Voting and/or Rating Threads

I think people rated the idea, not the thread. That's okay - the idea can be rated too, right?

[Nic Name]

dham, I think that is an important distinction.

this proposal isn't for polls ... "hey, what do ya think of this idea?"

we've got that already. although it's seldom used, because members prefer to sound off in a reply post if they agree or disagree ...

what i'm talking about here is a RATING mechanism that will tell the "audience" i.e. members + guests, what the members who have read a thread think of its value as a thread in the forum.

essentially ... is this a good discussion? ... or is this thread a waste of time?

i was proposing to make the implementation of such a proposal easy for UT by utilizing the existing software polls in as a way to RATE the threads ... because, it is really unnecessary to have polls for this type of community ... the ideas and opinions for and against anything are really expressed in the posts of the threads.

that's what i think, at this point, anyway.

Nic - I got it. Seriously. I think everyone else did too. What I'm saying is that I don't think people used this poll to rate the thread - I think they used it to rate the idea of using the poll to rate the thread. I don't think it's indicative of the general feeling toward your idea. That's all I'm saying. I very clearly understand what your idea was. I would think that my previous posts would have established that...

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by dhamsaic
Right. But what I'm saying (and what I think he's saying) is that it could be of some value to new people.

And I don't particularly agree with that either. I most especially disagree with a mechanism to deprecate in some way the threads that ddn't appeal to the hoi polloi...which would presumambly include the "new people". I say it's not broken, and I say don't fix it. Fair minds differ all the time here as to what's drivel and what isn't. I'm not even convinced "attracting new members" is a good goal to have. I'd prefer to see quality not quantity.

I may have to turn in my geek's licence for saying this, but not everything that *can* be done *should* be done.

Maggie - I agree about the deprecation of threads. That's why I said I didn't think they should be moved to "Trash", etc. However, it might be an interesting thing to have, especially if there was an option to "ignore ratings" - i.e., you wouldn't even see them, and they wouldn't affect you. Maybe this would be off by default for current users, but on for new users.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by dhamsaic
However, it might be an interesting thing to have, especially if there was an option to "ignore ratings" - i.e., you wouldn't even see them, and they wouldn't affect you.

If you think that "you wouldn't even see them" and "they wouldn't affect you" are the same thing, you've never read Slashdot. I think you'd immediately see some people starting to pander to the crowd, and the pandering wouldn't even be to the *entire* crowd, it would be that subset who are dim enough to spend a lot of their time voting; not the most interesting people on the planet. One of those "amongst those expressing a preference" deals that Pepsi made so famous. I just don't think "it might be interesting" is a good enough reason.

[Nic Name]

All this discussion, and then I read in the FAQ that vBulletin is already set up for rating threads ... what a great idea!

How do I rate a thread?

You may find a small menu on thread pages which allows you to 'rate this thread' with a number between 1-5.

Casting a vote for threads you view is entirely optional, but if you think that the thread is superb, you might rate it as a 5-star thread, or if you think that it's unspeakably dismal, you might choose to rate the thread with a single star.

Once enough votes have been cast for the thread rating, you may see a set of stars appear with the title of the thread in the thread listings. These stars reflect the average vote cast, and can allow you to quickly see which threads are worth reading if you are on a very busy board with a lot of threads.

I can't believe the Cellar doesn't have this feature activated, UT.

Which would be the reason why you would have the ratings turned <b>off</b>. People are going to say what they say, and it's not like any one person owns a thread - so therefore, there's really no incentive. We're not talking karma here. We're not talking about rating specific posts. We're talking about rating an entire thread based upon the quality of its posts. This rating would not affect the thread - it would just be used as a criteria to sort threads <b>if the viewer wanted to see the ratings</b>. Don't like 'em? Turn it off. Want to see 'em? Turn it on. With only a single vote happening per person, the ratings couldn't be stuffed.

I really don't see anything negative that could come from this. There would be no incentive to rank a thread, nor would there be any incentive to post there. Why would people pander to some crowd? As we all know, we individually rank people based upon the merits of their comments - whether or not they're participating in a "highly rated thread" would be ignored.

To put it another way: I simply do not understand your stance. Please clarify.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by dhamsaic
People are going to say what they say, and it's not like any one person owns a thread

Well, actually it is. *Every* thread has a starter displayed rather prominently, and we're starting to see more individual *forums* too, where most threads are started by the forum owner.

