BBO Discussion Forums: One last plea for allowing downvoting - BBO Discussion Forums

 Vampyr, on 2011-June-11, 08:55, said:

I find it amusing how one particular user appears to be the one down-voting me... must be jealous of my sidebar!
(of course I expect this particular post to be down-voted by about 20 different people in a matter of minutes)

 matmat, on 2011-June-11, 09:26, said:

Jealous, yes. That must be it.

It would be nice if Matmat shortened his sidebar just because it is annoying to have to do the extra scrolling.

 gwnn, on 2011-June-11, 09:20, said:

I have no idea.... I will try to down vote the post you just made twice, I will then try to upvote it twice. If I can't do both, I hope someone will upvote it to compesate for my test. Even it I can or can not, I am not sure how that would apply to other yellows. Only a few yellows (rain, gerardo, uday, me, probably fred if he cared) have any really special powers on the forums.

 inquiry, on 2011-June-11, 09:51, said:

No I was only able to vote it down once, and after that, I could not vote it up or down. I will check again tomorrow to see if this a once a day thing. In the meanwhile, would someone please upvote gwnn's post that I downvoted and post here that they did so I will not feel bad for downvoting his post. Thanks.



[edit note added.... thanks to diana_eva for cancelling my downvote during testing on gwnn's post, so no net change to his reputation has occurred due to this test, i will see if I can downvote it again tomorrow.]

One downvote per day for regular yellows. Maybe admins have another limit.

 matmat, on 2011-June-11, 09:26, said:

That's funny... I seem to have a stalker also...

 mtvesuvius, on 2011-January-31, 12:54, said:

Sorry you were sick, hope you feel better soon.

This whole +- thing has a potential to breed a lot of bad blood in forums.

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Yes, this is retarded. +/- may work on very technical forums where people are usually trained in logic and following rules (ie Stack Overflow) but in forums like this people will just upvote things they agree with and down vote things they don't agree with which in effect will cause some members to stop posting things they know other people won't like which is exactly what we don't want.
We could have 2 step system: all the down/up votes are public. Then if some moron downvotes someone else because he doesn't agree with what is posted he would earn downvotes for his stupid down voting

 bluecalm, on 2011-June-11, 17:00, said:

You're right. What were we thinking. Those two qualities are never present in bridge players.

I don't understand the gripe, there don't need to be rules for rep. If the system is just people upvote stuff they like, and downvote stuff they don't like, what is the problem with that? Even if people downvote something they don't agree with, then people reading the thread will know if a view is widely held, or a fringe view. Personally if I see something -voted that I agree with I will + vote it.

If the community does not want + and - votes used in this way, it will self correct itself. If the community does want + and - votes used this way, perhaps it will lead people to be more cautious when saying something dumb. Or perhaps it will lead them to be less authoritative when spouting off a minority view. Perhaps instead of kenrexford saying "you must play this way" and getting minus voted all the time he would say "I know this is a non standard view, but I have often played this auction to be x." Perhaps the world is a better place then.

Likewise, some people don't like negative/sarcastic comments. However, some of them are funny and useful. Perhaps it will stop people like me from being mean/trolling for the sake of it, and will lead to all sarcastic comments gone or being funny enough that they are worth it. Yes, these comments will be polarizing, but I doubt anyone is going to + vote something mean and unfunny.

Personally, I doubt that people will just neg everything they disagree with. That does not seem to be how it is used. But if I think something is just obviously wrong in a thread, I like the option of just negging it rather than posting something. Or if someone posts in the advanced/expert forum when they have no idea what they're talking about, I will be happy to neg them. Likewise, if someone posts something that is very good or close to my views I will give it a + vote rather than post the same thing over again. What is the problem with this? Someone can go in and see that one post has +4 rep, they will probably believe that our community thinks that is the right answer.

