How is the forum rating system doing?

[turbof1]

Perhaps there is need for incentives for people to upvote good posts?

[notsofast]

I still say that the immediate problem is getting value from the valuable posts. There's no way to find them easily without reading through all the unrated posts. So, why rate them at all? Let's fix that first.

And let's get rid of the -1 and +1 icons. That's standard forum shorthand for "I disagree" and "I agree", which is exactly what the voting system is not meant to be.

[strad]

I would think people would vote either way sparingly and only for something that really deserves it.

[Steven]

I still say that the immediate problem is getting value from the valuable posts. There's no way to find them easily without reading through all the unrated posts. So, why rate them at all? Let's fix that first.

Agreed. How would you like to see that work? A button on a topic page to filter out all unrated posts?

And let's get rid of the -1 and +1 icons. That's standard forum shorthand for "I disagree" and "I agree", which is exactly what the voting system is not meant to be.

Sure, that's been discussed before. If you have any ideas of what icons to use, please do make a suggestions, because I don't know (and so far nobody has come up with a good suggestions I'm afraid).

[Kiril Varbanov]

I still say that the immediate problem is getting value from the valuable posts. There's no way to find them easily without reading through all the unrated posts. So, why rate them at all? Let's fix that first.

Agreed. How would you like to see that work? A button on a topic page to filter out all unrated posts?

That's OK at first sight, but filtering out certain posts will easily break the thread chain and render them sort of useless, unless the previous post is quoted. Example are three posts, all voted +1, you filter them and you get three people talking about different stuff (if the thread has evolved in the meantime). So, in general - my vote goes for Yes to such feature, but use it with caution - you may end up reading the whole thread again. Second option is, perhaps, to make the valuable posts highlighted with some nice background color, like green.

And let's get rid of the -1 and +1 icons. That's standard forum shorthand for "I disagree" and "I agree", which is exactly what the voting system is not meant to be.

Sure, that's been discussed before. If you have any ideas of what icons to use, please do make a suggestions, because I don't know (and so far nobody has come up with a good suggestions I'm afraid).

Something as simple as this?

[hollus]

Upvoted posts could get a different background color. A subtle green, maybe? Then they would stand out more clearly than now. Multiple votes, and you use a lighter or darker color, as it is done now with the alternating grays for every post.

[WhiteBlue]

You could use a gold coin for + and a steaming pile for -.

[hollus]

As for icons, what about something like this:

I mean, keeping the text as part of the icon. It would have to be optimized for a very small size, of course, but it deviates clearly from the agree/disagree ethos.

[turbof1]

Instead of a button that for a filter that only displays rated posts, how about showing posts, that were rated inbetween other posts, in a slightly different color so that they stand out?

[i70q7m7ghw]

@Tomba I would look to existing systems like YouTube comments, where any user can cast a single up-vote or down-vote on any comment. They then "feature" the most up-voted comments at the top, and hide the consistently down-voted comments. Since all can vote, the thresholds are a bit higher. It would take 5 or so down-votes before a post gets hidden. That makes it very difficult for 1 grumpy user to make any damage. It takes the consensus of several users to hide a bad post.

[Pup]

Not being a fan of the rating system in general, I've steered clear of this topic, but after skimming some of the posts here I think I do have some ideas that might help.

As to the problem of the voting essentially becoming an agree/disagree thing, I'd suggest a pulldown menu with slashdot-style options like "informative", "interesting", "insightful","humorous", etc. It's not an end all solution, but it does set a psychological barrier to the "+1" voter.

As to the visibility of the ratings, how about changing the color of the text of the post to a different color so that even a with quick skim of the topic the good posts are obvious to all? You'd have to remove the color option for posting of course. For down-votes, the color could be made grey or something more easily disregarded.

As to the inequity of the voting, well, I think the solution is to concentrate on the posts and not the member. Why not just get rid of the member ranking all together and just have the posts themselves rated? That would get rid of the "vote-buddy" problem that I strongly suspect we have, and then people would be less inclined to get their undies in a wad when some post they spent an hour crafting gets no votes while the guy who says "that sucks" gets voted up.

[Clew]

Let's keep it simple: agree / disagree

[mx_tifoso]

The thing is that the system is not intended to be for agreeing or disagreeing with someone, but rather, about if the information they have posted is positive, constructive, and technically minded. That's as simple as I can get it to be.

And once again, we don't believe that everyone should have the right to vote right off the bat. Once you pass the test (i.e get enough upvotes), then you have the privilege. If you don't care about posting what I explained in the first sentence of this post then you can't vote.

[notsofast]

I agree with Hollus. If we can have a button that says "QUOTE" we should also be able to have buttons that say "VALUABLE" and "NOT VALUABLE" or something like that. It's not like we're lacking screen space.

[notsofast]

I still say that the immediate problem is getting value from the valuable posts. There's no way to find them easily without reading through all the unrated posts. So, why rate them at all? Let's fix that first.

Agreed. How would you like to see that work? A button on a topic page to filter out all unrated posts?

Yes. People who are constantly following a thread don't need this logic. But I do. I don't follow the car threads. But I would like catch the highlights. For example, the RB9 thread now has 46 pages. And on those 46 pages are (up to) 70 valuable posts. I would like to be able to click the "70" icon and then see just those 70 posts. I just want to get a summary of what relevant information we might have about the RB9. And I'm not going to reply to anything, because I know I'm just catching up. In fact, it would be OK with me if there were no Quote or Reply buttons on such a page.