Respect Voting System

[pedro]

Thanks Stinky, my apologies for jumping to conclusions, you've been awfully quiet on here lately, must be doing heaps of upholstery
           Pedro

[Glenn 'Stinky' Stankevicius]

you've been awfully quiet on here lately, must be doing heaps of upholstery

Well I certainly haven't been working on my own cars 

[pedro]

Well I certainly haven't been working on my own cars

Bummer, you finally got the shed all set up and now you can't make use of it.
             Pedro

[collecta]

 When can we get a poll under way?

[FCRB26]

Pedro leave stinky alone
he has a heap of "IMPORTANT" jobs on the go 

[pedro]

One of those jobs wouldn't happen to be one of yours would they Pete .
              Pedro

[FCRB26]

Yes an FC interior in flat pack is getting done back to stock looking.

[pedro]

Didn't know you could get an interior in flat pack Pete, do they sell them at Ikea
                           Pedro

[RET]

Hmm, I seem to have come into this late, because I've no idea what it was that sparked the thing off. Anyway, my 2c...

All the theorising about ganging up on people and downvoting them is all quite valid, but it's never actually happened*.

The point of the +/- system was to alleviate some burden from the moderators. A post (eg a joke) that people found unacceptable would disappear if it got enough downvotes (5, from memory), without requiring mod intervention. People can -ve something when they might not necessarily go to the trouble of clicking "Report Post" and making a more formal "complaint". (When they come up, we take them seriously, of course.)

Obviously it would be quite negative to only ever have downvotes, so by the same token, posts that are helpful or particularly good can be upvoted.

Now I'm not wedded to the good post/bad post mod - if most people would prefer it abandoned, then I'll remove it. Personally, I'm in the habit of upvoting anything I like - joke, technical advice and so on. I'll only downvote if I think a joke is in really poor taste, or when there is advocation of illegal vehicle mods, negative comments about VicRoads, RMS etc that are just not constructive and so on.

I see a lot of replies that say "thanks, that's good advice", "you should do what <someone> suggested", but no upvote to go with it. In my opinion, if there was more use of the upvote, then the occasional downvote wouldn't be a big issue.

I'll take it up with the Site Admins, and see what the consensus is. If they want to put it to a public poll, that's what we'll do.

cheers
RET

(* Two people did it to each other once, which was pretty much self-defeating.)

[Edit: never mind, found origin of discussion.]

[jack_fc]

All the theorising about ganging up on people and downvoting them is all quite valid, but it's never actually happened*.

The point of the +/- system was to alleviate some burden from the moderators.cheers
RET

Ret, I wasn't aware of the systems potential to alleviate some of the burden from the mods; if it achieves this aim without causing undue problems then it's a good thing...
But the system DOES appear to be causing problems for some contributors.

And whilst there's thankfully been no 'ganging up' on people and downvoting them, the potential is definitely there - just ONE person here (purely as an experiment) managed to vote another UP from +5 to around +66 in the space of a few minutes!
(said person then 'owned up' to the up-voted one who was most amused... and said person will now seek the assistance of a long-suffering Admin to restore the status quo )

I hope that after more discussion on the pros and cons of the system, the Admins will see fit to put it to a public poll.

cheers, jack

 

[pedro]

just ONE person here (purely as an experiment) managed to vote another UP from +5 to around +66 in the space of a few minutes!

  I thought Dean became awfully popular all of a sudden 70+ now, lucky the person who did it remains unnamed or they might have gotten into trouble

I'll take it up with the Site Admins, and see what the consensus is. If they want to put it to a public poll, that's what we'll do.

Sounds fair to me RET.
                     Pedro

[jack_fc]

I thought Dean became awfully popular all of a sudden 70+ now, lucky the person who did it remains unnamed or they might have gotten into trouble

                     Pedro

Yeah, Pedro, but he's a good bloke anyway!! (I'm talking about Dean; not the 'unnamed' shifty bastard who voted him up...  )

[DN2168]

What can I say...my fans love me .
Seriously though, if the mods can cull my sudden popularity so I can get my swelled head back in the door .

Dean.

[Not Happy Jan]

Dean...
what's wrong with plus 69 ? that could definitely give you a swelled head though.
Nick

[RET]

OK, the site admin team have had a chat about it, and agreed to trial a compromise solution that hopefully alleviates the main issue people were having with the feature.

Upvote and Downvote is still enabled, and if a post receives gets downvoted to -5, it will disappear. This is the main purpose of the feature, so that you can mark posts you think are not appropriate for the site, and if enough people agree, the post will disappear, without manual intervention by the moderators. (Of course, if you feel something is seriously inappropriate, the "Report to Moderator" option is always available. When users go to the trouble of putting their concerns in writing the Mods take it seriously.)

However, aggregate +/- scores for forum members are no longer displayed*. As a result, there is virtually no benefit in gaming the system with lots of votes for a particular person's posts in either direction.

If you feel strongly enough about the issue of posts being downvoted, there is a spot in your Profile under "Look and Layout Preferences" where you can choose to ignore Downvotes and show posts that would otherwise be hidden. They will appear "greyed out" if you do this, to alert you to the fact they have been disapproved of by 5 or more fellow users.

We believe this should resolve the issues with Upvote and Downvote.

cheers
RET

* Top Ten Most Respected is still available from the More Stats link.

[Johns]

Understand Richard, sounds fair enough.

regards
John