Hopefully keeping only the "like" button does NOT mean you are moving MR over to Mark Sugarloaf's FB; am I right, Arn? 
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Can we please remove the vote buttons?
- Thread starter InsanelyApple
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Clearly late to this discussion. I liked the down voting mechanism because it gave me a chance to voice my trivial opinion on something without having to say something that might not have added anything to the discussion. It's why I like the up voting mechanism.
I do think people are sensitive about it. Not sure if this is good or bad, though. Maybe it makes people more thoughtful and weeds out trolling.
I think it would be nice to have 2 counters though instead of 1 aggregate. In the old system, 0 meant nothing if it consisted of -5 and +5. And we shouldn't be able to rate our own posts.
I do think people are sensitive about it. Not sure if this is good or bad, though. Maybe it makes people more thoughtful and weeds out trolling.
I think it would be nice to have 2 counters though instead of 1 aggregate. In the old system, 0 meant nothing if it consisted of -5 and +5. And we shouldn't be able to rate our own posts.
Any possibility we add the down vote? I think it is a good way to have members vote on the quality of the post but also a rating for trolls to be shown the negative ratings. Without it the quality of posts will be hard to judge.
Damn, I went to downvote the person who ressurrected this thread again today, and the button was gone.
How about if you consecutively down vote, below your avatar will display a Cold Prickely, and if you up vote repeatedly, you get a Warm Fuzzy instead.
That will at least help ID both flavours of Mindless Vote Lemmings.
That will at least help ID both flavours of Mindless Vote Lemmings.
Not sure of which day was darker for MR; the day the vote buttons were launched or the day the vote buttons were castrated?
How about if you consecutively down vote, below your avatar will display a Cold Prickely, and if you up vote repeatedly, you get a Warm Fuzzy instead.
That will at least help ID both flavours of Mindless Vote Lemmings.
That actually sounds like a pretty decent idea, implemented correctly it would help the situation at least a little bit.
Thank goodness. I've read this thread pretty thoroughly and understand why people want to remove the voting buttons. But here's why I like them:
- It helps keep the comments section clean of people fighting with each other. Granted, that will happen anyways, but without the option to just downvote and move on I think that more people will be inclined to hit "Reply" and throw the discussion off-topic very quickly.
- More importantly, it quickly and visually differentiates between "no one's read this" and "this is a bad suggestion/comment/whatever". In a thread where someone's asking for help, they'd be far more inclined to try a solution with a rating of 0 over one with a rating of -12 even if the comment is just as bad.
- Commenters can no longer counter small contingents of trolls without throwing the discussion off track. If a couple morons start blathering about something unrelated, we used to be able to downvote them so that others could simply gloss over their comments. That ability is gone now, and it's a lot harder to help people weed out bad comments.
So the downvotes serve a useful purpose; that is, they allow users to giver others a sense of the comment's content. With a single voting button, people are unable to express disapproval of a comment without replying to it directly (and this isn't effective until others reach it, which is of course after the original comment).
This isn't to say that the voting system was perfect before, I just think it was made worse. Some things that would be welcome:
- Keeping track of a user's total comment ratings a la Reddit. This would help distinguish more helpful and insightful commenters.
- Hiding comments below a certain vote count a la Reddit/YouTube. This would further allow users to filter out bad comments on their own.
Unfortunately, you'll never be able to get rid of people downvoting because they disagree in a "fanboyish" way. But I think that's a minority here. I believe that this is a situation in which the lesser of two evils is to bring the down vote button back.
The register has an up and down vote system. It also tracks both votes separately. Very handy
However, I don't see why what other sites do should matter. This isn't another site; it's macrumors. Just because other sites are doing something, it does not automatically mean its correct or that this site should do the same thing. If the other sites were jumping off a bridge, should macrumors jump off too?
Removing the down vote button isn't going to make this place friendly, as if by magic. That's just not how the world works.
I don't really disagree with anything that you've said.
The voting system is still very primitive here so far. Showing the tally per user and the highest ranked people makes a lot of sense, and is an obvious step. But it will also instantly ignite a lot more drama with people competing for high marks. For various reasons we haven't devoted many development resources to this feature so far, but are looking into it again.
Removing the downvote was a very small experiment as we start looking into building out the system.
arn
"Rate This Thread" for Posts?