As originally conceived, the indivdual Cellar forums were on a specific topic, like MMM's Gun Locker and Toad's Wine Cellar, as I recall. But lately the new forums are starting to look much more like personal blogs...to the point where Syc even stacks a bunch of apparently unrelated items into a single "stuff I was thinking about at the same time" thread.

- so therefore, there's really no incentive...This rating would not affect the thread - it would just be used as a criteria to sort threads...

You're saying that a high or low rating would not affect who reads a thread...and that how widely read a thread is doesn't affect it? I still think that whoring for ratings--even thread ratings-- will change the nature of the dialog. Anything that changes how stuff is presented--even to a *subset* of the users--ultimately affects the content. I don't see this as having positive effect.

On the original Cellar, threads only happened because people posted as a reply; there was no formal "create a thread" mechanism. Threads did not have titles, posts did...it was very much modeled on USENET, which was an important reason The Cellar existed right up to the point where the USENET feed volume became unsupportable. People would typically log on and be presented with a list of all new posts in all forums they were tracking. That's still how I use it....recent postings keep a thread on the list, and I find out pretty quickly which threads I find interesting. *Forking* a thread is rather difficult now, and it was originally stone simple.

[Undertoad]

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.

As for owning a thread - I don't see it that way. If I start a thread, it's because I thought of and/or acted upon it first. All that means is that I started it. Where it goes, the group controls. It's <b>everybody's</b>. Or at least, those who post in it. The only control the starter has is the ability to delete the thread within the first 24 hours.

As a "moderator" of a forum, the only control I have is to delete threads, move them, etc. I can't edit comments. I don't delete them either. But that's because it's "dhamsaic's weblog". Image of the Day, etc - those all belong to everyone. Tony is the administrator, and he runs the hardware, but beyond that, it's everyone's. I think that remains most true to the spirit of the Cellar (or at least the spirit that Tony has conveyed to me).

Catering to an audience - I still don't agree. On Slashdot, someone posts to boost their Karma. On the Cellar, we post because we have something to say. If we're not affected by the rating, we have no incentive to cater to it. In other words, the rating would be on the thread as a whole, which is "owned" by everyone. Obviously if someone started a rather troll-like thread, it would be marked down and probably forgotten - this is the only indicator I see of it affecting the poster. Otherwise, the rating would be indicative of the thread as a whole, not of any single post. That is precisely why I don't think we should have ratings of single posts - a thread is a thread, and all posts within it are integral to it. Some may be less insightful than others, but they're all there, affecting the thread. I'm getting off topic here, but basically, I don't believe that a rating system <b>of the specific threads</b> will cause pandering to specific crowds.

Of course having more people reading a thread <b>can</b> affect it, but it doesn't necessarily, just as having less people reading may or may not have an affect. It all depends on whether said persons decide to post or not.

I think Sycamoreland and my "weblog" are supposed to be just that - personal forums. When I approached Tony about it, my idea was to make a private, personal weblog - I like the Cellar software and I thought I could bring some new people to the Cellar (which I have). Tony thought the "private" idea was too much of a hassle, so we decided to go public with it. What is it? A place for me to post whatever I want, and for those that choose to do so to respond to them. Nothing more. It's focus is on my life, just like sycamore's is on his. I don't see a problem with this - they're fitting their intended goal.

Anyway. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on the whole rating of threads issue. I'm sure that if you could say something that would convince me it's a bad idea, you would have said it by now Just as if I were going to convince you of even its "okayness", it would have happened by now. I guess we'll just wait for others to weigh in...

[Undertoad]

Close one post and start another? Sure it makes sense.

After reading Mag's post up there, which wasn't here when I started my novel, it occurs to me that there are several options available to us.

In vBulletin there is a concept of forum depth, currently set to 2. "Cellar comments and suggestions" is a sub-forum of "Cellar-related". It would be possible, for example, to have dham and syc's and another other daily journal-esque forums on a THIRD level. So on the front page, you see "User-hosted forums", under which is "weblogs", but you don't see the individual weblogs until you click on "weblogs". This keeps the front page compact and easier to comprehend.

I mention the weblogs because it's simple to understand how they'd fit into the scheme. This idea would be perfect for the "cities" idea; you'd go into that section to find the chatter on the city forum of your choice.

This could combine with the concept of subscribing to forums and threads to make a pretty usable setup for those who want to read almost everything but not everything.

