A debate: making votes non-anonymous
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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
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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
Chris Maunder wrote:
I get the feeling everyone's focussing on the minority, not the general majority.
Which majority are you thinking about? The 80000 users online or the 500? active users? (What is that number actually?) I think the active majority would stop downvoting if we have complete transparency. So the choice ends up being between transparency and a functional rating system, and while transparency is (should be) more important for the active users, a functional rating system is more important for the silent majority I believe. So here's the twist, while a functional rating system is important for the silent majority, having a happy active user group is important for having an actual functional rating system.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
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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
_Maxxx_ wrote:
I have decided that I don't really care that much!
I came to that conclusion too, but I believe that any of us "regulars" could live with whatever solution is implemented...
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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
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I would like votes to be anonymous and here are the reasons: 1. People may or may not voice their true opinions if their identities are revealed. 2. Even if we make putting an explanation mandatory, there will be instances where people would post unrelated or inappropriate comments like, "I don't like you". This could well lead to YouTube like comment trails. 3. Yes, there will be people who will put relevant comments, but if someone really wants to share the view, they any ways do it.
I agree with you regarding anonymous voting. Besides, if it were non-anonymous, who can be sure that false identities are not being used?
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
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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
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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
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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
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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
Hi! I haven't read all the replies yet. However, here is my opinion: 1) Personal (i.e. not anonymous vote) may actually be a good thing. 2) Nobody mentioned this, but a middle ground could be that you need to provide reasons for your downvote. This should be a dialog with a large listbox at the top and an auto-complete combo at the bottom, so that common down vote reasons would come up immediately(sorted by popularity, i.e. if many people put in the same reason...). 3) Anonymous voting makes the creation of claques a lot easier, running the risk of heightening the popularity of someone who does not necessarily deserves it. The other side has merit, too: anonymizing the vote means that I feel more free to vote as I please instead of having to defend my reasons. I am hence much more favourable to non-anonymous votes. A
The old developer from Hell.
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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
I'm a long-time CP member. Back when we had the 1-5 voting scheme, I voted on posts a lot. I eventually realized I was using net anonymity as an excuse for bad behavior. My New Years resolution that year was to never vote on a post again. If I like what someone says, I comment on it. If I disagree, I comment on it. No anonymity, and much less bad behavior on my part. I feel like my karma has improved somewhat.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
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
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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
No. People who want non-anonymous voting in any arena are always those who seeks to control the outcome. If you cannot handle the critics and the trolls then do not put yourself out there for them to come at you... this is not complicated stuff.
