Upvotes / downvotes

[Hoffman900]

Let’s discuss this:

The intent of upvotes / downvotes is to reward technical posts of value. Instead, moderators here constantly reward the downvoting of technical posts that disagree with fanciful speculation, which are in spirit, posts of poor technical value. They enable the retribution of downvoting, which goes agains their own community guidelines:

With respect to the forum rating system, requesting votes, voting upon request or reciprocating votes - either positive or negative - are not allowed. The moderators may undo any malicious votes, warn users for abuse, or can (temporarily) revoke a user's ability to rate other posts

This is beyond me, look at u/Rodak’s latest downvote.

To me, it shouldn’t be any wonder why this site has lost its most technical posters and isn’t seen as valuable and a must look place anymore.

I suggest if they want to keep it in the forum as conversation, then removing the up/ down votes would be best case scenario.

[Chuckjr]

I don’t think tech people are leaving because of unhappiness with the mods, or frustration with trolls, or voting. Most of the real tech guys I was reading in 2010-2013 and that attracted me to the site originally (I joined 2 years after lurking here daily), just dropped out with no warning or complaining, at all. Some literally in the middle of conversations. I know because I was there and wondered what happened to them as I was following their posts. I have gone back to their history’s to try and figure why they were no longer posting. Some with over 10,000 posts and counting just one day stopped in the middle of all their posts, and never posted again. No complaints. No frustrations. They just disappeared. To me that rings more of personal issues, maybe a catastrophic accident, or sudden death of some sort like a heart attack, or a host of other possibilities. But blaming it on frustration with a few trolls, or a compromised voting system, after many had given literally over a decade of their life posting here almost daily, and not complaining about much of anything, doesn’t add up.

I will add, of recent, a lot of guys seem to have disappeared in the 2020-2023 years. Many even now have simply dropped off the face of the earth just a month or two ago. I’m thinking of two guys, atm. I’d name them, but I don’t think the mods like that kinda thing pointed out by name. Maybe they are just on a long vacation or a work related issue, but it’s not their frustrations with F1 tech. They are just gone. Simply go back to the 2020 season and look at the Merc and Ferrari threads. A lot of guys who were all in for their team posting new race weekend car pics, pit pics, technical detail references, all kinds of awesome links and opinions as die hard contributors to this site, just stopped posting out of nowhere. No warning. No complaints. Just. Gone. Both those threads don’t have half the die hard contributors they used to have. And I mean guys with 50+ upvotes posting 3, 4, 6, 10 posts a day for years and years. Hard, hard core fans clearly in it to win it. Those kinda guys don’t leave because of a troll or disagreeable voting system without complaining about it first. Make of it what you will, but isn’t it interesting the recent great drop off of guys here started around the beginning/middle of 2020… I’ve my theory as to why, but we are not allowed to write that stuff here.

So I personally don’t think the voting is bad or moderated incorrectly. In fact, they took away many upvotes for many, many contributors here (myself included) when they made the big retroactive voting change years ago to only allow voting in technical car threads, and hard core technical detail threads they choose as worthy. That DRASTICALLY changed reputations and the vibe here, and some still haven’t recovered most of the votes they lost. Fair play to the site ownership to keep it technical, and up the value of votes, so I do think finally it was a good call despite the losses. But to think that eliminating voting entirely is a good idea, is, imo, extreme, since still that reputation number offers some quick insight/clue into who you are reading, and what kind of technical contribution they have made to the site during their tenure here. In fact, I think it’s one of the most valuable assets offered at F1 technical.

Overall, I think the voting is helpful more than hurtful, and no question it certainly works to encourage second thinking before pressing the send button (which is what they want), and keeps the voting very narrowed to technical only posts, which is good. I think this site actually does a better job than any other F1 site on the internet, and I think voting is a major reason why F1 Tech hasn’t become planet F1 or X.

I’m a more informed fan of the sport directly because of this site, and how it is run. No complaints from my end. I wouldn’t know half of what I know without this site (check out the 2010-2014 Ferrari threads—amazing details and relevant insights), fwiw, so they must be doing something very right imo. I’ve learned from some of your posts also. Thanks for contributing here.

[Holm86]

I feel like upvotes/downvotes have become agree/disagree buttons, I've seen peoples post get downvotes just because people don't agree, not because it was technically wrong or totally out there.
And people upvote simple comments, with no value at all, just because they agree with something they said ...

