Voting system updates - Call for suggestions

[Hail22]

I feel perhaps we should move to a ratings / tier system and get rid ofthe upvote / downvote mechanism, why you ask?

In the last 24 hours I've returned to this forum only to be downvoted 6 times on various (factual) content from between 6-8 months ago which suggests someone who has a superiority complex was waiting for me to return in some shape or form to begin their "barrage" unto me.

Tier systems are fair in that those who provide valuable content will simply get a "like" which will add to rep ranks e.g. Novice, Weekend driver, Enthusiast, Braniac etc (no need for a dislike button as we know from the past it leads to flame wars, but the forum could incorporate a "hide" or "report post for spam / off-topic and ranting" for content we do not wish to view).

End my 2 cents.

[Steven]

I feel perhaps we should move to a ratings / tier system and get rid ofthe upvote / downvote mechanism, why you ask?

In the last 24 hours I've returned to this forum only to be downvoted 6 times on various (factual) content from between 6-8 months ago which suggests someone who has a superiority complex was waiting for me to return in some shape or form to begin their "barrage" unto me.....

Please read at least 3 posts before adding such a comment.
I mentioned twice that some malicious votes have been removed from the system, impacting some users' ratings. There's no voting on any of your posts in the last 24 hours, it's only a correction, and others were impacted more than you.

[Hail22]

^
Ooooh, note to self *don't go on a forum after getting sloshed (drunk at a wedding)*. My mistake but still I believe in a "like" system with ranks so we can focus on people who provide informative / vital content to the community.

*proceeds to eat a tasty hat*

[i70q7m7ghw]

Can anyone answer this, my total votes have gone down 3-4 points in the last few days, but nothing shows in my history... what gives?

See two posts higher up:

There is indeed a problem with upvotes in the car threads, as well as reciprocating upvotes between a few members.
These votes are due for deletion, and I'll try to get that done over the weekend.
I'll update when things are done, but be prepared to see some user ratings plummit

So it's got nothing to do with you doing sth inappropriate, it's about remove some random votes to get a more clear picture.

I haven't been involved in any reciprocating up-votes... feel a little hard done by there to be honest.

[J.A.W.]

feel a little hard done by there to be honest.

So - now - you are claiming "to be honest", D?

As if that will help you..

Well, I WAS frank, & got my 'rep' points savaged down to zero..
& many down votes were for posts - that were then deleted.. so I lost both ways..

Points awarded for making an effort to provide useful data to a topic VS BS mutual ego-massage are equal?

& gutless anonymous down votes based on emotive "haters gonna hate" mentality.. can sweep 'em away..
..sans recourse.. this simply debases the whole deal.. IMO..

[iotar__]

Well some healthy individual went to over a month old post (Fri Jul 24, 2015 9:29 am) that is only a simple critique of article by McNish (BBC) about Honda to press a minus button. Factually rather unquestionable, couple of quotes and some comments about the whole thing - easily verifiable but who needs verification anyway.

Don't get me wrong there's no need for changes - waste of time but "reputation" = .

[WaikeCU]

I think there should be just an upvote option. Why downvote? If you don't like the post then don't vote and if you do, you can upvote the post. So a post with an amount of thumbs up means it's a valuable post of genuine quality. I used to be in a certain forums where it worked like that. If it's offending post, then the mods should issue warnings if they don't behave, they would be kicked/banned.

[Gettingonabit]

Just my opinion but I really don't see the point of this nonsense. Lets face it most posts are subjective and only an opinion - inappropriate ones can be cautioned, censored or removed by the mods if necessary.

Why have a voting system that can also be abused.

[BanMeToo]

One alternative, though I'm sure it has been discussed before - let anyone upvote or downvote any post but remove the reputation system. The score of a given post won't follow the poster around, like comments on a web article. I don't know if it's really best for this site, just throwing it out there.

[turbof1]

Can anyone answer this, my total votes have gone down 3-4 points in the last few days, but nothing shows in my history... what gives?

See two posts higher up:

There is indeed a problem with upvotes in the car threads, as well as reciprocating upvotes between a few members.
These votes are due for deletion, and I'll try to get that done over the weekend.
I'll update when things are done, but be prepared to see some user ratings plummit

So it's got nothing to do with you doing sth inappropriate, it's about remove some random votes to get a more clear picture.

I haven't been involved in any reciprocating up-votes... feel a little hard done by there to be honest.

There are people who have lost up to 60 upvotes. I personally lost around 40. Yet I also believe this was the best and most honest way to deal with it. You'd think you weren't involved in the reciporating upvotes is because only 4 posts spread over a couple of months got affected, in other words: the shock is much less apperent to you. People who were involved with several posts at consecutive pages have felt it a lot harder.

