A debate: making votes non-anonymous
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I prefer things stay the way they are with one exception: on the Lounge, I'd like anonymous down-voting back. But, I'd like to see the "rep cost" of a Lounge post down-vote (to the poster) be exactly 1 point, with no "weighting" by CP status. And, I'd like to see the down-voter on a Lounge post also "pay" one point. cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
BillWoodruff wrote:
And, I'd like to see the down-voter on a Lounge post also "pay" one point
I'm not sure how that would affect anything. It's a minor cost that trolls wouldn't mind paying. It's also a cost that those who are downvoting the truly awful shouldn't have to pay.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote:
I say this as a barely functional psychopath myself
And that doesn't make you immediately want to try this out? For shame!
cheers Chris Maunder
Establish veneer of respectability then commit heinous acts..t'is the psychopath credo.
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Rage wrote:
We do not need votes: - To express an opinion about the content or about someone.
Except we do in the Lounge. No, we're not Facebook, but Facebook has trained everyone to "Like" things (without allowing them to Loathe things). When someone posts something interesting, amusing, entertaining, or just plain nails a comment then it's nice to give them an upvote.
Rage wrote:
Voting with indication of who voted for articles and questions : this would limit voting to the scope of technical content, and would probably also discourage practices like "univoting" or "voting for my friend because he is my friend".
It would actually also limit downvoting in general: and that's bad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
When someone posts something interesting, amusing, entertaining, or just plain nails a comment then it's nice to give them an upvote.
But here you are describing about 80% of the Lounge content : If too much is upvoted, then upvote does not make sense. Of course it is nice to signal someone the post was good, but it serves no real purpose : it is not needed.
Chris Maunder wrote:
but Facebook has trained everyone to "Like" things
Well, I do not think bringing Facebook to CP is a good thing, even if people are brainwashed (or trained, call it whatever you want) by Facebook, it still does not make sense to copy the way Facebook works.
Chris Maunder wrote:
It would actually also limit downvoting in general: and that's bad
I honestly do not see why this would be so -> people who downvote articles for good reason also stand to their vote, and have no problem arguing. Would we really miss the fire&forget downvoters ? I seriously doubt so.
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When someone upvotes a message or article I wrote it's nice seeing who it was how voted. Really nice. Conversely when someone downvotes you there's often a "who on Earth would downvote that?" We've talked about this a lot and so I bring this up as something that's already been brought up, but times change as do opinions. So onto the debate: Whereas knowing your admirers and foes brings either a warm fuzzy feeling or concrete contact to discuss improvements, be it resolved that showing names next to votes is a Good Thing. Those debating for the motion please state their case, and those debating against provide their counter-arguments.
cheers Chris Maunder
Could you pin this post as the first Lounge post until the debate is closed (= until you think there is enough matter for you to decide) ? I think it would help for the visibility of the discussion.
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Ah, the moderate voice of reason. Why name and shame? What's the benefit in your mind?
cheers Chris Maunder
V: Tell me... what do you do with witches? P3: Burn'em! Burn them up! (burn burn burn)
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Actually it's precisely about you. And about everyone using the forums. I want your opinion, not what you think someone else's opinion is.
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
What do you want the vote to measure, quality or popularity?
And again this is really about you: what do uou vote for when you vote for a forum message? Quality of the post, a reaction to the topic, or (say) a thumbs-up to the poster for posting what what posted?
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
it just me that thinks the Lounge was a lot more interesting in the old times
Everything was better in the old times. The air, the water, the ice cream from down the street. The conversations in the lounge. Especially the ones about "the lounge was so much better when..." that are over 10 years old ;) I don't actually see that downvoting will make conversations more interesting. Disagreeing and posting your opinion makes lounge discussions more interesting.
cheers Chris Maunder
Ah, but you see, what I want is not what I think is best for the site/community. But at the moment I have tp cook for the kids, and put them to bed. I'll give you a proper answer later, reflecting both sides of my opinions.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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Ah, the moderate voice of reason. Why name and shame? What's the benefit in your mind?
