Voting system updates - Call for suggestions

[Steven]

With 2014 kicking off, a number of updates are being prepared, but following discussion among the mods, we'd like to ask for further input on steps to improve the voting system.

First of all, as suggestions, downvotes will require a reason (selecting from a number of options). It's unclear yet what these options should be, so we'd welcome some suggestions or ideas.

Furthermore:
- Would it be useful to also need a reason for upvotes?
- Currently posts get hidden with 2 downvotes. Should that number be changed?
- Should thread ratings be (votes/posts) rather than currently the total nr of votes?
- Should a similar count be used for a user's reputation?
- Should team threads be closed for voting?

This is just a limited list. Entirely different suggestions are more than welcome!

[Sebp]

Imo selecting reasons for up- and downvoting is a good idea.
Additionally alongside voting I'd suggest something like an agree/disagree feature.

[flynfrog]

once you dip into -3 all post must be approved by a moderator. This will cut down on spammers too.

reason for down vote.

Wrong
BS
Fanboi
Dont like avatar
Personal Attack

[Steven]

Imo selecting reasons for up- and downvoting is a good idea.
Additionally alongside voting I'd suggest something like an agree/disagree feature.

Agree-Disagree is not something we'd want, and it's the reasons that should help people realise that "I disagree" is not a reason to downvote, neither is an "Agree" for upvote. The system is not intended to be used like that, and we are trying to make it more obvious.

once you dip into -3 all post must be approved by a moderator. This will cut down on spammers too.

We're not that quick, but users with very low ratings indeed end up on the modqueue. Often however, they soon realise why and we can move them off the queue.

[WillerZ]

Nothing to do with voting, but please can the icon to take me to the first unread post be made enormous and/or change the thread title link to take me to the first unread post.

I basically never (want to) use the start-of-thread link; I click it when I miss the first-unread icon.

[el-Magico]

reason for down vote.
Dont like avatar

That is kinda g@y, isn't it?

I would prefer to have a reason for up and downvotes.. Because sometimes it is just plain BS..

Ps.
Could we quit the post approval, i kinda get the message.. Thx!

[Owen.C93]

Sometimes I downvote people who ask in broken english if the new Ferrari updates will make the car faster...Not sure if I should be doing that.

I don't think there needs to be any reasons, nobody is getting downvoted who shouldn't IMO.

There's plenty of people with lots of downvotes on their account and I don't know what you want to do about that.

[turbof1]

With 2014 kicking off, a number of updates are being prepared, but following discussion among the mods, we'd like to ask for further input on steps to improve the voting system.

First of all, as suggestions, downvotes will require a reason (selecting from a number of options). It's unclear yet what these options should be, so we'd welcome some suggestions or ideas.

Furthermore:
- Would it be useful to also need a reason for upvotes?
- Currently posts get hidden with 2 downvotes. Should that number be changed?
- Should thread ratings be (votes/posts) rather than currently the total nr of votes?
- Should a similar count be used for a user's reputation?
- Should team threads be closed for voting?

This is just a limited list. Entirely different suggestions are more than welcome!

1. It would be highly counter-productive to force to give a reason. People are way less likely to take the effort.
2. I feel that the hide feature when enough downvotes are given works fine. Perhaps change it to -3 for when somebody really got bad luck with sore attitudes, but it's not really needed.
3. What's the use?
4. Again what's the use? Big posters are less likely to get as many as votes/post as casual posters, even if on both sides the quality is equally good. Just take a look at the ranking currently; the top 10 are fine posters, no matter what their post count is.
5. It depends on what you want. Do you want to limit the votes down to pure technical stuff? Or do you want to keep that freedom for the members?
6. When are you going to put up the article I wrote ?

[amc]

I think that rather than hiding a post that has two downvotes, the user in question should recieve a 12-24 hour ban - long enough to be really inconvenient if they are trolling, not too long that the dedicated members really worry about. I guess that would only really work if it could be automated, and I don't know if that's possible.

A feature I'd really like to see is to show only the upvoted posts in the thread (i.e. hide all posts with zero rating or below). In the car threads this would limit viewing to the good pictures, quotes from team members, and analyses - kinda all we really want in there. In some other technical threads, it would limit viewing to the best explanations, examples, and diagrams, which would be useful for those of us who come here to learn.

[notsofast]

Instead of the up and down votes, I propose to have three clearly labeled buttons.

"Valuable" - - meaning: "I believe this post is of value to future readers of this thread".

"Not Valuable" - - meaning: "I disagree that this post is of value to future readers of this thread". This button should only be visible if the post has been rated valuable by others. In other words, votes cannot become negative.

