A few words about users reputation
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
OK, another reason to hide a negative reputation: what if I just don't like you? I could vote against every your publication. You write a lot of comments and I can put a lot of "-1". Today I can destroy your reputation just because I want. Are you sure this is OK?
Will ban remove negative votes?
Effect can be smoothed if every user will have fixed amount of allowable downvotes per day (5, for example).
Upvotes may need such limit too (20, for example).
This scenario is more related to software security.
Going from 1000 reputation (for example) to 0 is the same problem as going from 1000 to -1000.
Also user can register hundreds of accounts and reset every post to whichever rating he want. -
@Semenov-Sherin It is OK if it is not hidden, but if it is hidden to users, and only mods can see the down-votes, the user won't know that someone is behaving like a troll.
If someone consistently down-votes your posts you can contact a moderator to tell them what is going on.
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My opinion is that downvoting shouldn't be removed. Why?
@Pesala said in A few words about users reputation:Users don't usually get down-voted for expressing an opinion, not even for being critical. They get down-voted for being rude, arrogant, or for using foul language.
Edit: this has already been said by others:
@Semenov-Sherin said:
OK, another reason to hide a negative reputation: what if I just don't like you? I could vote against every your publication. You write a lot of comments and I can put a lot of "-1". Today I can destroy your reputation just because I want. Are you sure this is OK?
If a banned user has no right to vote, I think you'd be banned.
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
the community can become toxic
Just my 2 cents: a community becomes toxic because of certain individuals, not because of some artificial reputation system. There are platforms which allow only positive votes for posts/comments and yet some communities on those platforms are very toxic and hateful.
@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
It means that if I express an unpopular opinion, users will trample me in the dirt just because they disagree with my point of view.
(...)
If someone writes about a rare bug and other users don't have the same issue, his reputation falls. If someone write he need some feature and other users don't think that this is really necessary, his reputation falls. If someone writes that some feature works better in other browser and Vivaldi should make the same, his reputation falls. Do you still not see the problem?I don't see such a problem here. OK, I admit - I don't read every post on this forum, but from my experience, in most cases, users receive downvotes because of their attitude, language, for being rude, not because of the ideas or opinions they were trying to express...
And if there's any abuse concerning the reputation system, you can always report such posts for moderation. You can flag even the post which - in your opinion - has been wrongfully downvoted. I can assure you that each report is looked at by the forum moderators and community managers and you'll face no consequences for just reporting such post, even if the staff won't share your opinion in a certain case.
Now, concerning downvotes: I'm neither for or against them. For me, it can stay the way it is, but I'm not going to oppose their possible removal. I just wanted to say that it might be like trying to fix a problem that doesn't really exist (at this moment, at least) and that this is not even a "fix" since the voting system is never actually the source of the problem...
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@potmeklecbohdan said in A few words about users reputation:
My opinion is that downvoting shouldn't be removed. Why?
@Pesala said in A few words about users reputation:Users don't usually get down-voted for expressing an opinion, not even for being critical. They get down-voted for being rude, arrogant, or for using foul language.
Edit: this has already been said by others:
@Semenov-Sherin said:
OK, another reason to hide a negative reputation: what if I just don't like you? I could vote against every your publication. You write a lot of comments and I can put a lot of "-1". Today I can destroy your reputation just because I want. Are you sure this is OK?
If a banned user has no right to vote, I think you'd be banned.
I perfectly agree with both of you. The reputation method is a tool, depending on how you use it may or may not be useful.
@Pesala said in A few words about users reputation:
@Semenov-Sherin It is OK if it is not hidden, but if it is hidden to users, and only mods can see the down-votes, the user won't know that someone is behaving like a troll.
If someone consistently down-votes your posts you can contact a moderator to tell them what is going on.
Exactly when a user realizes that he is being targeted, he reports the user(s) and a moderator will evaluate the measures to be taken.
I think it's right that users can evaluate with + and - the comments of other users, as already mentioned, this should make it clear to users that when they take a negative vote, maybe they have mistaken the method of approach or have used an inappropriate language. The examples given by @Vort are a clear example of this.
Unfortunately it is not a perfect method because there are those who could abuse it, but in case of abuse Moderatoti or Comunity Manager will restore the order. -
As I've said before, I see an issue with people downvoting because of language, rudeness or attitude. That's something the moderators should handle when the need arises, therefore you can just flag a post when you feel it is inappropriate instead of downvoting. Users also get downvoted for their ideas or opinions regularly – not in the feature request subforum, but everywhere else. Truly, I see it the other way around: If anything, we should be allowed to downvote feature requests in case we really don't want to see something implemented, but should allow people their own opinion without downvoting them on the rest of the forum.