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
Ah, the moderate voice of reason.
Hey, you know me! :) Its like this. People should be held to account for downvoting, and justify their actions. As it is people can do it for revenge, or any other trivial reason, and walk away. If they know they will be publicly known as the downvoter, they will judge their decision more carefully.
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Ah, the moderate voice of reason.
Hey, you know me! :) Its like this. People should be held to account for downvoting, and justify their actions. As it is people can do it for revenge, or any other trivial reason, and walk away. If they know they will be publicly known as the downvoter, they will judge their decision more carefully.
Munchies_Matt wrote:
If they know they will be publicly known as the downvoter, they will judge their decision more carefully
Well, two problems with this 1. Some people don't care if people know they are a downvoter. Especially if it's a sock-puppet account. 2. Some people never learn.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Munchies_Matt wrote:
If they know they will be publicly known as the downvoter, they will judge their decision more carefully
Well, two problems with this 1. Some people don't care if people know they are a downvoter. Especially if it's a sock-puppet account. 2. Some people never learn.
cheers Chris Maunder
Do sock puppet accounts have down voting capability? Surely they are too temporary to have that. As for the latter, well, then they become known as grouchy old gits and ignored. :)
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When someone upvotes a message or article I wrote it's nice seeing who it was how voted. Really nice. Conversely when someone downvotes you there's often a "who on Earth would downvote that?" We've talked about this a lot and so I bring this up as something that's already been brought up, but times change as do opinions. So onto the debate: Whereas knowing your admirers and foes brings either a warm fuzzy feeling or concrete contact to discuss improvements, be it resolved that showing names next to votes is a Good Thing. Those debating for the motion please state their case, and those debating against provide their counter-arguments.
cheers Chris Maunder
Against: Anonymous voting encourages peer review (i.e. rating articles). Peer reviewed articles are one of the most important assets of CP. Although anonymous voting also allows abuse, the majority of votes are honest ones, causing the abuse to drop off as noise. For this reason, I urge you to continue to keep voting anonymous. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Could you pin this post as the first Lounge post until the debate is closed (= until you think there is enough matter for you to decide) ? I think it would help for the visibility of the discussion.
Rage wrote:
Could you pin this post as the first Lounge post until the debate is closed
Seconded. :thumbsup: /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Actually it's precisely about you. And about everyone using the forums. I want your opinion, not what you think someone else's opinion is.
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
What do you want the vote to measure, quality or popularity?
And again this is really about you: what do uou vote for when you vote for a forum message? Quality of the post, a reaction to the topic, or (say) a thumbs-up to the poster for posting what what posted?
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
it just me that thinks the Lounge was a lot more interesting in the old times
Everything was better in the old times. The air, the water, the ice cream from down the street. The conversations in the lounge. Especially the ones about "the lounge was so much better when..." that are over 10 years old ;) I don't actually see that downvoting will make conversations more interesting. Disagreeing and posting your opinion makes lounge discussions more interesting.
cheers Chris Maunder
Right here we go: First, my very own personal opinion. I want complete transparency! As simple as that. Do I believe it would work? Well not really. People wouldn't use the downvote which would render the ratings useless. And the rating is indeed important, not just for the articles but also the Q&A and the technical forums. So what do I vote for. Clever solutions, being helpful above the normal, teaching something new, correcting my knowledge or simply amusing me. On the other hand I also vote for low quality posts, that are simply erroneous, or incomplete, or someone being an arse. You know, the normal stuff. So as I've said before, the vote means different things in different situations. And that's why I ask, do you want to measure quality or popularity, votes or likes? Or why not both? Would it work having both likes and votes? I don't know. You will always have misuse, but maybe there would be a better balance between up and downvotes, if people could like a post instead of simply upvoting. I'm specifically thinking of one "massproducer" of articles where the articles are of a pretty low quality as such, but he gets tons of upvotes because they are in the form of a walkthrough which indeed is very helpful for people being new to a subject. So what about the Lounge. Well I suppose I'm simply getting old. But that's another post and another subject actually.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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When someone upvotes a message or article I wrote it's nice seeing who it was how voted. Really nice. Conversely when someone downvotes you there's often a "who on Earth would downvote that?" We've talked about this a lot and so I bring this up as something that's already been brought up, but times change as do opinions. So onto the debate: Whereas knowing your admirers and foes brings either a warm fuzzy feeling or concrete contact to discuss improvements, be it resolved that showing names next to votes is a Good Thing. Those debating for the motion please state their case, and those debating against provide their counter-arguments.
