Member Avatar for Dani

OK I am going to try to clear up all of the confusion, so bare with me :)

The reputation system still exists in the same manner it always has. However, the algorithm to calculate rep power (how much influence you have on another member) has been altered so that those of you with a lot of reputation can still feel comfortable posting a negative reputation comment every so often without feeling like you're going to kill the new member. Additionally, previously new members had to have 10 posts before they gained their first point of rep power and now they only need 5 posts. What all this means is that new members will start spreading reputation around sooner and old timers won't be affecting reputation so drastically.

Reputation is used for when you agree or disagree with a post, when you find it helpful, when you have a comment to make about the post that's either good or bad.

Then there's the voting system ...

Every individual post can be up-voted or down-voted. You can only influence a post by +1 or -1 depending on your vote.

If you give reputation to a post, you will automatically up-vote or down-vote the post based on the reputation that you gave.

However, you can also very easily up-vote or down-vote a post by clicking the little button, without having to type anything in or refresh the page. When you do this, you are only affecting the post's vote count by +1 or -1. You aren't affecting reputation.

So let me make sure you guys get this ...
You give reputation. You can leave a comment about the post. You affect the user's reputation based on your own rep power. You automatically increase or decrease the post's vote count by 1.

You just up vote or down vote. You increase or decrease the post's vote count by 1. There is no effect on the user's reputation and the user doesn't know who it was who up voted or down voted them. The idea though is for lots of people to do this and for posts to accumulate lots of votes each.

Unlike reputation, where you would only give rep if you thought the post was helpful, or thought-provoking, or useful, or gave the wrong advice, or you disagreed with it, you would up-vote or down-vote if a post is well-written or uses 1337 speak or doesn't have code tags or does use code tags correct on the first try, etc etc.

The idea is for posts to accumulate lots of upvotes or downvotes (similar to Digg, for example) to the point where when you're browsing a forum listing, you can skim the OP vote counters to see whether a post is even worth clicking into.

Edited by Dani because: n/a
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mvmalderen commented: Great clarification, all my doubts are cleared now :) +0

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Member Avatar for William Hemsworth

Thanks :) I personally think the voting system's awesome.

Member Avatar for Dani

Thanks for the positive feedback. OK I have some more confusion tidbits to add :)

As I mentioned, if you give reputation you automatically vote.
Or you can vote without giving reputation.

It is possible to change your vote (Click the other arrow) in the future. But, as you know, it's not possible to delete reputation you give. And once you've given reputation, your vote is tied to it. So once you give reputation, you can't change your vote.

So:

Give reputation and vote is automatically counted. Can't change either.

OR

Vote. Change vote. Change vote again. Give reputation. Vote is changed to whatever the reputation you gave was. Can't change either anymore. You might do this because you stumble upon a post and they used code tags right or the question was phrased very detailed so you one-upped them instantly. Then you took the time to evaluate their code, or study it more in depth, and you decided they really deserve some reputation love with a nice kudos on their algorithm.

Edited by Dani because: n/a
Member Avatar for William Hemsworth

How come some threads have '0' by the side, yet some of them have nothing at all? It should by one or the other, shouldn't it?

Untitled.jpg 34.76 KB
Member Avatar for Dani

If no one has voted, it shows nothing. But if people have voted but it got both positive and negative votes that even each other out, it shows 0 to indicate that there has been interest in the thread.

Member Avatar for jbennet

dditionally, previously new members had to have 10 posts before they gained their first point of rep power and now they only need 5 posts.

Is that retroactive? I assume not?

If no one has voted, it shows nothing. But if people have voted but it got both positive and negative votes that even each other out, it shows 0 to indicate that there has been interest in the thread.

I gave 1 to thread with -1 earlier, and it went straight to 1 not 0. The potato head dude noticed that too.

Member Avatar for Dani

> Is that retroactive? I assume not?

Well, no. But everyone who has 5 posts now has rep power to use moving forward.

> I gave 1 to thread with -1 earlier, and it went straight to 1 not 0. The potato head dude noticed that too.

It was a bug that has since been fixed. The bug was related to the new vote number it dynamically showed when you voted. The database has the correct amount and you would have seen the correct amount after refreshing the page.

Member Avatar for lllllIllIlllI

Well i do have one idea, that is we need to educate people as to what it is. I know that a lot of people dont come to the community feedback place. I didn't even know it existed for a while.

So is there any way of making an all around news post? Or making a readme page that explained the system and make it mandatory members to read it at least once?

I'm just trying to think of ways we could let the whole community know about the changes :)

Member Avatar for jbennet

I agree with paulthom12345 - Some members of the mod team didnt even know about it until today.

Edited by jbennet because: n/a
Member Avatar for jasimp

I just don't understand the point of it. People like AD complained because they couldn't leave neg rep without destroying someone's rep. So, instead of just having an option for no rep change when leaving a comment, an anonymous voting system was put in place, that doesn't allow for comments :-/

Secondly the numbers next to a thread are based off of the posts' votes, so if one post gets a bad vote, the whole thread gets a negative number next to it. It doesn't make sense.


BTW, another person against it :)

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/post1004252.html#post1004252

Edited by jasimp because: n/a
commented: Yessir, my thoughts exactly! +0
Member Avatar for William Hemsworth

Another person against it :)

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/post1004252.html#post1004252

Boo Hoo. People need to give things a chance, they're just not used to the small differences.

Please Dani, take them away, my eyes hurt.

I don't get it, it's hardly changed. There's two small buttons and a number by each post, what's with all this overreacting? :icon_wink:

commented: Hehe +0
Member Avatar for jasimp

I don't get it, it's hardly changed. There's two small buttons and a number by each post, what's with all this overreacting? :icon_wink:

If the bold numbers next to the threads were gone I would be satisfied.

Edited by jasimp because: n/a
Member Avatar for William Hemsworth

Plus the bold numbers next to the threads, get rid of those and I would be happy.

I agree with that, it looks slightly untidy there at the left, this was briefly mentioned in Area 51 too. I think that part just needs a bit of redesigning, but I don't want to get rid of it altogether.

Member Avatar for jasimp

There is no reason to have numbers next the threads that are based off what members think about individual posts in the thread, and are not based on what they think about the thread itself.

Edited by jasimp because: n/a
Member Avatar for jbennet

It gives a good overview of activity though

Member Avatar for William Hemsworth

As Dani said, it's another way to indicate if there has been some interest in the thread. I found myself using it, so it can't be that useless.

Edited by William Hemsworth because: n/a
Member Avatar for jasimp

The amount of replies/views was always enough to judge activity/interest.

Edited by jasimp because: n/a
Member Avatar for jasimp

Since everything I have said is negative, I do want to say something positive :)

I really like that when a thread has had no replies, the 0 is bolded and in red.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Yeah i like that, its helpful for Reported Posts, in particular.

Member Avatar for William Hemsworth

I really like that when a thread has had no replies, the 0 is bolded and in red.

Heh... yeh :cool: Saving those precious seconds.

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

I like to look at threads with no replies to see if I can help. Making the 0 in bold red helps to quickly locate them, even though there is the "Unanswered Threads" link.

commented: same :) +0
commented: agreed +0
Member Avatar for William Hemsworth

As I mentioned, if you give reputation you automatically vote.
Or you can vote without giving reputation.

It was my understanding that if somebody gives you reputation, it automatically gives a vote. On this post, I got given rep while (I think) my current rating was still 0. If that's the case, shouldn't it be 1? or have I just misunderstood this?

commented: Maybe a bug. Testing testing 123. +0
Member Avatar for jasimp

I like that it the voting buttons were moved over, looks a lot better. Also, why are the buttons now gray, and only color when you vote? Seems weird that way.

Member Avatar for Dani

As people said ... too much criticism that they were too distracting.

Member Avatar for jbennet

Cool , but now it looks like the buttons have something do with the #number

Member Avatar for iamthwee

I have to agree with jbennet, but they do look better out of the way and grayed out.


I think that a newbie would be confused by it being in its current position, but a regular member wouldn't. So it doesn't necessarily matter that it is in that position.

Keep it like this for the time being.

[edit]
Can you explain why the thread vote score is dictated only by the number of votes the very FIRST post gets and not the ENTIRE thread?

Edited by iamthwee because: n/a
Member Avatar for lllllIllIlllI

Can you explain why the thread vote score is dictated only by the number of votes the very FIRST post gets and not the ENTIRE thread?

Im pretty sure that was because of complaints dani was getting that a thread could be pulled down by a stupid post.

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