30 Second Voting Grace Period

It would be nice if you could just reverse/remove your rating at any time. I've occasionally had it pointed out to me that I misinterpreted a post the first time through the thread, and then wished to remove the negative buff.

It would be nice if you could just reverse/remove your rating at any time. I've occasionally had it pointed out to me that I misinterpreted a post the first time through the thread, and then wished to remove the negative buff.

I cool for this. It's not that we have the ability turned off though (AFAIK) it's just simply not there. Mike will have to weigh in on our ability to add this functionality. The IPS system is pretty modular and does allow us to make changes to the way it works so might be possible I just don't know personally

Taking a longer view, is it an option that IPS might be inclined to implement if we suggest it?

Why have a down vote at all? Just contradict the post with valid arguments if something is wrong or report if it is offensive.

Why have a down vote at all? Just contradict the post with valid arguments if something is wrong or report if it is offensive.

Because reputation is a valuable component to vetting information, and a point-by-point comparison of (mis)facts in a bubble doesn't capture the picture of someone's breadth of knowledge.

It's imperfect, sure -- collect a high-enough rating and there are sure to be a few dings from mistakes and know-nothing-know-it-alls -- but overall it shows the trend; wisdom of the crowd and all that. It works far better here, where the community is in large part either very knowledgeable or very open to receiving knowledge, than it does in less-focused venues where opinions often masquerade as facts.

[quote name='Dawoodoz' timestamp='1330966324' post='4919492']
Why have a down vote at all? Just contradict the post with valid arguments if something is wrong or report if it is offensive.

Because reputation is a valuable component to vetting information, and a point-by-point comparison of (mis)facts in a bubble doesn't capture the picture of someone's breadth of knowledge.

It's imperfect, sure -- collect a high-enough rating and there are sure to be a few dings from mistakes and know-nothing-know-it-alls -- but overall it shows the trend; wisdom of the crowd and all that. It works far better here, where the community is in large part either very knowledgeable or very open to receiving knowledge, than it does in less-focused venues where opinions often masquerade as facts.
[/quote]

The average number of up votes per thread could give a score.
I would rather have 3 uncomplete attemps at helping than no help at all.

Without having downvote, your reputation is effectively just a measure of how long you've been with the site and how often you post -- it says essentially nothing about how helpful you are in aggregate if you can never have points taken away from you. Reputation as it is (again, imperfect) at least gives a general idea to someone coming into a topic (or this site) cold about who's feedback might be more worth listening to. A huge portion of this community are inexperienced, and are ill-equiped to determine the validity of feedback based on the content alone.


Nobody foregoes replying for fear of being down-voted -- at least no one who has a basis to talk from. If it prevents Joe Newbie from putting in his two ill-advised cents, then I'd say its working exactly as intended -- and not only is the site not worse for it, its actually better for it.

Why have a down vote at all?

In addition to the reasons the others have provided above, don't forget that the down vote isn't available to everyone -- the staff haven't shared exactly what criteria have been used to make it available, but at least in theory the idea has been put in place that the ability to down-vote must be earned, and is not available to those who have just signed up or are unfamiliar with our community.

The voting options have also been completely removed from forums such as "The Lounge" and "Comments, Suggestions & Ideas" so that people aren't rewarded or punished for giving their opinion in discussions of potential site features or off-topic discussions.

Personally, I think the new (current) system is a pretty good one that appears to have been used pretty effectively thus far. I believe the staff intend to add additional ways to increase reputation by contributing to the site over time as well.

Why have a down vote at all? Just contradict the post with valid arguments if something is wrong or report if it is offensive.

Because sometimes a user will post completely bogus information (like this guy did), and the down vote allows the community to easily identify which posts to listen to and which not to. It helps with a couple things beyond just contradicting it with another post: 1) it's easy to see at a glance without having to read the whole thread to find out (maybe 2 or 3 or more pages later) that what was said wasn't a good idea; 2) it helps beginners identify what's not a good idea (they may not understand the counter arguments and still think whatever was suggested is a good idea); 3) it is faster/simpler (I browse GDNet on my phone a lot, and maybe I don't want to type out a full list of counter arguments on my phone, so just hitting -1 is easier in this case); 4) uhhh... it's the yin in the yang, imagine what terrible things could happen if there was no balance!

I believe the staff intend to add additional ways to increase reputation by contributing to the site over time as well.

We're adding a total of 4 dimensions to the reputation system to measure your rep as an author, moderator (everyone has some level of moderation ability, even if it is up/down voting or reporting bad content), scholar (name given to reputation earned from providing helpful posts/replies), and participation.


Here's a quick sneak peak at the member lookup / top-ranked users. It's ajax-based so the inside form tab updates the member list as you type (that's why everything in the tab starts with a j) It was modeled after the stackoverflow member list, but everything is ajax-based instead of just when you type a member name to search.

[attachment=7584:toprep.png]


Individually members (for the first time) will get to see where all their reputation points come from. I'm sharing a pic of a reputation graph for Servant of the Lord. It's dynamic and javascript driven, so you can pull your reputation graph for any time from January 10th, 2011 on.

[attachment=7586:totalrep.png]

We're adding a total of 4 dimensions to the reputation system to measure your rep as an author, moderator (everyone has some level of moderation ability, even if it is up/down voting or reporting bad content), scholar (name given to reputation earned from providing helpful posts/replies), and participation.

Would this include the ability to see the "Scholar" rep as earnt from each forum i.e. rep from "Creative Writing" forum being identifiable in raw data separate from rep earned in say "Directx and XNA" forum?

edit:

Individually members (for the first time) will get to see where all their reputation points come from.

I figure this answered it but seeing the graph was total rather than a specific, thought I would check

Would this include the ability to see the "Scholar" rep as earnt from each forum i.e. rep from "Creative Writing" forum being identifiable in raw data separate from rep earned in say "Directx and XNA" forum?

For our initial release you won't have the ability to tell which specific forums you earned reputation from, although you will see a list of which topics you earned reputation from. This does give me some ideas though for additional stats to provide for users. We will be posting the list of ways that users can earn reputation points when we release it soon.