The Cellar - View Single Post

Undertoad · 01-15-2002, 05:15 PM

OK!

There are numerous problem with thread ratings, which I'll try to convince you all of, because it's important.

The major problem is that you think they're answering a question, but they're really answering a diffferent question than the one you ask. You ask "What are the threads that I'd like best?" You receive back a list of threads that OTHER PEOPLE thought were best... by definition, a group not including yourself. This is very precisely the wrong answer.

The value of the answer that you get varies according to a set of variables over which we have no control. The rating of any particular thread by anonymous masses can be useful or not useful according to the phases of the moon. Newbies rating threads - threads careening away from the rating - people voting at random - people voting for their friends - parimutuel scoring (I vote for you you vote for me) - everything seems to sway the bottom line.

That's the biggest problem, but by far not the only problem. Notice the shock that people had when we went from ver 1 to ver 2 of the software? Ever watch someone starting out on the Cellar and how confusing it is? These are problems for longer memories. The more "stuff" on the system, the more people are basically confused about how it really runs, to the point where they use it for years and years and never really understand it.

This is not a problem for techie sorts, who are oriented around working out how various features work. (I'm reminded here of a time when I pushed random buttons on an automatic coffee machine, and it hung and had to be reset. To me, it was natural hacker behavior. To everyone else, it was stone-cold stupid.)

But to attract people other than techie sorts, you have to settle for a degree of simplicity and strong usability. This simple fact is one of the unseen factors behind the dot-com crunch -- beyond the obvious fliers on dumb ideas. The biggest ISP in the world is STILL AOL, because they solved the usability problem first.

As it is, the system is creaking on the usability front. There are problems. The message icon, the "C"s, learning vB Code, the stupid "user cp" button. all conspire to create a system that is not very usable. Now we want to add to that another column (I already removed a column -"moderator".)

I believe that vBulletin is really suffering from feature creep, to the point where it is getting difficult to get basic things done. And why IS there feature creep? It's because everyone believes they have a question that must be answered, and everyone's a programmer, and everyone wants their code going towards communities where the code will be highly visible and oft-run.

Would thread rating solve the problem of attracting people? No, the ratings are basically invisible until they fully comprehend the software. Would it encourage quality posting? No, as Mags points out, the /. and K5 experiences tell us it doesn't exactly work as expected. It does encourage group-think, voting to "correct" moderation, voting down ideas you don't like. Hey, one of my last comments on K5 was voted 5 by some people and 1 by others... and no 3s at all. Politically motivated voters? Very obviously.

I think our biggest problem is thread hijacking, but I don't for a moment believe that this would be solved by thread ratings. More likely a highly-rated thread will be posted to more often - since it's highly rated, duh. I still think a greater number of forums will help since there will start to arrive topics that not all of us care for, encouraging diversity.

OK, that there is the tip of an iceberg on the topic; I could go on, but you'll stop reading anyway.

01-15-2002, 05:15 PM	#25
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	OK! There are numerous problem with thread ratings, which I'll try to convince you all of, because it's important. The major problem is that you think they're answering a question, but they're really answering a diffferent question than the one you ask. You ask "What are the threads that I'd like best?" You receive back a list of threads that OTHER PEOPLE thought were best... by definition, a group not including yourself. This is very precisely the wrong answer. The value of the answer that you get varies according to a set of variables over which we have no control. The rating of any particular thread by anonymous masses can be useful or not useful according to the phases of the moon. Newbies rating threads - threads careening away from the rating - people voting at random - people voting for their friends - parimutuel scoring (I vote for you you vote for me) - everything seems to sway the bottom line. That's the biggest problem, but by far not the only problem. Notice the shock that people had when we went from ver 1 to ver 2 of the software? Ever watch someone starting out on the Cellar and how confusing it is? These are problems for longer memories. The more "stuff" on the system, the more people are basically confused about how it really runs, to the point where they use it for years and years and never really understand it. This is not a problem for techie sorts, who are oriented around working out how various features work. (I'm reminded here of a time when I pushed random buttons on an automatic coffee machine, and it hung and had to be reset. To me, it was natural hacker behavior. To everyone else, it was stone-cold stupid.) But to attract people other than techie sorts, you have to settle for a degree of simplicity and strong usability. This simple fact is one of the unseen factors behind the dot-com crunch -- beyond the obvious fliers on dumb ideas. The biggest ISP in the world is STILL AOL, because they solved the usability problem first. As it is, the system is creaking on the usability front. There are problems. The message icon, the "C"s, learning vB Code, the stupid "user cp" button. all conspire to create a system that is not very usable. Now we want to add to that another column (I already removed a column -"moderator".) I believe that vBulletin is really suffering from feature creep, to the point where it is getting difficult to get basic things done. And why IS there feature creep? It's because everyone believes they have a question that must be answered, and everyone's a programmer, and everyone wants their code going towards communities where the code will be highly visible and oft-run. Would thread rating solve the problem of attracting people? No, the ratings are basically invisible until they fully comprehend the software. Would it encourage quality posting? No, as Mags points out, the /. and K5 experiences tell us it doesn't exactly work as expected. It does encourage group-think, voting to "correct" moderation, voting down ideas you don't like. Hey, one of my last comments on K5 was voted 5 by some people and 1 by others... and no 3s at all. Politically motivated voters? Very obviously. I think our biggest problem is thread hijacking, but I don't for a moment believe that this would be solved by thread ratings. More likely a highly-rated thread will be posted to more often - since it's highly rated, duh. I still think a greater number of forums will help since there will start to arrive topics that not all of us care for, encouraging diversity. OK, that there is the tip of an iceberg on the topic; I could go on, but you'll stop reading anyway.