Post rating system changes

[djos]

Evidence that Ryar is quite wrong on this. The ratings are now a lot more representative of the technical quality a user contributes to the forum. Yourself being probably one of the best examples of that.

That's precisely the point. People already know whose who!

That's great for those of us who have been here for years, but for newer members, it's very worthwhile IMO. It's also useful for folk who decide to poke their heads into a sub-forum they don't normally frequent.

[dave kumar]

Going back and looking through some of my older posts that got a negative vote, it's quite funny. Whilst they were in technical threads, the reasons for downvoting were nothing to do with being technical, it was just to disagree, or because a fan of a team didn't like my post.

How frequently is downvoting used to highlight a technically incorrect post? I suspect it is much more common for users to downvote something because they don't agree with the sentiment of the post rather than for any technical reason. I've said this before but I think we should rely on positive reinforcement (upvoting) of good technical contributions and ensure users can easily find posts that have been upvoted. Then you don't need downvoting as inaccurate posts will be ignored along with the general chat in a thread. That is the principle of stigmergy in the animal kingdom (termites, ants bees, etc), it relies purely on positive feedback (upvotes) without the need for negative feedback (downvotes).

Would it be better for the forum, if users used the report button instead of downvoting, given that most downvotes are to express that a user considers a post to be off-topic, trolling, or worse? It would be good to hear from those with the ability to downvote what they use it for.

[djos]

Going back and looking through some of my older posts that got a negative vote, it's quite funny. Whilst they were in technical threads, the reasons for downvoting were nothing to do with being technical, it was just to disagree, or because a fan of a team didn't like my post.

How frequently is downvoting used to highlight a technically incorrect post?

It’s quite common, if you want a good example, go look for a prolific user who’s alias starts with well known “Super being“.

This individual has over 400 positive rated posts and over 100 negative rated posts (that’s a 25% negative ratio). The negative posts are almost universally tagged negatively due to being technically/factually incorrect.

Note: mods I’m not taking a personal shot at this particular member, (as tempting as that may be), I’m just using them to highlight the system as it currently stands is working.

[SiLo]

One solution is to simply have set options as a reason for upvoting or downvoting a post, rather than a text box. One of my posts was downvoted after stating something that was technically correct and the reason was "prove it".

[dave kumar]

...
It’s quite common, if you want a good example, go look for a prolific user who’s alias starts with well known “Super being“.

This individual has over 400 positive rated posts and over 100 negative rated posts (that’s a 25% negative ratio). The negative posts are almost universally tagged negatively due to being technically/factually incorrect.

Note: mods I’m not taking a personal shot at this particular member, (as tempting as that may be), I’m just using them to highlight the system as it currently stands is working.

Thanks, useful to have another perspective on this. My bias is probably because I only see posts from people complaining because they have received downvotes based on sentiment rather than technical inaccuracy.

[dans79]

...
It’s quite common, if you want a good example, go look for a prolific user who’s alias starts with well known “Super being“.

This individual has over 400 positive rated posts and over 100 negative rated posts (that’s a 25% negative ratio). The negative posts are almost universally tagged negatively due to being technically/factually incorrect.

Note: mods I’m not taking a personal shot at this particular member, (as tempting as that may be), I’m just using them to highlight the system as it currently stands is working.

Thanks, useful to have another perspective on this. My bias is probably because I only see posts from people complaining because they have received downvotes based on sentiment rather than technical inaccuracy.

it also gets used a lot to note posts thats are hostile, and or trolling. When you see posts with ratings of -4 or -5 or worse, it's usually some combination of all of the above. Imo, anything more than -1 or -2 and something is wrong. I've seen posts with negative ratings into the double digits, but those are pretty rare, as the user was most likely trying to invoke a response from people and the mods usually remove those as soon as they see them.

[ispano6]

...
It’s quite common, if you want a good example, go look for a prolific user who’s alias starts with well known “Super being“.

This individual has over 400 positive rated posts and over 100 negative rated posts (that’s a 25% negative ratio). The negative posts are almost universally tagged negatively due to being technically/factually incorrect.

Note: mods I’m not taking a personal shot at this particular member, (as tempting as that may be), I’m just using them to highlight the system as it currently stands is working.

Thanks, useful to have another perspective on this. My bias is probably because I only see posts from people complaining because they have received downvotes based on sentiment rather than technical inaccuracy.

it also gets used a lot to note posts thats are hostile, and or trolling. When you see posts with ratings of -4 or -5 or worse, it's usually some combination of all of the above. Imo, anything more than -1 or -2 and something is wrong. I've seen posts with negative ratings into the double digits, but those are pretty rare, as the user was most likely trying to invoke a response from people and the mods usually remove those as soon as they see them.

I have quite a few downvotes from "trolls" who downvoted my comment to "stay on topic" with messages "not contributing" or "you're not a moderator". Those are cheap shots, if you ask me.

[djos]

I have quite a few downvotes from "trolls" who downvoted my comment to "stay on topic" with messages "not contributing" or "you're not a moderator". Those are cheap shots, if you ask me.

TBH, I think that is due to Ferrari fans tending to be rather "emotional" - that's the main reason I stay out of Ferrari topics.

[nzjrs]

Lets close this thread, mods?

Time to move on.

[djos]

Lets close this thread, mods?

Time to move on.

Good point, so far the changes seem to be working very well.