So currently I feel downvoting triggers all the wrong things in this community. I wholeheartedly agree with OP that it should just be removed. Wether or not upvoting should be removed too is another discussion, but I wouldn't really miss it. The
Thank you
system we had before was more meaningful in my opinion, but of course this wasn't a conscious decision but just a side effect of switching to nodeBB.edit: As a sidenote: The only posts I currently downvote (since I can't downvote feature requests ^^) are those featuring spam or advertisement – these are posts really deserving the downvote, as negative reputation (anything under 3 upvotes) imposes restrictions on the user.
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@luetage said in A few words about users reputation:
That's something the moderators should handle when the need arises, therefore you can just flag a post when you feel it is inappropriate instead of downvoting.
If the moderators were to intervene in each case like that, it would not only drain more time of their life to carefully read, interpret, decide whether to take any action, what kind of action, the possible outcome of that action, but it would also increase the irritation of the users being constantly rebuked and censured. We already receive complaints about imposing too much "censorship", while all we try to do is to keep the forums civil. Sometimes we decide not to take any action because even though someone doesn't quite obey the rules, the violation is minor and we could let them get away with that.
Generally, the more we intervene, the more people get irritated, therefore we often restrain to removing/editing the content only if it is clearly in violation of the Code of Conduct. "Downvotes" is a form of punishment for those naughty users who are in that "grey" area of not breaking the rules (yet) but being not too kind. After all, we cannot impose politeness on people - the best we can do is to give them a good example.
Whether we need that voting system is up for debate (except for feature requests).
BTW. One of the moderators proposed (privately) a voting system similar to the one observed on StackExchange, where you'd have to give away one of your own reputation points to downvote somebody else. That's also an interesting idea. I know that the StackExchange community is a little bit different, but it's the kind where the downvotes are pretty much essential and it doesn't become any more toxic because of that...
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@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
If the moderators were to intervene in each case like that
If something is clearly against forum rules, you have to intervene anyway. The only thing I'm saying is that the downvoting doesn't do us any favours. I mean what does a user take away from a situation taking half a dozen downvotes, because they critizised Vivaldi? Critique should be nurtured, cultivated and tolerated instead of discouraged – and that's exactly what the voting (and especially downvoting) does – be it here or on reddit/twitter/whatever.
And yeah, the Stackexchange way of handling it would probably solve this somewhat, a solution we could all live with I think.
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Personally I ignore the up/down vote unless it serves a genuine purpose.
Unless it changes the order in which you view comments, or actually affects reputation as far as the forum software is concerned it serves no genuine purpose.I feel that voting on comments is a pointless gamification which just encourages competitive behaviour.
Voting belongs to polls, not general conversation.Imagine having a conversation for real while the people you are talking to are up and down voting you. In real life you would feel offended by this rude behaviour of people judging you constantly.
In the aging gamer forums where I moderate we bestow reputation ranks on the users.
At UT99.org honoured members get added to a sticky post with a description of why the community values this individual (the admin do not pick the honoured members. the community put their name forward and we have a period of input from the community where they voice their opinions).Users gain reputation by their deeds for the community, not the posts they write.
I have previously suggested we ditch the voting and have it for topics where voting is required.
I reiterate this request for sanity. Please dispense with the gamification of conversation.
If users feel compelled to agree or disagree with a post, they already have the tools at hand to join the conversation and say what they think. Voting gives nothing you don't already have. -
@Dr-Flay said in A few words about users reputation:
Voting gives nothing you don't already have.
It allows users to acknowledge help by upvoting without posting a reply, which adds to the poster's notifications, and bloats the thread.
Downvotes allow users to show their disapproval of the tone of a post without starting a flame-war.
In real conversations people show their approval or disapproval by their body language. Online conversations need different tools.
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@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
One of the moderators proposed (privately) a voting system similar to the one observed on StackExchange, where you'd have to give away one of your own reputation points to downvote somebody else.
This is a good solution. Really.
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
One of the moderators proposed (privately) a voting system similar to the one observed on StackExchange, where you'd have to give away one of your own reputation points to downvote somebody else.
This is a good solution. Really.
Yes it seems to me a good solution, who knows if it's supported by NodeBB.
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
@Vort said in A few words about users reputation:
If user posts stupid thing, community have right to see "-123" and do not read that idea.
This week a user wrote that he had lost his data. Probably it was because of a rare bug. The community should works together to find the causes of this bug. But now this post has about "-10" rating. And you're right: nobody read this now.
Were is this post?
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
@Vort said in A few words about users reputation:
So the problem is that people can't believe that their thoughts can be wrong?