I think all the arguing about what should and shouldnt constitute a plus vote is moot. The rep system is here for our community, and our community will decide what gets plus and minus votes. If it causes people to stop posting things that they know will get minus votes, that's not a bad thing. If it causes people who are very often considered wrong and not often considered right to get more minus votes than plus votes and have a lower reputation, there is nothing wrong with that.

What I think *will* stop now that we can see the rep is people anonymously negging people for no real reason other than personality, or because they feel their own rep is too low. I mean the person who has pretty much neg bombed everyone in a couple of threads, including a beginner for asking about a hand on the beginner/int forum (literally negged the op) and then put in their profile "I would appreciate if you sent me a message on why you downvoted my posts so I can lose something <3" will probably not be doing that anymore. The fact that the community will look down upon that person for actions like that is not a bad thing, who downvotes someone for posting a question about an auction in the beginner/int forum? Who downvotes an entire thread while whining about getting downvoted, obviously they are just being a hater. Again the community can self correct the rep situation for people like that pretty easily now, that person will be ostracized until they can show they can handle rep, and people will probably just +vote someone who was -voted by them to correct it.

Anyways, tl;dr, but I think the community deciding their own standards for stuff like this is always the way to go, and will always lead to a better forum experience with readers more able to gauge the validity of posts as determined by the community.

The biggest forum in the world is reddit and their whole forum operates on karma points/rep, with no guidelines on + or - voting except whether you like the post or not, and they're doing just fine.

I find the whole reputation thing rather Orwellian. Rarely do popular thought and truly insightful thought overlap. There's enough groupthink in the world already, thanks.

 jonottawa, on 2011-June-11, 20:12, said:

yeah... but then there's funny thought...

 jonottawa, on 2011-June-11, 20:12, said:

Then it should be a badge of honor to have a low rep. Wear it with pride. Because I'm sure if you have an awesome unique thought about a bridge hand and you explain your point people are just going to neg you.

 cherdano, on 2011-June-11, 08:35, said:

Thanks for the implicit compliment
In the current system (public voting), one potential result of such behaviour is me hounding said poster and downvoting their posts. If we're lucky, maybe we'll each try to get friends to ruin each other's reputations. Not ideal.
In the system I proposed, I would notice my posts get downvoted frequently through what appears to be no fault of mine. Then I can go to a mod, who'll see "hey, these are all the same person!", tell me that was the case and possibly undo the damage / talk to that person. This way, a flame war (or a voting war) can't start.
Of course, so far I haven't really seen evidence of flame wars even with public voting, so I guess that's also a good solution.

 JLOGIC, on 2011-June-11, 19:43, said:

The question is what are you trying to achieve. If you want to expand the user base for the forum, you must sacrifice some of the humour that might make people feel excluded. This is one perspective I don't think you have regarding these forums.

 JLOGIC, on 2011-June-11, 19:43, said:

That really depends on the usage. If people are going to play favourites and downvote posters for disagreeing with their friends, then you really want people to ignore the rep altogether (as you say in a later post). Currently I can't say it's easy for me to know how correct an answer to a bridge question is based on the rep of the post (frankly, my own usage kind of screws it up - I upvote people who are trying to help me when I ask questions, clearly I'd have no clue if they're wrong or I wouldn't have asked the questions to begin with).

 JLOGIC, on 2011-June-11, 19:43, said:

This is something of a hijack, but doesn't kenrexford's title say he's a great theorist? Is the title sarcastic? I thought he makes a lot of sense.

I would not want to put in place without good reason a system that has the potential to place on mods a greater burden than that which they aleady bear.

It occurs to me that the merits and flaws in having a rep system in the forums are very similar to the merits and flaws of having a rep system on BBO.

To some extent we do have a rep system on BBO in the form of BBO masterpoints. It is not foolproof, because they only go up, not down, will not be awarded to players who choose not to play in events that award them, and do not provide much of an indication of the ratio of masterpoints awarded to (qualifying) hands played. If you wanted an ideal rep system on BBO then I think it would have to be one that you did not have to pay for. It is cumbersome, but if you were really interested in a player's rep you could do worse than to look up their average IMPs per hand from MyHands over the last month.