cheers Chris Maunder
Well, I'd happily vote for a system that publicly attached the name of the voter to the vote. It needn't be shown by default - ajaxing the list for those curious enough works perfectly fine in other places I visit. While it does open the door to a vendetta, it also enables one to quickly ascertain whether or not to place any importance on it. All this has been said before. I've found it works quite well in conjunction with a system that allows for users to block one another - a safeguard against troll-voting if you like. Irritate someone too many times by voting in such a fashion and they simply block you. This means you can't see or respond to anything they've written while logged-in as yourself. The block however is a two-way street. If you block someone, not only are your posts hidden to them, but their posts are hidden to you - this naturally enough provides a disincentive to vindictive blocking. CodeProject's members are far more mature and educated than those of some other places I frequent. They are filled with all kinds of oddballs - as I jokingly say, everything from puppy-dogs to serial killers. Yet even in these places the system appears to function just fine. The only 1 thing that I feel would be better is if the blocks were automatically cleared at a fixed interval. Perhaps quarterly or biannually would be a good interval, with the option to also clear them at will. If someone still presents a problem, you can simply block them again. On the other hand, if one or both of you were just having a bad day then what may otherwise be forgotten can be cleared and a chance for each to start anew is automatically afforded. Being blocked by someone whose opinion you value tends to make people pull their head-in in my experience and can allow a forum to operate almost entirely without moderation. I recall declaring some time back that I'd leave if down-voting in the lounge was removed, that obviously didn't happen - CP is simply too good. I shall continue to enjoy it regardless of the decision made, but will happily declare my preference for non-anonymous votes, which, I feel would be an experiment worth conducting. (Based of course, on the assumption that the coding effort to implement such a pair of features as blocks and named votes would be fairly or entirely trivial to implement)
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told
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BillWoodruff wrote:
And, I'd like to see the down-voter on a Lounge post also "pay" one point
I'm not sure how that would affect anything. It's a minor cost that trolls wouldn't mind paying. It's also a cost that those who are downvoting the truly awful shouldn't have to pay.
cheers Chris Maunder
Hi Chris,
Chris Maunder wrote:
I'm not sure how that would affect anything. It's a minor cost that trolls wouldn't mind paying. It's also a cost that those who are downvoting the truly awful shouldn't have to pay.
My (perhaps wild) idea is that the "symbolic" cost of 1 rep-unit just might be a brake on impulsive down-voting by the not-the-OP, while ... assuming the down-votes pile-up ... the down-votes might get a message to the OP. Also based on my perceptions of the Lounge as essentially "another planet" :) cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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Right here we go: First, my very own personal opinion. I want complete transparency! As simple as that. Do I believe it would work? Well not really. People wouldn't use the downvote which would render the ratings useless. And the rating is indeed important, not just for the articles but also the Q&A and the technical forums. So what do I vote for. Clever solutions, being helpful above the normal, teaching something new, correcting my knowledge or simply amusing me. On the other hand I also vote for low quality posts, that are simply erroneous, or incomplete, or someone being an arse. You know, the normal stuff. So as I've said before, the vote means different things in different situations. And that's why I ask, do you want to measure quality or popularity, votes or likes? Or why not both? Would it work having both likes and votes? I don't know. You will always have misuse, but maybe there would be a better balance between up and downvotes, if people could like a post instead of simply upvoting. I'm specifically thinking of one "massproducer" of articles where the articles are of a pretty low quality as such, but he gets tons of upvotes because they are in the form of a walkthrough which indeed is very helpful for people being new to a subject. So what about the Lounge. Well I suppose I'm simply getting old. But that's another post and another subject actually.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
Would it work having both likes and votes?
