Bugs and Suggestions

Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan wrote:
I had to add a suggestion

You would have used this forum. Name itself says it all.

"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly"- SoMad

I shouldn't post that here, because that wasn't a suggestion for this website or its developers, instead it was for general ASP.NET developers.

Anyways, Richard had me covered and helped me to post such stuff as a tip. Smile | :)

Thanks for your time too Rohan. Smile | :)

The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~

Shouldn't the author of an article (also tip/trick) know who voted and what voted in his work? I do not mean unveiling the voter's identity, but the voter's status. For instance, status like: admin, mvp, author, less-than-30-days-old-member, etc... This would allow the author of an article to conclude more consistent information about his/her work. Maybe this is already possible, but I don't find the correct button to click.

Yes: Because to make it transparent.
No: To avoid to fight back.

If one publish an article/tip/trick one has to be ready to get the Feedback. So I think it is not needed to known who has voted, but a must should be that downvote Needs to be commented.
Bruno

modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.

You agree with me, although you didn't perceived it. There's no risk of any fight, because as I wrote in my OP, "I do not mean unveiling the voter's identity". So, any fight back is impossible. But, it is important to know the "vote quality".

To some extent you can already see this information since the votes are weighted. Have a look at http://www.codeproject.com/script/Membership/Reputation.aspx[^]

On the other hand, your suggestion makes an assumption that a vote from a member with more points is more valuable than a vote from a member with low points. Personally I don't see any reason why this would be true Smile | :)

The whole mess could be cured. I've suggested a reasonable change and it has been rejected. If they'd just convert to a "Is useful" voting system, an article's worth could be more easily construed, there would be no negative connotations (it would virtually end the whining from article authors, such as myself), and it could even be used to add a more social aspect (and transparency) to the site by showing who found the article useful.

".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

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
I've suggested a reasonable change and it has been rejected.

You've suggested a change, but you've not provided a solution that solves the issue we're looking to solve: how do you tell the good articles from the bad.

We've discussed this many, many times and I've pointed out the core issue, yet I've not seen a response to this.

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
an article's worth could be more easily construed

But how?

OK, so let's go through this again.

Article A has 100 "this is useful" votes.

Article B has 10 "this is useful" votes.

1. There's absolutely zero way that you can compare the two articles: Article A may have been up for 2 years and B might have been posted today. How do you order A and B? Do you look at "useful votes per day"? Do you just go on absolute numbers? Do you not even both ordering articles so there's no longer a concept of "the best articles"?

2. What if A was on ASP.NET 5 and had a thousand readers in 2 days so garnered votes due to popularity of content. Article B is on [insert really obscure technology] and gets a viewer a week. Every single viewer think B rocks and it's percentage of upvotes from engaged, critical viewers is high. So do we look at "upvotes per viewer"? Do we add other voting categories such as "Enjoyment factor", "Technical accuracy", and "I really like the author"?

3. How many spurious friends & family votes has article A had? What about B? The friends & family vote makes a mockery of any system that doesn't allow balancing contra votes. Even adding different voting categories will not help since F&F will abuse this too. So do we add a skills test before you can vote? Get someone to answer a question related to the article to show they understand it? Obviously that's hard to scale. Or we could limit voting to those who have status. This then dramatically limits the number of votes we get, meaning the voting becomes even less statistically valid.

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
it could even be used to add a more social aspect (and transparency) to the site by showing who found the article useful.

And now we get to the interesting part.

What if we made voting totally open. You vote, your name is shown in a list of voters? Each article shows a list of people who liked it, and if you click the list you'll also see those who didn't like it. You get an email "Hey - John just up-voted your article - nice!" (but no negative emails?)

This makes it open and more accountable.

Let's extend this a little more, maybe: What if we had two scores: A popular vote (all votes are included) and Experts Opinion, based on Gold and platinum authors and experts only.

Then you avoid the F&F issue, but you introduce statistical issues of validity. You have accountability, but you also get balanced votes. And if you get a downvote from a high-rep author, then stop whining and discuss it. Maybe they are wrong, or maybe you need to have a good hard look and realise your article could use a polish.

cheers
Chris Maunder

Chris Maunder wrote:
Let's extend this a little more, maybe: What if we had two scores: A popular vote (all votes are included) and Experts Opinion, based on Gold and platinum authors and experts only.

I like it.
But why not go all the way?
All users gets a Like button a la Facebook, this is simply a counter and presented as a number of likes. This is a vote of popularity and using the Like button is anonymous.
High rep users get to vote. All votes need to be commented with a motivation and they are not anonymous. If your comment consists of just "Nice" or "Crap" they are to be considered abuse and to be removed.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello

This will drastically reduce the number of votes, making the system pointless. It hasn't fixed it, it's turned it off.

I hate the idea of saying to newcomers: you aren't smart enough or to be trusted enough to be eligible to vote. It's a false and insulting assumption.

The problem, for me, remains. We need something more.

cheers
Chris Maunder

Chris Maunder wrote:
This will drastically reduce the number of votes, making the system pointless. It hasn't fixed it, it's turned it off.

Yes that's a problem, the validity goes down.

I've been thinking about this a bit and I'm more and more starting to believe that the main problem isn't just that people don't downvote because they were discouraged from it.
But rather that you're trying to squeeze several aspects into one measure.
And while it has been suggested several times that we should be allowed to vote on several different aspects such as Usefulness, Educational, Clarity, Accuracy and even Comedy. I believe that it would be to watered down and confusing, so people would just vote the same in all categories if at all.

So it has to be kept down to the two most basic aspects.
Quality and popularity (quantity).

Trying to squeeze quantity into a quality measure is a major reason for skewed results. Facebook has unfortunately twisted peoples comprehension on the purpose of voting.
I mean, just look at this[^] list. He's making the voting system into a farse, well at least if a quality measure is the goal.

So that's why I suggest that we have two systems, a like button for the popularity measure. And the good old voting system for the quality measure. And to really turn it into a quality measure, useful feedback needs to be mandatory.

Chris Maunder wrote:
I hate the idea of saying to newcomers: you aren't smart enough or to be trusted enough to be eligible to vote. It's a false and insulting assumption.

I don't see that this has anything to do with being smart enough or not, trusted yes, but privileges are already implemented at a large scale on the site.
There has to be some kind of threshold for the quality voting, if nothing else just for the sake of blocking sock puppets, exactly where and how this threshold should be implemented is a different question.

And then you have another problem. How to treat the current voting results if you actually would consider this suggestion? I have to admit I haven't thought that part through properly, but one way would be to turn the upvotes of the lowest rep voters into likes. I'm seeing quite some problems with this scenario, but keeping the old skewed scores in a new system would be even worse. This would be my major argument against a change of systems.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello

So this goes back to my idea of having an "Experts Opinion" whereby we show two scores: the Popular vote, and the votes from members who have a certain reputation.

This splits the quantity vs quality if one assumes that high-rep members vote intelligently. Not a terrible assumption given that to attain high rep you need to hand around, which means you have a sense of affinity with the site and it's members and content.

We have full historical voting data (at least back to 2008) so implementing this split is trivial.

Jörgen Andersson wrote:
So that's why I suggest that we have two systems, a like button for the popularity measure. And the good old voting system for the quality measure

This doesn't solve the Friends and Family issue: authors will ask F&F to Like and to upvote.

cheers
Chris Maunder

Chris Maunder wrote:
So this goes back to my idea of having an "Experts Opinion" whereby we show two scores: the Popular vote, and the votes from members who have a certain reputation.

Yes, as I said in my first response in this thread, but also no. I don't want a distinction on who's voting, but rather the type of vote.
For this reason the different voting types need to be distinctly different to the voter, and the different purposes has to be obvious.

The only reason I suggest that there should be a threshold of say bronze for quality voting (except for the participant category), is to stop sock puppets and to a certain extent F&F. There need to be a higher threshold than just registering on the site. And I simply don't know a better method.
And if F&F should happen to be members already, then so be it. You simply can't safeproof everything.

But that's another reason I find it important to make quality voting not anonymous. It makes it easier for other users to track those kinds of voting patterns.
Not that it should be hard to make a query for that purpose, but the human brain is amazing at finding unexpected patterns in chaos if given the chance.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello

Yes it would be true. To have lots of point, you need to be serious and publish. It is when you have published once that you really understand the value of each vote.

This is a topic we're hotly debating this very moment.

cheers
Chris Maunder

Thanks, for considering the suggestion.

Message Removed

modified 27-Feb-15 16:04pm.

Message Removed

modified 27-Feb-15 16:04pm.

Message Removed

modified 27-Feb-15 9:22am.

I've written an "alternative article" (Really Understanding Association, Aggregation, and Composition[^]) that is criticising the original article, which is highly ranked. Now my alternative article got a "1" downvote with a heavy weight (so it's now rated as "2" and therefore no longer displayed) and without any comment explaining the downvote, so I'm assuming it may be a revenge vote by the author of the original article.

Isn't it contradicting the idea of the "alternative article" feature if the author of the original article can vote against an "alternative article"? In this way he can prevent that the criticism of his article is perceived/read by the site's readers.

modified 26-Feb-15 12:09pm.

Can you please send me a link to the article?

cheers
Chris Maunder

I just added it: Really Understanding Association, Aggregation, and Composition

Gerd Wagner wrote:
Isn't it contradicting the idea of the "alternative article" feature if the author of the original article can vote against an "alternative article"?

Of course it isn't. There's an assumption in that idea that alternatives will always be better. This isn't the case, and we shouldn't be treating it as such.

I will add that the author in question does not always react too well to critique.

modified 26-Feb-15 12:31pm.

Gerd Wagner wrote:
In this way he can prevent that the criticism of his article is perceived/read by the site's readers

He can't - he can merely express his opinion.

Let the votes sort themselves out. You have one downvote. You have many more upvotes.

cheers
Chris Maunder

How come there aren't any comments to go with the 1 votes? That seems a bit odd.

14	Letting Article Owners Pin Posts in their Discussion Forums?
7	Not to cut threads in half in a page
5	User control over what is considered "new"
4	The moderation queue and hidden links
4	Article moderation suggestion
4	Brush up

1	Spam filter on member profiles
1	Moderation, spam & etc
0	some link in article are broken
0	New "consent" popup
0	Inappropriate ads?
0	Several bugs with github article submission import wizard.

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