Suggestion: Public Display of Affection hack in Programming, help forums.

[GeeYouEye]

There's a hack that can be found at vbulletin.org (or at least it used to be...) called Public Display of Affection. Basically, in conjunction with the reputation feature (seems to be disabled here, but it is in the software), it lets posters comment on a particular post without creating a new post, indicating their agreement or disagreement; the titles "agree" and "disagree" can be changed. I think this would be useful in Mac Programming, and any of the help forums, to let posters "mod up" (to use Slashdot's terminology) posts that are accurate and useful, and "mod down" those that aren't.

Just a thought.

 

[Blue Velvet]

How specifically does it work? Could it be applied on a forum basis or is it global?

If I post something which people 'agree' with, can someone come along and change it? Or does it have text fields?

Although a qualititive judgement on some of the advice given in many threads here would be useful, from the sound of it, it could be another way to create a headache for mods if people start complaining about what someone had done to their post, especially if someone starts off here on a bad foot...

Anything that smacks of reputation, ratings or a peer approval process doesn't sit well with me. Saying that, it's hard to tell without more details.

 

[arn]

I'll look into it. if it's simple enough, it might be useful.

arn

 

[zflauaus]

So is this sort of like a Digg-style system where you say whether it's good or not? The Engadget commenting system? Or am I horribly wrong?

 

[Eraserhead]

Saying that, it's hard to tell without more details.

I think I understand this.

OK say in the help forum someone asked how to delete a file.

If I then replied with: "drag the file over the trash bin on the right side of the dock" then other posters could press agree to show they agree with my statement. This would be especially helpful I had also mentioned that you can press Command-Backspace to delete files, as they probably then couldn't think of anything else to add.

Alternatively If I replied with: "drag the file over the applications directory", then other posters could press disagree so as not to have to post that I'm wrong, this would be more useful of course if my mistake was more subtle than in my example as they might not be totally sure.

 

[dogbone]

The first thing that came to mind after reading Eraserhead's drag to trash example, is that my experience of MR forum has been that while looking in an apparently newbie thread about some obvious thing that has been discussed heaps of times, for some unknown reason someone will suddenly post something that is incredibly useful.

This may be curtailed by this rating system (or it may not, it's just a thought) due to the thread being flagged as sufficiently answered.

As an example, how many threads have there been about defragging, lots. You'd think it's all been well and truly covered but a recent thread about that very subject suddenly took on a life of it's own and iMeowbot posted, what I consider to be the definitive link. This type of thing happens surprisingly often.

 

[Eraserhead]

As an example, how many threads have there been about defragging, lots. You'd think it's all been well and truly covered but a recent thread about that very subject suddenly took on a life of it's own and iMeowbot posted, what I consider to be the definitive link. This type of thing happens surprisingly often.

But then more people (such as yourself) would give him "praise" for the good post .

The crucial difference over reputation is that it is on a post by post basis, a bit like thread rating.