So the one thing a lot of people will probably agree with me on are post ratings. Not necessarily all positive ones, either. I think ratings will significantly boost the quality of Cemetech articles, and I have some ideas that may improve people's thoughts on it.

1. People who use one rating significantly more than the others will temporarily lose the ability to leave ratings.

This makes it impossible for someone to constantly up/down vote pages without actually caring about the content, which is bad for the forum's, uh, "Health".

2. If there are a ton of positive ratings on a Post/Thread the (non-staff) user should get recognition. (I mean like a LOT of ratings)

No explanation required, I think.

3. Here are my suggestions for the individual Ratings:

3a. Negative Ratings:
Bad Grammar
TL;DR
Bump/Spam

3b. Neutral Ratings:
Disagree (Opinion Based)
Agree (Opinion Based)
Hype Train (Anticipation)

3c. Positive Ratings:
Up Vote
Informative/Helpful
Unique

This could do with more suggestions! Leave them down below![/list]

Post ratings is something I've brought up to the other admins in discussions about the improvement of the Cemetech forum. Below, I'll reiterate one of the points I've brought up for the sake of any discussion this topic produces:

It'd be more efficient to only allow the equivalent of up votes. If someone isn't benefiting the conversation they are effectively ignored. Now, on-topic posts won't necessarily be "up voted" but that's okay.

Now, to focus on your post. I'll provide my input.



This is a great idea but would require a bunch of over head. We'd have to keep track of the last votes a user submitted. Do we make this vote tracking over a period of time? Now we need to store dates and times. Run a script every day, if not multiple times a day, to ensure that we don't unfairly prevent anyone from voting.



I don't quite follow what you're saying but I'll chime in with my suggestion what post ratings could be used for.

Votes could directly translate to a users standing amongst the forum. That might sound bad but I mean well. A user who positively contributes to the forum would be able to have a greater say in post reporting. Say, for spam. Any user can flag a post as spam but an admin will need to review it. 5 users could mark a post as spam and the system could automatically hide it until an admin reviews it. Now, if a "trusted" user marks a post as spam, the post would be hidden and await admin review even though only one user flagged it.

Additionally, users correctly flagging spam would also contribute to their points. Secondly, flagging would also be used for posts that break our community rules.



Nope. Just to entertain the idea of down voting:

Downvoting because of bad grammar would be horrible. We have many non-native English users on this site and punishing them for that would be unfair.

TL;DRs can be a succinct way to wrap up a long post. Often times I read TL;DRs first to judge whether or not I should read the whole post. Secondly, TL'DRs aren't very common here.

Bumping a topic is completely acceptable once it's been roughly 24 hours. Again, down voting for that would be unfair.



Wouldn't a Neutral rating be the equivalent of not rating a post at all? I do agree that those types of posts don't require a rating.



Not sure how an up vote would be something that requires a positive rating? But, out of the last two, an informative and helpful post should be the only post that receives a positive rating.

I firmly believe all we need to implement is an upvote/like button. As a down vote/dislike option will lead to misuse.

All discussion in Cemetech is expected to be constructive/helpful/unique. Things that merit receiving downvotes shouldn't be posted at all.

How about that?

Votes are most effective in self-regulating communities, because moderators can easily discern low-quality posts from high-quality posts. But this is not a self-regulating community at all, but rather a very tight-knit community where many of the people doing the talking are the moderators/admins themselves who have the ability of maintaining order as they see fit.

This is a quality post

Came here to say all of this. Well done.

It really depends of the forums and what admins would prefer that the rating system is used for. The downvote button on CW and Omni has led to less workload for moderators, as legitimate contributors are more careful to avoid racking up their downvotes count. However, security had to be adjusted over time (such as requiring to post a reason for downvoting and having 20 posts) due to abuse, and a rating system requires logging in order to be effective (so that staff knows what gets downvoted and if certain members are abusing the system based on the respective forum rules).

We don't NEED post ratings, IMO, it would just conflict with the karma we have on irc. If someone likes a post, they can say so in the thread, irc, or with a [username]++. It just really isn't something the forum needs.

Ah right, I forgot about the karma. Anyway, on Cemetech people are generally given more room to criticize things or other people, even if it means generalizing a bit, so adding downvoting would kinda be against this.

I see what you did there.

Thanks for all the feed back, guys!

Indeed, that was very well said oldmud0.

Agreed, 100%

+1

Yeah, I'd probably have been tempted to like/upvote that post if this forum had that feature.

TL;DR: Now look what you guys made me do.

I am too lazy to actually make my own post so instead I quote people and then don't say anything new

The irony in that statement is just wonderful, also, great post oldmud0!

Is there a limit to nested quotes

It's fairly unnecessary to have an upvote button, because you can see what people think just from what they say, both through SAX and by replying here. But yes, if there was an upvote button I would definitely press it.

and no there's no limit to nested quotes

Ooh, pritty!

Also, I like the idea of an upvote button but maybe without any direct benefits. That way people will post to help out rather than to get votes. A well-voted post would just mean that it is s helpful and a well-voted user means that they are respected and knowledgeable but not necessarily more powerful or privileged.

The only thing I have to say here is that if any of this becomes a thing post ratings should be able to be turned off or on when you create a topic. Or at least some form of that.