It would, actually. If done properly.
Jörgen Andersson wrote:
First, my very own personal opinion. I want complete transparency! [...] Do I believe it would work? Well not really
I'm not sure I agree. I get the feeling everyone's focussing on the minority, not the general majority.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Against: Anonymous voting encourages peer review (i.e. rating articles). Peer reviewed articles are one of the most important assets of CP. Although anonymous voting also allows abuse, the majority of votes are honest ones, causing the abuse to drop off as noise. For this reason, I urge you to continue to keep voting anonymous. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
So what if we took the coward's approach and made only upvotes non-anonymous?
cheers Chris Maunder
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So what if we took the coward's approach and made only upvotes non-anonymous?
cheers Chris Maunder
That won't hurt, but seems biased. In any case, the article forums currently allow voters to leave an optional message to accompany their vote if they choose to do. The privacy (or lack thereof) of the vote is at the discretion of the voter, which seems fair. If I choose to advertise my vote, I can. If I choose to not advertise my vote, I can. This seems to be (much as I hate to use the phrase) a "win-win proposition". Synergistic to the max, with cooperative web-readiness oozing from every pore. You get my drift. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Against. As other people have pointed out, there're plenty of idiots who'd go on a revenge voting spree. We don't need that.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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When someone upvotes a message or article I wrote it's nice seeing who it was how voted. Really nice. Conversely when someone downvotes you there's often a "who on Earth would downvote that?" We've talked about this a lot and so I bring this up as something that's already been brought up, but times change as do opinions. So onto the debate: Whereas knowing your admirers and foes brings either a warm fuzzy feeling or concrete contact to discuss improvements, be it resolved that showing names next to votes is a Good Thing. Those debating for the motion please state their case, and those debating against provide their counter-arguments.
cheers Chris Maunder
After giving it quite some thought, I have decided that I don't really care that much! My feeling is that, if you introduce it then it should be across the board, no exceptions - everyone can see a list of who voted what. New members should not be allowed to vote up or down at all until they have reached a certain level of time/usage of the system. Abuse of either upvoting or downvoting should be punishable by the removal to do either, and (preferably) the removal of those votes. (this would also help prevent puppet accounts being created to upvote one's own articles). Keep the stats of each user's voting - number of UPs vs Number of Downs and perhaps publish them, too - that will be an interesting stat! And reduce the effectiveness of a vote compared to the number of items read / the number of up or down votes. e.g. If I read x articles and down vote them all, the 'points lost multiplier' should be reduced - so the 'grumpy old git' gets less effective over time if they don't find something to be happy about. Flag a warning if a user consistently differs from the herd in their voting (especially down votes) Publish the data as raw data (via an API would be lovely) and have a competition to make best use out of it. I;m thinking of a "who hates me" app and a "Ohhhh! is he your girlfriend" app.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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After giving it quite some thought, I have decided that I don't really care that much! My feeling is that, if you introduce it then it should be across the board, no exceptions - everyone can see a list of who voted what. New members should not be allowed to vote up or down at all until they have reached a certain level of time/usage of the system. Abuse of either upvoting or downvoting should be punishable by the removal to do either, and (preferably) the removal of those votes. (this would also help prevent puppet accounts being created to upvote one's own articles). Keep the stats of each user's voting - number of UPs vs Number of Downs and perhaps publish them, too - that will be an interesting stat! And reduce the effectiveness of a vote compared to the number of items read / the number of up or down votes. e.g. If I read x articles and down vote them all, the 'points lost multiplier' should be reduced - so the 'grumpy old git' gets less effective over time if they don't find something to be happy about. Flag a warning if a user consistently differs from the herd in their voting (especially down votes) Publish the data as raw data (via an API would be lovely) and have a competition to make best use out of it. I;m thinking of a "who hates me" app and a "Ohhhh! is he your girlfriend" app.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
Have a slightly unbalanced upvote from me. :)
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello