a) Remove this

or

b) make it so that if someone wants to know who voted what, they can?

It's being used as a tool of war between people now it seems, and its not good, I think its losing its original purpose

Fal

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nem-x had this to say about dark elf butts:
The "have to post to vote" idea was a good one.

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Yeah, the problem is with anonymous voting.

But, i still think thati fy ou click on the ratings bar, a list of who has voted would be a good idea. not necessarily WHAT they voted, but who.

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When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Falaanla Marr said:
Is there a way you can either

a) Remove this

or

b) make it so that if someone wants to know who voted what, they can?

It's being used as a tool of war between people now it seems, and its not good, I think its losing its original purpose

Fal

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I agree with this totally.

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Dr. Pvednes, PhD impressed everyone with:
I agree with this.

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Lyinar Ka`Bael got all f'ed up on Angel Dust and wrote:
To be perfectly fair, are we in their head? Do we know why they're voting the way they're voting? It doesn't always have to be about disliking someone. Perhaps they just dislike their actions.

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Isn't that essentially disliking the person?

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Lyinar Ka`Bael stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
To be perfectly fair, are we in their head? Do we know why they're voting the way they're voting? It doesn't always have to be about disliking someone. Perhaps they just dislike their actions.

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And does it matter if it's not anonymous? Shouldn't they stand up for what they dislike?

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Lyinar Ka`Bael painfully thought these words up:
Not exactly. You can still like someone, just not like what they're doing at that moment. It's not a statement against the person, but against what they're doing.

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Then why even have voting at all? If it's a statement against what they're doing, then how can voting, which is totally anonymous, act as any form of suggestion? If voting is a statement against a person's actions, it's a poor and childish one. If one were to make a statement, one way or another, it should be made loudly and clearly lest it be completely misunderstood.

I think, that to be able to vote on a thread, one must post on it. I further think that when voting on the thread, that one's vote should be placed in the 'toolbar' section, perhaps right after the 'Reply with quote' button.

Because let's face it... the 'net is a huge, anonymous place and things such as this are what make it so that people can abuse that anonymity. If people lose that, they may start behaving in a much more mature manner lest they be confronted by others.

Or, maybe I'm just thinking too hard about it. Either way, I agree with Fal's original post. Make it visible to the poster... or make it so that one must post to be able to vote on the thread... while I would prefer the first, both options are ideal.

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Lyinar Ka`Bael had this to say about pies:
Of course they should stand up for what they dislike. But what if they do that and nobody takes it as a valued opinion? At least a vote is a legitimate statement that can't be ignored as easily.

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I disagree.

Votes rarely register heavily on a person's mind, at least for me, they don't. I usually just see: "Oh, someone's voted my thread crappy."

Then a little later, I look and see: "Oh, other people who liked the thread voted it a five."

Votes are rather easily ignored, I would say. And I don't think they really make much of a statement. It's essentially anonymous trolling.

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Lyinar Ka`Bael had this to say about (_|_):
Of course they should stand up for what they dislike. But what if they do that and nobody takes it as a valued opinion? At least a vote is a legitimate statement that can't be ignored as easily.

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So let people only vote if they post, or have a display that shows who voted.

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Lyinar Ka`Bael was listening to Cher while typing:
Of course they should stand up for what they dislike. But what if they do that and nobody takes it as a valued opinion? At least a vote is a legitimate statement that can't be ignored as easily.

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On the contrary. the vote is a statement that can be ignored ten times as easily, since it carries no weight. One has no way of knowing whom could have voted for it, be it someone known for voting irresponcibly (Such as Waisztarroz, who went on a voting spree of '1's once) or someone whos opinions are widely regarded as being very fair and unbiased, such as Chalesm. On the whole, the votes get ignored more than they perhaps should. And losing much of the anonymity behind them may just change that so that votes are taken that much more seriously.

Before anyone has even replied to the thread, it's voted crappy by a certain someone, who shall remain nameless.

But the point is that if someone feels so strongly about it that they're consistantly voting Fae's D&D threads as Crappy, and it's apparently not getting the point across, shouldn't they say something about it...?