We remove downvotes when they aren't fair. We are actually a lot more easy-going concerning upvotes, but when almost hundred pages had every post upvoted by the same person, we have to act.

[Steven]

I haven't been involved in any reciprocating up-votes... feel a little hard done by there to be honest.

There are people who have lost up to 60 upvotes. I personally lost around 40. Yet I also believe this was the best and most honest way to deal with it. You'd think you weren't involved in the reciporating upvotes is because only 4 posts spread over a couple of months got affected, in other words: the shock is much less apperent to you. People who were involved with several posts at consecutive pages have felt it a lot harder.

We remove downvotes when they aren't fair. We are actually a lot more easy-going concerning upvotes, but when almost hundred pages had every post upvoted by the same person, we have to act.

@Diesel: the posts that were removed had nothing to do with reciprocating votes. It's as turbof1 says, when a user upvotes each and every post in a few car threads, you get a distorted view where people who post a lot (even if that's nonsense) in these threads, get boosted, while it is the intention to have a rating that reflects the quality of the posts.

As for the user rating that is currently a sum of the ratings on one's posts, would it help if we make this more abstract?
Something like "0", "10+", "50+", "100+" or something, so that one gets a feel for the value of a user's contributions, while not (always) resulting in a visual drop of user rating when we remove incorrect ratings. I personally think this would be pretty good, but I guess other solutions can be thought out as well.

[alexx_88]

I think one should start with the whole reasoning behind the voting system, which is to give more weight to members that have, in the past, expressed more useful opinions, as in more informative, than others. So the upvoting works pretty much alright for my taste, it's disabled in the sections where a valid opinion is purely subjective.

However, I think the downvoting is the problem. If an user without downvoting permissions gets into an argument with one that has it, then the latter can simply downvote each and every post without consequence to himself, but obliterating the other guy, no matter how valid the other person's opinion was. The solution is really easy, just downvote the post (and hide it when it get to -3 or something), but don't decrease the user's reputation. Also, allow any user with a minimum number of posts to downvote something. As it is now, it discourages newer users to get into arguments with those that have very high reps and encourages bullying.

[strad]

I think one should start with the whole reasoning behind the voting system, which is to give more weight to members that have, in the past, expressed more useful opinions, as in more informative, than others.

Don't you see that that more useful information is also subjective in the eyes of people who don't know squat?

[i70q7m7ghw]

@Diesel: the posts that were removed had nothing to do with reciprocating votes. It's as turbof1 says, when a user upvotes each and every post in a few car threads, you get a distorted view where people who post a lot (even if that's nonsense) in these threads, get boosted, while it is the intention to have a rating that reflects the quality of the posts.

I'm still unsure what I was involved in exactly? I haven't made any agreement with anyone to exchange votes or anything? I only vote when I feel the need to, and I have limited ability to do this anyway.

You're right about the distorted view thing though, the whole voting system gives a distorted view because it's promotes quantity over quality. More posts = more potential upvotes.

[turbof1]

@Diesel: the posts that were removed had nothing to do with reciprocating votes. It's as turbof1 says, when a user upvotes each and every post in a few car threads, you get a distorted view where people who post a lot (even if that's nonsense) in these threads, get boosted, while it is the intention to have a rating that reflects the quality of the posts.

I'm still unsure what I was involved in exactly? I haven't made any agreement with anyone to exchange votes or anything? I only vote when I feel the need to, and I have limited ability to do this anyway.

You're right about the distorted view thing though, the whole voting system gives a distorted view because it's promotes quantity over quality. More posts = more potential upvotes.

Exactly. You vote when you feel the need to. The person who made the hundreds of votes simply hit the upvote button at every post, just because he could do it.

Nobody is even mentioning agreed cross voting. It's simple: one of our members upvoted almost every single post in a 100 page topic. We made an inquiry about this, we never got response, so we removed all the upvotes he made in that particular topic. We are guessing behind his motivation to do this (he probably was not drunk since the upvoting spreaded across a few months), but we do know it had nothing to do with the intended purpose of upvoting.

You did not put a single foot wrong on your part, mind you. You just happened to have made a few posts in that particular topic which got upvoted due a guy clicking the button on every single post. Someone just upvoting for the heck of it is not voting due quality. That's dishonesty, which again you neither asked for, neither was even aware of and ultimately it comes across as being unfair. But that was the only way we could tackle that problem, and we had to tackle the problem. If someone looked at the RBR topic, it would have come across that it was qualitative far superior compared to the other car threads, due the much higher number of upvotes.

In short your 'involvement' was nothing more then innocently posting in a thread in which a member went rampant with the upvote button. We removed those particular upvotes, on your posts and other member's posts. Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that you did not do anything wrong and that is neither personal or subjective.