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I don't vote lower than 4. Too afraid some douche author (and they aren't all like that) will downvote everything I have destroying my life's work!
In fact I know an author here on CP who does just that, and I believe he is a platinum author himself... I can't remember his name, but some people may know whom I speak of (I believe he even got banned a few times). And my thoughts go a bit like this: if this was a nice guy he would've written a good article, but he hasn't so he's probably some jackass who can't take criticism and will downvote me for downvoting. I guess I have some issues too 
Besides, if an article already has x votes of 4 and 5 then my vote of 1 will simply be ignored. People won't be alarmed about the quality of the article and I will look like an a**hole for voting 1 (and take the risk of being downvoted myself). That's just not worth it!
Some people obviously try their best. Sometimes I vote 3 and explain how it would be better. But that's rare.
Then I believe there are just too many bad programmers out there who can't really value an article for what it's worth. Take an article that shows an example of how to get data from the database. The author doesn't know about the pitfalls of not disposing and not parameterizing himself and shows only bad practices. Now here's the deal. Many people don't know about these issues and actually think it's a great article! After all, it get's the job done, they get data from the database. And there's your vote of 5!
I value CP as a source of information and there are many great articles on here. But you can't trust the voting system. You'll have to use your own judgement to see if an article is worth the read. For some authors, I hope including myself, the read is just always worth it. For others you have to take a bit more caution. It's just too bad you already have to know your way around code to know which is bad and which is good.
That said, if I could anonymously vote 1 I would certainly do so on a lot more articles I see! And if more would do that then maybe the 1's wouldn't be ignored because of all the uninformed 5's.
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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I hate my inability to express myself properly, I'm simply not lingually gifted.
Thanks for expressing my views better than I could myself. 
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I know the author of whom you speak  He's even been known to create shill accounts to continue his revenge.
Saying that, I do downvote articles. If an article is poor quality then I owe it to other readers to explain why I think the article is poor. I generally try to offer advice on how to improve the article but, in some cases, I can see no redeeming features.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: I know the author of whom you speak He's even been known to create shill accounts to continue his revenge.
I believe he's still around only because his articles are valuable to the community. Hard to think that someone who creates such value can be such an a**hole
Well, I guess we all have our flaws.
Pete O'Hanlon wrote: Saying that, I do downvote articles. If an article is poor quality then I owe it to other readers to explain why I think the article is poor. I generally try to offer advice on how to improve the article but, in some cases, I can see no redeeming features.
I agree, I did that a few times, but the people after me still continued to vote 5's. Then I got downvoted a few times and now I'm cured of such beliefs 
The only people on here that I'd dare to give my vote 1, people like you, don't deserve 1's
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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There's a couple of articles by a fellow MVP that I have voted 1 on because they are dangerously wrong, yet others have still voted 5. Sadly, if they follow the advice they are given, they are going to have nothing but trouble later on.
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I was lucky enough to have great criticism with my first couple of articles - they were absolute stinkers. I took the criticism on the chin, and have managed to progress in some small way.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: managed to progress in some small way
You're to modest! You're a legend in my book!
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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Not only in yours 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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There are MVP still spread wrong information here as well as elsewhere too. The others gives reason saying "I'm in exam, we change it other time." And never see it changed based on your comment. Soon they get the platinum status and spoil the community by down voting. Not being ashamed of what they wrote as an article.
I'm new but it just frustrating to see here.
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When I voted (and I haven't since the need to supply a reason was put in place) I only voted 1 or 5; I see no reason for the 2, 3, or 4.
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You said it!
I think any voting system where you can't vote negatively is worthless - it's just becomes meaningless noise.
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The data would be more complete with perhaps the total number of articles in the same period, the average score and the median score.
One of my issues is that there are so many articles and tips with much higher rating but of poorer quality than some of those on that list
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Stop showing us actual data! That's not how internet discussions work, you should know that!