I mean, really, who would be doing such a thing?

But that sort of situation doesn't exist. Humans are imperfect. While most of the time that is to our advantage (It's allowed us to leap to the head of the evolutionary ladder, has it not?) in situations like this it's a flaw.

The voting system is ideal so long as the votes are unbiased, that just won't happen.

If I had some sort of grudge against Lash, I could easily vote a '1' on each of her threads. Due to the anonymity she may not realise this, and think there's a problem. Or perhaps she ignores it. Yet, what if there is a problem? A widespread reason that more than one person is voting '1's? If she were to think it was only myself holding a grudge, how could she take those votes seriously?

There you have it. Take away the anonymity and the problem is solved. People vote the way they feel, and if confronted, then any non-childish motives should be revealed. If left alone, the situation between now and before, remains unchanged.

You see our point? By making it anonymous it becomes a childish little way to hold such a grudge, voting 1's on threads simply out of some misplaced sense of spite, rather than any true form of attempting to communicate whether the post in question was lacking or not!

While I like the idea of names by the vote (stand for what you post)...im changing my idea a bit

After a thread gets 2 votes, a listing of who voted on the thread (without votes) can be accessed by clicking the rating of the thread.

that way, if i vote a 5 and oh, say, lyinar votes a one on a thread, we wouldnt know who voted what. it could be a 3 and 3, a 4 and 2, a 5 and 1...

That would retain a degree of anonymity, but not total anonymity...also require that the person post on the thread to vote by putting the vote thing on the page that pops up after you vote and letting you click it to pop up a small window where you pick the vote.

AND I AM SAD MY THREAD ISNT A 5.

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Verily, Falaanla Marr doth proclaim:
AND I AM SAD MY THREAD ISNT A 5.

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I gave it a three. Interesting ideas, but nothing vital or Earth-shattering to the running of the boards.

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How.... Palador ChibiDragon.... uughhhhhh:
I gave it a three. Interesting ideas, but nothing vital or Earth-shattering to the running of the boards.

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ANGST ANGST ANGST

As it currently is, the voting system serves as a (somewhat faulty) view of the general public attitude. Sure, it can often be thrown off by a vandetta or a bit of mischief, but in general it's not too inaccurate (for instance, you rarely see "crap" tags on genuinely funny things, or gold bars on trolling.)

The idea of a voting system that declares who voted what is interesting, and has advantages and disadvantages of its own. The advantage is that unlike the current system, there could a real sense of accountability for the voter if we as a community treat it properly. Maliciousness and vandettas could be quickly spotted and frowned upon, and the voting rankings could take on some very solid meaning (who doesn't like it and, for a clever reader, why, which is far more constructive than "two bars")

The disadvantage, as I see it, is that this could become yet another area for anger to be born and flames to sprout up. Someone looks at who voted on their thread, and, regardless of the total ranking, sees several specific people who voted "crap", often for perfectly fine reasons (I, for instance, haven't been a big fan of EQ humor, most goes over my head, and as such if I do vote I may give a somewhat negative rating) Then, the thread author could very easily get annoyed at the voter over this, creating the seed for yet more unneeded anger. If we're careful and non-judgemental of most voting we can avoid this, but that is asking a lot of many people. A full-accountability voting system would likely be quite rough unless a lot of people are very open-minded of everyone else's opinions (or at the very least are confronational about "unjust" votings, to avoid a festering of emotion, but that has its own, seperate set of problems.)

As for the in-between idea, a vote that has the names, but not who voted what, it has its own advantages and disadvantages. It does avoid some of the problems of the full vote, while still giving more information than the current system. However, I have a bad feeling that it could go wrong, by enforcing previous vandettas and problems. For example, someone looks at their thread, sees a rating of three, and four people who voted on it. Someone they don't like happens to be among them, and they automatically assume that person is the one "dragging them down", and we have much the same situation (though admittedly rarer than in the other case), only now the added complication of no solid proof or certainty, which can easily lead to a "you did too!" "I did not!" situation.

Each is a valid option, but everyone, as a community, would want to think hard about this first. It's hard to tell beforehand what the final outcome of each option would be.

Or, alternately, we just wait for Drysart to either do something or just leave it, which gives us our answer.

[ 08-24-2002: Message edited by: Chalesm ]

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Dr. Pvednes, PhD had this to say about Jimmy Carter:
I agree with this.

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[ 08-25-2002: Message edited by: Enforcer Za'Yth ]

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•Delidgamond• had this to say about Robocop:
You lie sir. You lie.

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And if I do?

Not really. If I lie, I am a liar. But I haven't admitted I am a liar, and neither am I required to admit it, it's a personal choice.

First off...Who cares who voted? Chances are if you think someone voted your thread "Crap" they did. And you know why. Having a list of names won't make you feel any better. It also doesn't fix the core problem in a situation like that (IE a problem between two or more people). It just forces people into a situation where they're sticking their nose where someone can pull it off and eat it. People would end up using voting less, at which point why have it at all?

The boards aren't a democracy. It is, at best, a sort of counseled autocracy. Which is the best idea possible, because there are some clusters of people with many voices but collectively only half a brain. They vote in swarms and it's all on the idiot ballot. People vote in cliques, and there are bugs in voting (for one, each separate account you have can vote differently on a thread, which destroys the concept of "One person, one vote")

Another glitch I see is that if a thread gets a "Crap" rating, attention seems to swarm to it. That in turn frequently leads to mini-flame wars (or outright flame wars). This is especially the case when some new board member comes along, says something stupid that the status quo disagrees with, and everyone and their grandmother jumps on the new guy. It's gotten better of late, but it seems to come and go in phases. There have been nights where everyone was in a shitty mood and mods have had to lock/edit/blacklist two or three people.

Also people have hard time discerning the difference between a critique and a flame. Disagreeing with someone isn't the same thing as a flame. Disagreeing with someone isn't a flame. Disagreeing with someone doesn't mean you should give a thread a "Crap" rating. That's juvenile and stupid.

Funny threads like Parcelan's LotR parody end up as sticky threads. Or word of mouth passes along the attention of good threads. Or a person does what I do and looks for who posted the thread and what the subject is ("hmm...KaLourin posted a thread about the future of warfare, that's worth checking out. So's Maradon's thread about smoking. And Cthulhu threads are generally worth a looking over...But who's this new person? Don't know that name...what's this thread about? Nah. doesn't look interesting").

Generally people who are regulars know which people they think are funny, and which subjects they can handle. So the rating system isn't useful as far as that goes.

*shrugs* I don't think it's broken. And I don't think the rating system should be used to allay the concerns or reinforce the fears/friendships between people.

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael painfully thought these words up:
EXCREMENT Crap about voting

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Verily, I support this.

[ 08-25-2002: Message edited by: Tegadil ]

If there is a problem with someone using votes as a form of trolling then report it to Drysart. Voting has been historically an anonymous event to allow people to give their opinions without fear of mob justice.

And on a final note, its a fucking rating people. Do you really need to whine about it as if the "crap" tag is a pile of poo on your pillow?

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So quoth Piper:
I think the EC lynch mob needs to put their fangs away.

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I concur.

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Piper stopped staring at Deedlit long enough to write:
And on a final note, its a fucking rating people. Do you really need to whine about it as if the "crap" tag is a pile of poo on your pillow?

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I'd also like to know who's been dropping unwrapped mints on my bed at night.

*glares at Piper*

There's no consequence to it, so it's no big deal. If a thread ends up with a Crap rating, that doesn't mean that someone's going to get banned or anything -- and if you see a thread has a lower rating than you think it should have, you can always vote it up.

That's what the votes are for. They're not there so that people are compelled to only vote in the politically correct manner for fear for reprisal from the mob. You're never going to get a list of who voted on a thread -- since if more than two people voted, the list is useless, and if less than two people voted, then it's defeating the purpose of having anonymous votes in the first place.

The only time I'm ever concerned with votes are if someone's intentionally spamming the board with them... outside of that, they have a tendency to fix themselves.