F1Technical updated. What's new?

[Richard]

Elitism? Deemed worthy? Not fair?

If you've not been picked in the handful of threads that Tomba happened to used then that's just random chance.

I'm sorry that random chance isn't as dramatic as a conspiracy theory.

[King Six]

I hate the new layout, but I'll get used to it.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Elitism? Deemed worthy? Not fair?

If you've not been picked in the handful of threads that Tomba happened to used then that's just random chance.

I'm sorry that random chance isn't as dramatic as a conspiracy theory.

No need to feel sorry.
But what's the idea of a technical forum's voting system to be left to, and I quote "random chance"?

[db__]

Elitism? Deemed worthy? Not fair?

If you've not been picked in the handful of threads that Tomba happened to used then that's just random chance.

I'm sorry that random chance isn't as dramatic as a conspiracy theory.

Very true - but in a consumer industry (which this site is) the customer may not always be right but if you piss them off enough they will go elsewhere.

As a long time (mainly) lurker this won't really effect me too much as I'm unlikely to every get a + vote but it does seem to me that 'the management' appears to be going out of its way to alienate a number of people recently. Comments such as that above could be interpreted as a little patronising (and frankly not worth of RL's usual quality of posts) which I'm sure was not the intention.

Over the many years that I have enjoyed reading the discussions here I have detected a distinct change - both the users and the moderation have become more extreme as the content has, arguably, become less technical. This is unfortunate but then again things do evolve. 'We' are not really able to control the users unless you go down a completely different route with the site but to the moderators I would ask what is the purpose in this seeming heavy-handedness?

BTW I love the new look of the site.

[Richard]

JET - The votes weren't randomly awarded. I was simply saying that Tomba dipped into a few threads and found some good technical posts. It was random who those posts belonged to. Just a small sample of 42 out of thousands on here.

Ultimately the system will have a very broad reach and will be the opposite of elitist. The volume of users with votes will mean no one person will be able to directly influence it. Lets have some patience and see how it works once it is widely dispersed and has mass participation.

[i70q7m7ghw]

Everyone should have an equal chance to vote, otherwise it's not fair. If that's not what the system is trying to achieve then that's fine, I'll simply ignore it since it doesn't really add any value for me. My issue is people are going to be unfairly judged on their rating and it's going to become a way to discredit people just because they have a 0 rating. That might be because those people don't contribute and only post spam, BUT it might be because those people don't post as often as others, and one of their posts that might be 'vote worthy' just hasn't been seen by somebody that has the ability to vote.

Because posts can be voted up AND down I think the system would work much better if everyone could vote. The good posts would on average get more votes up and the spammy fan boy type posts would on average get more votes down. I think with the current system there's a much higher risk of some random person getting a +1 rating off the back of a single post that might have caught a 'voters' eye, but then goes on to get caught up in some fanboy thread and starts down voting posts that go against their preferred driver, and everyone else is powerless to prevent this because they can't counter those votes.

[raymondu999]

Eh? Marcush can't upvote posts even with rep?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Eh? Marcush can't upvote posts even with rep?

Are you referring to my post?
If you are.....read the post again. I'm sure you will find the commas useful.

[mx_tifoso]

Eh? Eh? Read that post again carefully.

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

Eh? Marcush can't upvote posts even with rep?

Was this, in response to this....

Does that mean we should give less credence to what he posts, and more to that of someone like say Marcush, who I notice has 2/3 votes, despite not being able to upvote another users post?

[Richard]

Diesel - thanks for the post, I see where what you mean.

In the mod conversations with Tomba, this has been explained as a way of identifying better posts on listings so users can easily find see the high quality threads. To me the big difference will be a thread such as the one about rolling resistance of tyres having a really high vote rating. One day in the future, those technical threads could be given higher prominence.

Personally, I'd be inclined to see how this works for a while. It won't be long before most regulars have votes and we'll all be joining in. Then it would be similar to the old post count in showing who is new and who is long serving - just more nuanced?

Let see how that works, to me the key outcome is in highlighting good threads. If users say it is too limited then we (all users) can think about changing who can vote.

[strad]

... or are you saying that the whole concept of upvoting is flawed?

Yes I am. So far it's blatant favoritism and in the end leads to nothing but a popularity contest with certain members chosen as better than the rest of us slobs.
Also people will tend to support those chosen few as they obviously hold favor with the upper echelon and to agree with them is to curry favor and to disagree is to invite disfavor thus a poor reputation. You're saying those you've chosen to upgrade are better than us.
Edit
The only fair thing would have been to start everyone at 1...I think This is not only unfair, it's prejudicial

[xpensive]

...
So far it's blatant favoritism and in the end leads to nothing but a popularity contest with certain members chosen as better than the rest of us slobs.
...

If it's any comfort strand, not terribly surprisingly I belong to those slobs as well. Not that I care that much if some of
the fan-boys here understands basic engineering concepts or not, but I fail to see the point in all this?

[Richard]

If its any comfort strad, me, MX and Giblet are slobs too.

As I've explained, we're still in a trial phase. Tomba picked 42 posts from some threads that happened to fall under his mouse cursor. Once the trial phase is over then I really can't see why most people would not have a vote because most people post good tech posts.

[xpensive]

If its any comfort strad, me, MX and Giblet are slobs too.
...

I can see why a long documented technical moron like myself is without cred, but you guys, I'm at a loss for xpressions?