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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Hi Jorgen,
I think the demographics of CP have changed a lot since the 8+ years you have been a member, or the 13 years I've been a member here; so, I think it's only natural for what voting "means" for many members ... absent any method of ensuring "voter qualifications" and consistency (gods forbid !) ... to change.
I agree with you that what exists now is less than as meaningful as it could be, and I personally favor mandatory disclosure of author's name on both up- and down- votes ... at least as an experiment to see if article/tip quality improves.
But, vis-a-vis articles and tips, what I see happening is that far too many very low-quality pieces are getting published in the first place.
Over time, I believe, the reputation of CodeProject has changed so it has become a place where it is perceived that anyone (at any level of understanding, accomplishment) can publish an article just to have the fact of that on their resume. And, so, the sheer volume of submitted articles makes it impossible to have really detailed pre-publication screening ... in spite of heroic efforts by CP staff and current members active in article moderation.
Maybe if we had 10,000 members active in article moderation every week that would be different ?
And, that, imho, takes us into the quagmire of "who puts the bell on the cat," or, in fancier terms, "quis custodiet custodes."
I think there might be many of us that feel/think we should do something more on CP to help out with article moderation, but see that as requiring so much time and bandwidth that it would interfere with our own creative work for publication on CP, and with helping-out on QA, not to mention the time and energy available for our personal lives, and other areas of activity.
So, while I am willing to vote on articles/tips, and have my name published with the vote, and, possibly, become the target of some retaliation, I am not willing to spend energy in a back-and-forth dialogue with someone who has submitted a half-baked article explaining to them why its content is hopelessly confused, or inaccurate.
Up-voting by friends and followers: that will never go away; down-voting based on grudges, or biases; that ain't going away.
Should the vote of a member have more, or less, influence/ranking based on their rep or status ? I think so, but, then, you will have the "edge cases" of a very high-rep/status member behaving in a biased or irresponsible way. If you believe in crowd-sourced "wisdom" averaging out for the better, well, maybe that's the thing to trust ... but, then, you gotta have a crowd.
One very different (in my mind) strategy here is to focus on how we "elevate" the best of CP content, including the best QA questions, and answers, so that it "floats above" other content in similar categories.
Right now, I have at least fifty CP articles bookmarked (in Chrome) sorted into various bookmark folders: I often refer to these as the "crown jewels"
Imagine that we could somehow have a "hall of fame" where the most bookmarked articles of one million CP users were ranked by topic ?
Just an idea.
cheers, Bill
«What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning» Werner Heisenberg
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An excellent summary, a simple yes would suffice as an answer.
But I actually have one comment: I feel that your idea of using bookmarks for measuring actual usefulness of the articles is a good idea, but as soon as people know about it, it will be broken too.
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: a simple yes would suffice as an answer
I never met a simple "yes"
«What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning» Werner Heisenberg
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I absolutely agree. On a scale of 1-5, 1 should mean awful, 3 average and 5 excellent.
When there's only 4.5 to 5.0, it all becomes fairly pointless. Does the voting influence what appears on the front page? If so it's not just pointless, but destructive.
As it stands, I'd prefer to see voting go. Obsession with popularity is just another manifestation of vanity.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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The voting system has evolved to require justification for votes of 3 or lower.
I have twice suggested that we change over to a "mark as useful" arrangement (previous article votes of 4 or 5 can be translated to "useful", and lower votes are not counted at all). The new "identification of voters" idea would be reduced to something like "John Simmons/Outlaw Programmer found this article useful". CP staff don't appear to be receptive to that idea.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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Just thinking loud here...
How about a few more dimensions, like:
Mark as Useful
Mark as Educational
Mark as Inventive
And the other side of it
Mark as Pointless (There are better ways of doing it)
Mark as Reinvented (There are already 47 articles covering this subject)
And so on.
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If it's not useful, why even vote on it? that's my whole point. Allowing a user to "mark as useful" would even allow more graphs to be generated, such as a pie graph showing levels of users that found it useful.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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