Time and again a method of independently rating players based on performance, visible to other players, has been argued for and against, with the management firmly coming down against the idea. And it is not a new idea either, but has been tried and tested on other sites for decades. So it is not as if this business model is a stab in the dark. Furthermore I have no access to the financial records of BBO (nor desire to), but if pure membership numbers are a guide I would tentatively suggest that it is a popular model.

So on BBO itself we are left with a system of friends, enemies and player comments which are kept entirely private to the user who makes those judgements. There is no public record for you to assess, when sitting down with a pick-up partner, whether (s)he sucks or is regarded by 1000 other members to be a fine upstanding player. Until the BBF voting system was introduced, that was a principle broadly mirrored in BBF.

So, what is so different about BBF contrasted with BBO that makes this change desirable in the one but not the other?

The administrators stated that the reason for this change is to enable posts or threads of particular interest to be identified for advertisement in BBO news pages. I suppose this MIGHT work, and I shall keep an open mind, although I am presently sceptical, and for all that this is the published reason I don't see it as one that has been taken on board by most of the BBF members who have taken an interest in this development.

Antrax: I don't think you can screw up the system with whatever you + or - vote if you're actually plus voting posts you like and downvoting posts you don't. If your system is to + vote helpful people/posts, more power to you. Like I said, I don't think we have to define what a + vote should or shouldn't be, the community will define it for us. Eventually things that people like will be + voted and things people don't like will be - voted. This goes for humor, helpfulness, accuracy, whatever, in context.

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You are right, I don't think it's my job to operate solely to "expand the user base of the forum." I don't mind if people are mocked or feel excluded if they cannot follow the guidelines of each subforum like posting stupid things in the advanced/expert forum, or answering a beginner/int question authoritatively when they don't know what they are talking about. Or being snarky to someone who is often snarky. Likewise, I would never be rude or condescending to someone who posts a question in the beginner/int forum or answers a hand given incorrectly or w/e. To me they are different forums and I act differently in them. I don't run or represent BBO, so I don't have to be politically correct like Fred or Uday or whoever does And I am hotheaded and sometimes get into flame wars, downvotes might be good deterrents of those, I imagine both parties will start getting negged, but who knows. There is nothing wrong to me to acting sarcastic/rude/whatever in certain contexts, and if it's funny I will upvote it, but I know you and others may disagree and may downvote it. Eventually the community will decide. Yes sometimes communities act in ways that make bad members feel excluded, this is natural and healthy in my opinion.

All that said, I think a rep system with + and - votes will be good for the bad humor/mean comments to go away. When it was just + votes then you'd have a few people find a comment funny and upvote it even if the majority didn't like it...now people can downvote as well if they don't like it. Yes you could argue that something that 5 people + vote and 4 people - vote is not a good comment, but at least if it sucks you'll get a minus ratio. And pre rep there was nothing to stop it unless people posted about it, which would hijack the thread. I think rep is *good* for those cases, not bad.

Edit: Oh and the kenrexford thing... you know that you can make your own titles right? For instance mine says AKA Hanp...but I'm not really Han (or am I??). But yeah I was just teasing him, he and I are actually quite friendly now.

I was referring to screwing up your proposed method of identifying which posts are correct, Bridge-wise, and which aren't. If there are several factions to up/down votes, the results could be confusing. If half the forum upvotes funny posts and downvotes annoying members, and half upvotes correct bridge and downvotes wrong bridge, then a correct answer given by an annoying member, or a hilariously wrong answer, both get natural rep.
Not to detract from the fact I completely agree about communities self-governing in general.

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I worry about new members, not bad members.
And no, I didn't know titles are self-assigned. Probably requires some min # posts since I don't see it on my profile.