Why not dump the current +1 (applies to +1 -1 as well) system that offers a very limited ability to rank posts and use something like the "rate this thread" feature but applied to individual posts? Using that rating system for posts would give forum users a lot more options for ranking posts than just agreeing or disagreeing with it and that generic five-star format is very simple to use.
You could do all sorts of interesting things with a system like that: averaging up the "stars" of every post a user makes and then placing it on their profile would provide a way for users to find members of the community that contribute quality discussion to the forum, allow users to search for five-star (or whatever number of stars) posts, allow users to hide low-quality posts, and much more.
Obviously I am not a forum expert or anything like that so I don't know whether or not this is possible or would even be useful to most people. These are just some thoughts from a user that thinks the current way of rating posts could be improved and one of many possible ways to improve it.
Why not dump the current +1 (applies to +1 -1 as well) system that offers a very limited ability to rank posts and use something like the "rate this thread" feature but applied to individual posts? Using that rating system for posts would give forum users a lot more options for ranking posts than just agreeing or disagreeing with it and that generic five-star format is very simple to use.
You could do all sorts of interesting things with a system like that: averaging up the "stars" of every post a user makes and then placing it on their profile would provide a way for users to find members of the community that contribute quality discussion to the forum, allow users to search for five-star (or whatever number of stars) posts, allow users to hide low-quality posts, and much more.
Obviously I am not a forum expert or anything like that so I don't know whether or not this is possible or would even be useful to most people. These are just some thoughts from a user that thinks the current way of rating posts could be improved and one of many possible ways to improve it.
That's the reason why this system doesn't work. Too many helpful and accurate posts have been downvoted, simply because those voting didn't like the poster. It had nothing to do with the validity of the solution. This has the potential of misleading the one asking for help by making them think the solution isn't a good one. I agree it would be very helpful if the system wasn't abused, but unfortunately, there will always be those who are immature enough to downvote every post by someone they dislike, regardless of content.
Off-topic comments can be reported, so moderators can remove them. A voting system doesn't necessarily identify posts as "bad" or "unrelated", since there are many who abuse the system, as indicated above.
Not true, since posts can be down or up voted based on criteria other than the post's content.
That minority is enough to skew votes to the point of making them useless indicators of a post's content. One person may take the time to downvote every post by a poster or posters they don't like, regardless of the content of those posts. Those who are in the majority likely don't vote at all, and certainly aren't going to take the time to counter-vote all those negative votes.
The result is if one poster has a handful of people who target their posts, regardless of content, they can end up with a majority of their posts receiving negative votes. That would further skew the perception that their posts aren't to be trusted, when the votes had nothing to do with the accuracy or applicability of the solutions posted.
The voting system is severely flawed and is a detriment to meaningful communication. If you agree or disagree with a post for reasons that aren't obvious to any reader, you should take the time to explain your position. If you're not willing or able to do that, you should move on to another thread.
Ok let me add my whine since everyone else has. These are the vote results right? So the actual one chosen by a moderator/Hitler wasn't the most popular choice, neither was it the second most popular choice, but something that a meagre ~18% of people voted for? Sorry, but WTF is that?
What makes this different from the current upvotes/downvotes we currently have? People are still going to abuse it, and then it will be just as bad as now.
I fully agree with GGJStudios (at least in this instance)
I fully agree with GGJStudios (at least in this instance)
Polls asking for site changes are pointless, as only one person's vote counts.
Arn wouldn't have much of a website if it weren't for its users. I don't pretend to be one, and my stake in up-vote-gate isn't enormous, but I do have this weird idea that says democracy is generally a good thing.
This has gone too far
I think most of you are giving too much importance to such a mechanism. Does anyone really care about voting? In my opinion it's perfectly useless. It doesn't stop trolls nor encourage good posts. The vast majority of internet forums, AFAIK, don't implement anything similar for this very reason. A reputation feature, showing who reps/is thanking who, is the only "voting" that makes sense. But I dislike the whole like/unlike thing. Reminds me of kids. Instead of contributing in a constructive way, some just vote up and down.
I think most of you are giving too much importance to such a mechanism. Does anyone really care about voting? In my opinion it's perfectly useless. It doesn't stop trolls nor encourage good posts. The vast majority of internet forums, AFAIK, don't implement anything similar for this very reason. A reputation feature, showing who reps/is thanking who, is the only "voting" that makes sense. But I dislike the whole like/unlike thing. Reminds me of kids. Instead of contributing in a constructive way, some just vote up and down.
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