Remember, it was only about four months ago when it was cleanly possible to read everything... and it could well be four months before that's possible again. People's interests and desires shift like the wind when it comes to this sort of thing. If five of us were to suddenly stop posting, the system would quickly return to that status.

-

The other very interesting idea is quality selective moderation. As I noted, I'm not impressed with the quality of moderation seen at other systems, and especially with the moderation at forums that are smaller than K5 and /.

K5, in particular, is the fascinating one to me; Rusty tries his best to give all power to the users. I admire that tremendously, but I'm not as enamored of the result.

But what if you took the K5 idea and changed it from a Democracy, to a Republic? What if, instead of moderating every single post or thread, you elected a small set of moderators, who were directed to moderate on the basis of a small, understandable set of principles?

Let's say you elect five moderators, and tell them that the only basis for moderation should be post quality; no politics, no "correction", no voting for friends.

What if there were specific moderators for every forum here, and their only principle for voting posts down would be that they were off-topic?

I think you get my gist... site owners are reaching to technological architecture to solve all their problems, when they should be looking to innovative sociological solutions.

OK, now I've been high-falutin' here for so long that I'm gonna go pour myself a beer. My brain hurts.

Individually selected moderators may indeed be a good idea, as long as those moderators are trustworthy.

However, the whole notion of rating a comment as "offtopic" doesn't really appeal to me <b>unless the user is not punished</b>. Karma on Slashdot is silly. I wouldn't feel right moderating an offtopic post down only because it was offtopic, even if it were well constructed and fit in with the current discussion in its containing thread.

And where does one draw the line of offtopic? Are we still talking about rating threads here? Or are we down to moderating specific posts? Where is the line drawn?

Maybe it's best to leave the system as it is.

As far as setting a depth to 3 or whatever, that sounds fine to me - I wouldn't at all mind having a "weblogs" section and then myself under that. I also wouldn't mind having something like this:

User-Hosted Forums
|- dhamsaic
| |-weblog
| |-Quote Of The Day
|- sycamore

Where each user can have multiple forums under their control. I was thinking about adding a "Quote of the Day" thread to my forum, but it really works better as its own forum, much like IotD does. I really don't need to have separate forums under "User Hosted Forums" - what should be the best way to accomplish this? Another forum under "Main" that's moderated by dhamsaic himself? Or changing the way the Cellar works?

There's really a lot of thinking that needs to be done before we settle on any change. I'd like to hear ideas on what I've posted here.

[Nic Name]

Here's another thought that comes to me when listening to Maggie, dham and UT above:

What's the need for a field that names the Thread Starter?

The starter of the thread should just have the right to name the thread and make the first post. Then participate in the discussion, just like everyone else. I think that's what is intended.

But the way it is now leaves room for misinterpretation of the Thread Starter as "owner" or "moderator" of the thread. I hear all of you saying start it and let it go ... it doesn't belong to anyone.

So why does there appear to have the name of the Thread Starter "branded" on it for the entire life of the thread?

(Case in point ...IotD ... Be a person ... started by FreeYourself) (101 replies and he hasn't been posting anywhere since 01-02-2002)

As UT says, simpler is better ...

Even dhamsaic's and sycamores personal sites would look better. I mean ... what's that about? I know these two don't want to appear so egotistical. They aren't. Yet look at the presentation of their sites. It's enough to scare off participation.

IotD would appear more democratic. The threads would stand on their own merit, not viewed as UT's or Nic Name's or some others' threads. (For my part, I never wanted my name hung out there. I felt the same as dham and UT and the rest of you. It's not about the Thread Starter.)

For all we say about how the system is supposed to work, it really does look otherwise, from the current labelling of the Thread Starter.

[Nic Name]

dham, i think your quote of the day idea works best as a single thread in your forum, rather than a sub-forum. In your Quote of the Day thread you'd post your quote, and people might comment, and the next day you'd post another quote and people may read and reply or just read. I think it's unrealistic to imagine a great long thread of replies to each quote as an individual thread.

That's how I'd want to do it, anyway.

Where the additional level is very helpful is with the idea of Cities in the Main level, with the sublevel just having the proper names of the cities (that's where Philadelphia would be) Under each city name would be all the different Threads related to that particular city, each with its own title chosen by the first member to post to the thread, and get it started.

UT could add the real names of a sampling of cities to get it going, and then add other cities upon request in due course.

I think this would represent a natural maturation (god i hope i spelled THAT right) of the Cellar, unless you want to keep it in Cellar-related so that this seems like a local website.