[Hoffman900]

I don’t think tech people are leaving because of unhappiness with the mods, or frustration with trolls, or voting. Most of the real tech guys I was reading in 2010-2013 and that attracted me to the site originally (I joined 2 years after lurking here daily), just dropped out with no warning or complaining, at all. Some literally in the middle of conversations. I know because I was there and wondered what happened to them as I was following their posts. I have gone back to their history’s to try and figure why they were no longer posting. Some with over 10,000 posts and counting just one day stopped in the middle of all their posts, and never posted again. No complaints. No frustrations. They just disappeared. To me that rings more of personal issues, maybe a catastrophic accident, or sudden death of some sort like a heart attack, or a host of other possibilities. But blaming it on frustration with a few trolls, or a compromised voting system, after many had given literally over a decade of their life posting here almost daily, and not complaining about much of anything, doesn’t add up.

I will add, of recent, a lot of guys seem to have disappeared in the 2020-2023 years. Many even now have simply dropped off the face of the earth just a month or two ago. I’m thinking of two guys, atm. I’d name them, but I don’t think the mods like that kinda thing pointed out by name. Maybe they are just on a long vacation or a work related issue, but it’s not their frustrations with F1 tech. They are just gone. Simply go back to the 2020 season and look at the Merc and Ferrari threads. A lot of guys who were all in for their team posting new race weekend car pics, pit pics, technical detail references, all kinds of awesome links and opinions as die hard contributors to this site, just stopped posting out of nowhere. No warning. No complaints. Just. Gone. Both those threads don’t have half the die hard contributors they used to have. And I mean guys with 50+ upvotes posting 3, 4, 6, 10 posts a day for years and years. Hard, hard core fans clearly in it to win it. Those kinda guys don’t leave because of a troll or disagreeable voting system without complaining about it first. Make of it what you will, but isn’t it interesting the recent great drop off of guys here started around the beginning/middle of 2020… I’ve my theory as to why, but we are not allowed to write that stuff here.

So I personally don’t think the voting is bad or moderated incorrectly. In fact, they took away many upvotes for many, many contributors here (myself included) when they made the big retroactive voting change years ago to only allow voting in technical car threads, and hard core technical detail threads they choose as worthy. That DRASTICALLY changed reputations and the vibe here, and some still haven’t recovered most of the votes they lost. Fair play to the site ownership to keep it technical, and up the value of votes, so I do think finally it was a good call despite the losses. But to think that eliminating voting entirely is a good idea, is, imo, extreme, since still that reputation number offers some quick insight/clue into who you are reading, and what kind of technical contribution they have made to the site during their tenure here. In fact, I think it’s one of the most valuable assets offered at F1 technical.

Overall, I think the voting is helpful more than hurtful, and no question it certainly works to encourage second thinking before pressing the send button (which is what they want), and keeps the voting very narrowed to technical only posts, which is good. I think this site actually does a better job than any other F1 site on the internet, and I think voting is a major reason why F1 Tech hasn’t become planet F1 or X.

I’m a more informed fan of the sport directly because of this site, and how it is run. No complaints from my end. I wouldn’t know half of what I know without this site (check out the 2010-2014 Ferrari threads—amazing details and relevant insights), fwiw, so they must be doing something very right imo. I’ve learned from some of your posts also. Thanks for contributing here.

These people didn’t “die” or sail off into the sunset, they saw what a crap show this place is and said “this isn’t worth it”


I’m getting downvoted for sharing a link that a poster is too lazy to read that is relevant to the conversation, and he’s getting upvoted for a whining post that he doesn’t want to read it, and has provided nothing of technical substance.

THIS behavior and the mods enabling it are why people left. Why bother?


It’s just turned into 16yo reddit --- posting.

[Greg Locock]

Personally I think the quality and volume of tech discussion has dropped, and upvoting in the car and team and race threads are entirely dominated by fanboys. Also frankly as F1 moves towards being a one design series there is less tech to discuss. Having left a few fora over the years I can assure you that sudden radio silence is my typical behavior.

[Just_a_fan]

[text removed for ease of reading]

Some people have gone because they got board warnings leading to bans. Having been excluded for 3 or 6 months, they didn't bother coming back. Why did they get warnings/bans? Because they didn't follow the forum's narrative regarding certain drivers/teams. I know, I've been on the receiving end. But I don't lie down easily.

Others got pee'd off with the one-sided nature of the forum in the last few years and just left. Not excluded, just had enough of poor moderation. They're active elsewhere, it should be noted.

And that's before you get people downvoting things they disagree with whilst upvoting "happy stories" that fit their personal bias.

