and post. I don't think that has much to do with the ability to up- or down-vote. We want them to post content, not click a button that is (mostly) meaningless in the big scheme of things. A new player can't really learn much from upvoting or downvoting a post, I don't think. Yeah, it'd be great if lots of world class players join us and it might be a problem initially if they can't vote, but how big a loss is that really? I'd argue not much at all, given their content will be good and they'll get the requisite posts soon enough. I guess my point is what purpose exactly do we want to achieve with these votes for members who, at least for now, lack credibility anyway? It seems like just another toy for them to play with and not something really constructive. If someone disagrees, I'll be happy to listen.

 

BBF regs posted for years without this feature, and frankly I don't think many of them missed it. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I certainly could live without it. I just can't see this having so much push or pull to be the deciding factor in whether or not new posters participate.

 

I do think it's sort of a nice little feature, and I think it'll be even better once the novelty wears off and people stop voting just for the sake of voting. Hopefully once that happens we won't have to worry about anonymous, trolling downers and this whole discussion will be moot.

 

For the time being, though, I cast my vote for making vote history more transparent. Especially in the on-topic forums, I'd like to know when my votes get poor ratings and by whom. Moving forward I think this will help me both get more out of the forums and become a better poster, but without knowing where my votes are coming from, they really don't tell much of a story.

[hotShot]

I don't like the 100 posts limit.

 

Why shouldn't a forum newbie be allowed to upvote a good response to his first ever post?

 

The only reward you get for answering to B/I or support threads is a good reputation (either by remembering your posts or by votes).

[Bbradley62]

Instead of simply seeing a net up/downvote total for a post, would there be any point in seeing a breakdown? IOW: would we ever care to know the difference between a post getting 2 upvotes as opposed to a post getting 20 upvotes and 18 downvotes?

[BunnyGo]

Instead of 100 posts, one can also make the ability to vote based on having rep. That is, one can upvote from the start (why not be able to express what you like?), but can only downvote if one has +10 rep or something. This makes downvoting the purview of those members in "good standing," and assures that posts aren't down voted unless they are truly off-topic or badly written (for the most part). This is similar to how it is done on MathOverflow (and I think StackOverflow as well).

 

It seems to work well as "downvote wars" end when neither person can vote down anymore, and in reality just keeps down votes in the hands of people who have something invested in keeping the site well maintained.

[Vampyr]

Instead of 100 posts, one can also make the ability to vote based on having rep. That is, one can upvote from the start (why not be able to express what you like?), but can only downvote if one has +10 rep or something. This makes downvoting the purview of those members in "good standing," and assures that posts aren't down voted unless they are truly off-topic or badly written (for the most part). This is similar to how it is done on MathOverflow (and I think StackOverflow as well).

 

It seems to work well as "downvote wars" end when neither person can vote down anymore, and in reality just keeps down votes in the hands of people who have something invested in keeping the site well maintained.

 

Downvotes could be limited, too -- say to 10% of a person's rep per day.

[Bbradley62]

Seems like a lot of effort to get adults to behave like adults.

[Antrax]

I think downvoting/upvoting should both be used wisely, maybe sparingly. The hope was to include BBF posts somewhere prominent in BBO, and to include votes among the logic to determine what post should get there. If it's used for silly purposes (gwnn?!) then what's the point?

One way of ensuring sparseness is to give less of them per day.

 

Although it's persuasive to think if newbies shouldn't have as much right to up/downvote and this will take care of the "register new name for mindless voting" problem, this kinda conflicts with the goal to increase participation in BBF.

If the goal is to increase participation, making the BBF a more pleasant place by adhering to standards acceptable in most forums on the internet will probably come a much longer way than a rep system. As long as it's acceptable to be negative for the sake of negativity, to post for the sole purpose of telling stale jokes that are unrelated to the thread topic and to hijack threads with in-jokes and out of date memes, I wouldn't expect many newbies to stick around.

 

Tying one's ability to up/down vote to one's own rep is the best way to ensure the existing mob mentality never goes away.

[JLOGIC]

One way of ensuring sparseness is to give less of them per day.

 

If the goal is to increase participation, making the BBF a more pleasant place by adhering to standards acceptable in most forums on the internet will probably come a much longer way than a rep system. As long as it's acceptable to be negative for the sake of negativity, to post for the sole purpose of telling stale jokes that are unrelated to the thread topic and to hijack threads with in-jokes and out of date memes, I wouldn't expect many newbies to stick around.

 

Tying one's ability to up/down vote to one's own rep is the best way to ensure the existing mob mentality never goes away.

 

This IS the internet we're talking about :P