Why it should be fixed by technical means?OK, another reason to hide a negative reputation: what if I just don't like you? I could vote against every your publication. You write a lot of comments and I can put a lot of "-1". Today I can destroy your reputation just because I want. Are you sure this is OK?
On the forum not just you and your opponent. A lot of users have read and vote. One person can't crash your personal reputation if other users not agree with him.
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@Gwen-Dragon said in A few words about users reputation:
@Vort The problem on reputation related to downvote is users acting like trolls can and had alreay etremenly downvoted others.
One troll can't crash your reputation - many other users will upvote and reputation will growth. And, even you got a lot of minuses, you can write a good post or comment and people will upvote it.
Actually, all users that currently have less than -10, got this downvotes rightly.
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
One of the moderators proposed (privately) a voting system similar to the one observed on StackExchange, where you'd have to give away one of your own reputation points to downvote somebody else.
This is a good solution. Really.
It's not a good idea. If somebody make wrong things - why I should get a part of his guilt?
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@Shpankov On StackExchange it works both ways. You give away your own points by simply voting (whether "up" or "down"), but you can earn points also in other ways. I think it's too complicated anyway. IMO the way it works here is good enough.
I also wanted to add a few other thoughts regarding the downvotes. First of all, the votes are not anonymous. That's very important. We can see who downvoted a certain post. If there's any abuse, we have the right tools to take action. Moreover, I think that the downvotes can serve as a sort of a warning for users who misbehave. The threat of being downvoted might make them restrain from writing something rude (for example). But I'm aware that it can work both ways and it can scare off users who didn't intend to say anything wrong.
Well, I'm not trying to be an advocate for downvotes here. I'm seeing both the pros and cons of having them. Whether they stay or not, I'll be fine with either option.
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@Pesala
Yeah I understand the principal, however in a real conversation with body language if someone is obviously showing disagreement while you talk, you will pick up on this at that moment and either ask what the problem is, or explain yourself differently.
When they nod and make agreement noises, this is to show that they understand and you can continue.
Votes after the conversation are too late to be of use.
Flame wars generally happen with people that are not used to discussing different opinions, and these days we seem to go out of our way more and more to avoid discussing different opinions.Anonymous voting with regard to reputation allows for politicised voting, and is what makes sites like Web of Trust truly broken.
Example of voting with no comments on why
Yahoo answers site is extremely useless due to voting on the answers, so often the correct answers are not shown as relevant.
If someone agrees and has nothing to add, they could just be happy they agree, rather than needing to be seen to agree.
If someone disagrees and has nothing to add, then why bother disagreeing ?
If the need to be seen to disagree is more important than explaining why you disagree, maybe you don't have a solid base for disagreeing and would rather stay silent lest you were proven wrong.Our countries are run by people that like to be seen to agree or disagree on things they know nothing about. Facebook and twitter are rife with people agreeing/disagreeing on things they only read the headlines of.
This gets us where ?
Personally this desire for external validation is abhorrent and I see it as part of the modern rot of the iWorld.Dialogue and discussion were once valued tools, but now we show our pleasure/displeasure with all the eloquence of emoji.
Obviously this is all a matter of opinion, but in my eyes it just feeds the lazy competitive and selfish direction our cultures are headed.
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@Shpankov said in A few words about users reputation:
It's not a good idea. If somebody make wrong things - why I should get a part of his guilt?
It's not part of the guilt. There is no "guilt" to begin with. Downvoting could be seen as an unwelcoming act, therefore it makes sense you have to invest something. If you have many upvotes, it won't hurt you a bit, but it also means users with less than one reputation can't downvote. I think that makes a lot of sense.
@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
First of all, the votes are not anonymous.
But they pretty much are anonymous. Vivaldi has removed the pointer over the voting count to hide the fact it can be clicked to access a list of Upvoters/Downvoters. Only users accustomed to the forum software are aware of this. We also shouldn't forget most know up and downvoting from reddit, where it is anonymous indeed – it isn't a big stretch to assume the same for Vivaldi too initially.
Anyway, I don't think we have a real problem here, but change wouldn't hurt either. Let's just try something different and see how it works out.
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@luetage said in A few words about users reputation:
Vivaldi has removed the pointer over the voting count to hide the fact it can be clicked to access a list of Upvoters/Downvoters.
That's interesting because as far as I remember, the pointer was never there in the first place. I know this, because early on after we switched to nodeBB I made a custom CSS for the forums and adding a pointer for the votes counter (or more like
cursor: help
in my case, for some reason) was one of my very first modifications.My point was that since the votes are not anonymous, we can spot the abuse and take appropriate action, whenever necessary. Whether the average user is aware of that is a different story.