Voting is supposed to be + for things that add value, - for things that are demonstrably incorrect or detract from a discussion. Voting on whether someone is part of "your tribe" (and that happens a lot) is not what the voting system is intended for. But that's what it's used for in many cases. I've seen an up-vote for someone just posting "I agree". What value does that add to the forum? Likewise, people downvoting because they don't like a post - look at the reasons given in the OP's profile for the down vote and you see what is actually going on. Often the down vote text is nasty/insulting. Sometimes it's just weird. One from my own profile a while ago: "I agree, but for the sake of balance...." and a down vote. I mean, what the hell is that all about?

I've been on the forum a long time and I've seen high-value contributors leave. Often because they were hounded by one or two individuals who disagreed with them. The high-value member was often someone in motorsport and the nay-sayers just keyboard warriors. The keyboard warriors just jumped on every post, arguing the toss. And for the pros, arguing with trolls isn't important. So they just left. Often, as you say, in the middle of a discussion.

[Chuckjr]

Really helpful feedback. Thanks gentleman (and ladies if applicable) for all your replies. It helps me better understand the situation. I still feel it’s better to have votes than not because overall it helps render the ones that are truly committed contributors, and likely aren’t trolls. But I fully get your frustrations, and it is unfortunate the system is taken advantage of by some. Maybe a solution would be to up the required amount of positive votes to 40 or 50 upvotes before someone can downvote. Maybe limit upvotes to 1 or 2 a day until one has reached 30-50 upvotes themselves. Though I know those kinda things won’t solve it, they may curtail abuse.

[Dunlay]

Something that I have observed during the short span here, the hardcore tech posters who are there on technical threads, don't show up on team or race threads. Especially the technically focused. I don't think those people draw any negativity (down voting) from other sparring posters. Posters that have established animosity with other posters due to team/driver affiliation and arguments in team/race threads, would probably recieve down voting on technical threads due to that animosity. That's my assumption as there would be no reason to down vote a post that has some technical value. So that makes me believe that if genuinely technical nerds (reserving themselves on tech threads) have left, there must be personal reasons, not the quality of team/race thread discussions, where they never really participated.

[Just_a_fan]

I can certainly remember people getting hounded on purely technical threads. This was back when the forum was much more technically oriented and much less race/team/driver oriented. Ironically, it would be people who were strong fans of some road car brand or other. So still fan-driven just different fans

The forum is less technical than it used to be, I think, but that might just be signal/noise ratio rather than absolute numbers of technical posts reducing. The team/race threads are very noisy, for example.

I do sometimes miss the days when, for example, the forum figured out McLaren's f-duct. From memory, it was before the journos got anywhere on it. Indeed, they ended up effectively quoting from the forum in some cases.

Do I think the current forum can have a good discussion about the supposed brake balance issue that has led to regs changes? No, I don't. I think there would be too much fan defence because it's obviously one team that has implemented something. Just like with DAS - half of the discussion was just not-fans saying "Mercedes are cheats!!!" and to a lesser extent the Ferrari engine "issue". It made the technical aspect less enjoyable to follow.

[chrisc90]

A bit like this reason to one of my posts in the braking changes discussion thread...

"Any race driver trailbrakes, at least on circuits"

viewtopic.php?p=1237158#p1237158

Certainly makes you wonder doesnt it.

[Just_a_fan]

A bit like this reason to one of my posts in the braking changes discussion thread...

"Any race driver trailbrakes, at least on circuits"

viewtopic.php?p=1237158#p1237158

Certainly makes you wonder doesnt it.

How strange. I posted something similar as a direct reply to you in the thread.

[Hoffman900]

Again, I’m downvoted by the same poster who refuses to read a technical link. It’s already written, I’m not gojng to rewrite it because they’re too lazy to click a link.

Hollus’s response it a similar issue is to just take away my voting privileges, but not these people. Arguing that I’m targeting these posters in return. Wrong, I’m downvoting in return to being downvoted for lazy posters who are incorrect. What they’re doing is exactly against the forum rules.

Do your job moderators.

[chrisc90]

Fairly easy way would be for downvotes to be moderated and approved. That way it means the reasoning given is somewhat justified.

All in all, it’s just a number by your name, that’s not even visible on mobile devices. Sometimes it makes no odds. However if a system is there - is shouldn’t be open to misuse.

[Chuckjr]

All in all, it’s just a number by your name, that’s not even visible on mobile devices.

To be clear, votes are indeed visible on mobile phones if used in landscape mode—at least for iPhones. I can’t speak for other brands.

[CMSMJ1]

All in all, it’s just a number by your name, that’s not even visible on mobile devices.

To be clear, votes are indeed visible on mobile phones if used in landscape mode—at least for iPhones. I can’t speak for other brands.

Didn't know that

Android too