Thumbs up, thumbs down
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On the message boards it took me some time to figure out that there is an up/down arrow that is visible only when we hover over the message. It took some addition time to figure out that it can be used to vote up/down the message. In my opinion it would be better and more intuitive to use some old-school and less futuristic voting buttons (maybe thumbsup/thumbsdown icons) for example on the right side of the footer where the vote results are displayed.
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These buttons have been here for months, I'm surprised that such an enterprising person as yourself has never noticed them. Maybe you spend too much time in the forum of the damned[^]. ;)
Use the best guess
You are right, I'm there most of the time (when we are outside the homework seasons :-)) but with the same frequency I'm also visiting the C++/MFC/ATL/WTL message boards too. I noticed that the numbered (1-5) voting buttons had disappeared long ago but when I saw that some of the messages still received votes I thought that voting became the monopoly of some über-members. Recently noticed the voting buttons (a few weeks ago) and I thought this may be a problem for a lot of other users who simply don't know about their voting opportunity. Unfortunately the current buttons seem to be too hidden and even if you spot them their skin doesn't really make their function obvious.
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You are right, I'm there most of the time (when we are outside the homework seasons :-)) but with the same frequency I'm also visiting the C++/MFC/ATL/WTL message boards too. I noticed that the numbered (1-5) voting buttons had disappeared long ago but when I saw that some of the messages still received votes I thought that voting became the monopoly of some über-members. Recently noticed the voting buttons (a few weeks ago) and I thought this may be a problem for a lot of other users who simply don't know about their voting opportunity. Unfortunately the current buttons seem to be too hidden and even if you spot them their skin doesn't really make their function obvious.
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pasztorpisti wrote:
doesn't really make their function obvious.
It's to deter the downvoters. ;)
Use the best guess
Interesting approach to keep the morale high. :-) Unfortunately solving the problem of evil downvoters is nontrivial if not impossible. I guess it could be a bit better to give permission to downvote something only after an amount of positive contribution on the forums. Upvoting is okay as a beginner. Of course this approach assumes that promoted members behave in a less childish way.
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Interesting approach to keep the morale high. :-) Unfortunately solving the problem of evil downvoters is nontrivial if not impossible. I guess it could be a bit better to give permission to downvote something only after an amount of positive contribution on the forums. Upvoting is okay as a beginner. Of course this approach assumes that promoted members behave in a less childish way.
pasztorpisti wrote:
solving the problem of evil downvoters is nontrivial
And we should really stop worrying about it; the people who matter do not really care about votes. For example, I have no idea what level your current reputation points are at, but I have high regard for you because of the quality of your answers.
Use the best guess
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pasztorpisti wrote:
solving the problem of evil downvoters is nontrivial
And we should really stop worrying about it; the people who matter do not really care about votes. For example, I have no idea what level your current reputation points are at, but I have high regard for you because of the quality of your answers.
Use the best guess
Thank you! I agree that mutual respect is that really matters. We come here because learning and sharing knowledge is fun. I don't really care about points, collected only 20K in 8 years. :-) Still, voting is fun: I like voting up good answers and rarely downvoting some abusive posts. It would be okay to have only a single vote up button in 99.99% of the cases.
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Interesting approach to keep the morale high. :-) Unfortunately solving the problem of evil downvoters is nontrivial if not impossible. I guess it could be a bit better to give permission to downvote something only after an amount of positive contribution on the forums. Upvoting is okay as a beginner. Of course this approach assumes that promoted members behave in a less childish way.
pasztorpisti wrote:
guess it could be a bit better to give permission to downvote something only after an amount of positive contribution on the forums
Unfortunately voting abuse is common with members who already have a certain rep.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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pasztorpisti wrote:
guess it could be a bit better to give permission to downvote something only after an amount of positive contribution on the forums
Unfortunately voting abuse is common with members who already have a certain rep.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Could a system work with only a vote up button? To be honest I've never spent much time with thinking about this while you may already have a well rounded answer to this. With a vote up button you still have the ability to promote/reward good answers while you are removing an evil tool from the hand of abusers. In worst case the abuser doesn't upvote a very good question... You only have to deal with abusive posts after this but I don't think that an abuser would report a normal "answer message" as spam/abusive.
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Could a system work with only a vote up button? To be honest I've never spent much time with thinking about this while you may already have a well rounded answer to this. With a vote up button you still have the ability to promote/reward good answers while you are removing an evil tool from the hand of abusers. In worst case the abuser doesn't upvote a very good question... You only have to deal with abusive posts after this but I don't think that an abuser would report a normal "answer message" as spam/abusive.
The Lounge has only the upvote button enabled. The other forums have up/down, or none, depending. It's been a slow evolution
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
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The Lounge has only the upvote button enabled. The other forums have up/down, or none, depending. It's been a slow evolution
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
I haven't noticed this, probably as a result of incompatibility issues between me and the vote button style/location. :-)
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pasztorpisti wrote:
guess it could be a bit better to give permission to downvote something only after an amount of positive contribution on the forums
Unfortunately voting abuse is common with members who already have a certain rep.
cheers, Chris Maunder The Code Project | Co-founder Microsoft C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
Unfortunately voting abuse is common with members who already have a certain rep.
And it hurts when a platinum member down-votes an accepted answer without leaving any comment. I understand many new users would accept all the answers so that not necessarily mean your solution is correct. But when OP says 'thanks, it helped' and accepts the answer, I do not understand why would someone down-vote it... not at least when the down-voter is a platinum authority and leaves no comment for the vote. I know this thing has been discussed at least 10 million times ( :rolleyes: ) and we have never been able to come up with a perfect solution and we probably never will. So I should go back now, help more people and earn those points back. Sorry for whining but as I said, it hurts. :|
..Go Green..