"Report" - - meaning: "I am reporting this post to the moderators for possible deletion or other action against the poster". Posts with at least X number of reports (2? 3?) should be hidden automatically until a moderator intervenes.

[i70q7m7ghw]

The word "vote" is wrong in the first place because it implies agree/disagree.

1. Rename it. Call it kudos/karma/gold/points/etc. just don't call it "vote" if you don't want it to mean agree/disagree. For the rest of this post I will refer to them as "votes" as a working name though.

2. Open it up. Let everyone cast the "votes", and don't set the limit too low, perhaps 50 a day.

3. After opening it up, you would expect every post to have some sort of "voting" activity, which would then allow you to sort a thread based on each posts total "votes". Essentially, this should provide users with a way of quickly digesting the best posts of large threads. Who cares if all posts get 1-2 "votes"? The point is the best posts will always get the most "votes" and rise to the top.

All I can say is look at websites like imgr and reddit. They have voting systems that work. Content doesn't get voted up because people agree/disagree, content gets voted up because it's great content. Their systems are actually useful, whereas the current F1T system doesn't really do anything other than cause arguments and confusion.

[SectorOne]

Get rid of the voting system, it´s just stupid.
I really don´t care if someone has 500 or -25 stars..

[acosmichippo]

With 2014 kicking off, a number of updates are being prepared, but following discussion among the mods, we'd like to ask for further input on steps to improve the voting system.

First of all, as suggestions, downvotes will require a reason (selecting from a number of options). It's unclear yet what these options should be, so we'd welcome some suggestions or ideas.

Furthermore:
- Would it be useful to also need a reason for upvotes?
- Currently posts get hidden with 2 downvotes. Should that number be changed?
- Should thread ratings be (votes/posts) rather than currently the total nr of votes?
- Should a similar count be used for a user's reputation?
- Should team threads be closed for voting?

This is just a limited list. Entirely different suggestions are more than welcome!

I like the idea for giving a reason for downvoting. This gives the poster a chance to edit his/her post with a response, as well as coaching for future posts before accumulating more downvotes. Downvote reasons could be "Off Topic", "trivial", "lacking evidence", "plagiarism", or "inflammatory".

I'd decrease the hidden threshold to -3, especially since votes tend to have a snowball effect. But then it also doesn't seem like many people have the ability to downvote yet, so I wouldn't make the threshold too low.

Changing thread ratings to votes/posts sounds good to me, but it sounds like that would result in a lot of low numbers (even in the best threads, there are way more posts than votes, so thread ratings would be less than 1). Maybe then multiply that result by 10 or 100. Same deal with user reputation.

[tok-tokkie]

First of all, as suggestions, downvotes will require a reason (selecting from a number of options). It's unclear yet what these options should be, so we'd welcome some suggestions or ideas.
I like the voting system - I check the poster's rating.
I agree with having a list of reasons for both up & down votes. Votes based on agree/disagree would then become less likely.

Furthermore:
- Would it be useful to also need a reason for upvotes?
- Currently posts get hidden with 2 downvotes. Should that number be changed?
I did not realise that they are hidden. Good idea that they are but 3 seems a better number.
- Should thread ratings be (votes/posts) rather than currently the total nr of votes?
- Should a similar count be used for a user's reputation?
That seems a good idea
- Should team threads be closed for voting?
I don't follow the team threads but that seems like a good idea

[WhiteBlue]

Inflamatory is not a good reason to downvote. It is just as dumb as unpopular for a downvoting reason. A bit of provocation is ok if it is handled in a cool and competent way and if there is not an attack ad hominem involved. A site like F1t need unpopular opinions and the opportunity to voice them freely.

There is s a difference when it comes to chauvinism, being uninformed and unfriendly. If people are polite and voice unpopular ideas they should be protected from waves of downvoting.

The voting should be focusses on the quality of the contribution. Well informed but opinionated posts should receive the support while popular opinions which are proven to be incorrect in a scientific way should best be downvoted. This is in essence not happening today.

Then there is the broad field of opinion which can be held either way. If people are aware in their post that their oponents can honestly hold different opinions that should also be rewarded by upvotes. If people are dogmatic and religeous about their believes and tolerate no other opinions on issues that are open in the scientific debate they should legitimately be down voted.

Other than that I would like to see general rules of scientific discourse and debate implemented. No plagiarism and no falsification of quotations should be allowed. The sentence: "here I fixed it for you" is a bad example for this kind of behavior. It makes no positive contribution and only serves to stir negative emotions and muddle the water for the casual reader who did not follow the previous debate.

I have long held the opinion that team threads should be closed for voting. They are not much different in content to race threads and those have rightfully be closed to voting for a long time. There is too much like/not like in the voting in the team threads. Those threads do not generally have technical content which is the criterion for being worthy for F1t.