Upvotes and Downvotes

[Blaze1616]

Staff, do you think that you could elaborate a little bit on what you mean by devaluation of the rep system? I understand what devaluation is, but I’d like to understand what sort of instances led you to believe that it’s a problem, and why you consider it to be a negative thing. I’d also appreciate if a staff member were to describe what situations they would consider to be upvote/downvote-worthy, so that I might better understand the administration’s stance towards the issue.

 

I do understand the staff's concern over users taking the rep system too seriously. Upvotes and downvotes are, after all, ultimately just arbitrary Internet points, and treating accumulation of them like a competition or interpreting each downvote as a public slandering is a bit silly. I can confess to becoming invested in the system myself (you probably saw my excited post about entering the top fifty in ‘Random Stuff’), but I think that it’s a fairly easy mistake to make. As such, I would consider abolishment of the rep system to be a bit extreme. Instead, I would advocate starting with a post that makes 17S’s stance towards what a proper attitude about reputation should be. I am aware that staff has made sporadic addresses to this issue in various boards, but something more widely visible might serve to have a site-wide impact. If the problems you observe continue, something else might need to be done. For now, though, I think such an announcement would be a good place to start.

 

Now I cannot, and will not, speak on the staff's behalf, but the devaluing of reputation is a fairly obvious trend to notice. To demonstrate, I will be using two members whose contributions to this site I highly respect, and in choosing them for this example, I do not intend to insult or criticize either.

 

I joined really late in October 2014. At that time, high reputation counts generally meant that the user was very knowledgeable in Sanderson's works. One example of this would be Kurkistan, whose posts are almost entirely placed into the various Theory subforums. His contributions are vast, covering almost all of Sanderson's works, and have served to place him at the top of the list of users most knowledgable in the Cosmere. Kurkistan joined in September 2011, and his current rep count is 2288 at the time of this post.

 

LarkoftheRiver, on the other hand, contributes very little to the Sanderson side of this forum, and far more contributes to the Community subforums, where she is often found praising others, criticizing herself, and talking about or showing off her great works of art. Lark joined in April 2015, and her current rep count is 2513 at the time of this post.

 

Now, of those two users, which one has more users similar to their activities? I can think of, easily, upwards of 25 current users whose activity on the Shard resembles Lark's, and their Reputations mirror this; meanwhile I strain to think of 10 users ever whose activity and Reputation mirror Kurk's. When speaking of Reputation being devalued, I would think it is in reference to Sanderson knowledge, as this site is the Official Sanderson fan forum. We're even linked to not only on his site, but on Writing Excuses.

 

That is, of course, not to say that what the Community does for members who frequent it is frivolous. As Kobold says, the Community now helps others get over self-confidence, self-worth, and self-image issues (it used to not be used even half as much as it is now), and even in our disagreements we are still a family here on the Shard. But one cannot deny the loss of value in the single Reputation point, as I can no longer look at reputation points and immediately have a very basic understanding of one's contributions to the fandom. Instead, seeing high rep counts now means that the user fits one of two profiles; 1)Very humorous, I am very likely to chuckle when reading their posts, 2)Very comforting, I am likely to either feel comforted by their post, or feel the need to comfort them in a response to their post.

 

I feel like the best solution for the proposed problem would be to have Reputation points only count towards your Reputation score if they are gained in the sections based around Brandon's works ("The Cosmere" and "Non-cosmere Works"), while still allowing reputation to be given in the other threads, with little green numbers in the corners. Such would solve the issue pointed out by Kurk and Meg (which I myself agree with), as well as solving the issue presented by Kobold. Unfortunately, it would seem such a system is not possible.

[Windrunner]

As Kurk said, I'd like to talk for a minute as a member rather than a moderator. I've discussed this in the past, but I've finally collected my thoughts on the subject a little bit.

 

I think people need to decide what they want reputation to be. I hear many people echo Kobald's sentiment about upvotes being essentially meaningless, an imaginary internet point. However, it takes very little time looking around to find someone posting who is extremely upset at being downvoted, often only once or twice. If upvotes don't matter, then downvotes don't either. The message I see is that people like to claim that they don't care about upvotes (and surely some truly don't) but the second someone's rep goes down these imaginary internet points suddenly have some sort of value.

 

I'm also a little curious about something. I often hear people upset that someone has downvoted them without a post or a PM to explain why. Now though, that rep is more scarce, people are concerned that they're going to get too many posts telling them that they did a good job instead of upvotes? Shouldn't an explanation of why someone liked something you posted be similarly more valuable than an upvote to those who prefer explanations to downvotes? This is genuine curiosity, so I'm interested to hear what you guys think.

[Kobold King]

As Kurk said, I'd like to talk for a minute as a member rather than a moderator. I've discussed this in the past, but I've finally collected my thoughts on the subject a little bit.

 

I think people need to decide what they want reputation to be. I hear many people echo Kobald's sentiment about upvotes being essentially meaningless, an imaginary internet point. However, it takes very little time looking around to find someone posting who is extremely upset at being downvoted, often only once or twice. If upvotes don't matter, than downvotes don't either. The message I see is that people like to claim that they don't care about upvotes (and surely some truly don't) but the second someone's rep goes down these imaginary internet points suddenly have some sort of value. I'm also a little curious about something. I often hear people upset that someone has downvoted them without a post or a PM to explain why. Now though, that rep is more scarce, people are concerned that they're going to get too many posts telling them that they did a good job instead of upvotes? Shouldn't an explanation of why someone liked something you posted be similarly more valuable than an upvote to those who prefer explanations to downvotes? This is genuine curiosity, so I'm interested to hear what you guys think.

 

 

I do not in fact believe upvotes are meaningless. I believe they hold a very real value in expressing appreciation towards other members, and that this value is in no way diluted by their abundance on the forum. The more upvotes the better, in my opinion. If I were in charge there wouldn't be a quota at all. By the same reasoning I view excessive downvotes as unhealthy both to individual members and to the forum as a whole.

 

Nonetheless, I see which way the wind's blowing, so there's little point in me continuing to argue. I remain firm in my stance, but that is neither here nor there.

 

 

I will say, however, that even among the most toxic of web communities the admins are usually the first to caution that the downvote button is not a disagreement button. It is stated in many guidelines that it is not to be used as such, and I happen to be part of several highly successful subreddits that do not include a downvote feature at all, with absolutely no resulting problems of "balance."

 

I would be saddened if 17th Sharders, generally such a friendly and supportive bunch, began a policy of downvoting minority opinions. As much as anyone might claim otherwise, downvoting opinions invariably leads to bitter arguments, the unfair discrediting of opinion posts allowed to bleed into the red, or both.

 

The admins might have their say, and they make the rules, but if I'm allowed to voice my opinion, it's that downvotes are to be used only in the most heinous of cases. And I hope strongly that no matter what the admins decide will become official policy, the 17th Shard will retain that magical positivity that has made it such a great place to be.

Edited January 8, 2016 by Kobold King

[Chaos]

On that point I was in another discussion where it was brought up and it is apparently impossible. Also in light of it separating BS stuff from unrelated stuff I doubt it would be possible, the only way to do it would be to separate it by which subforum the post is in, but plenty of off-topic threads and posts appear in the Mistborn forums and plenty of legitimate theories are discussed in the general discussion forum.

1. I'm aware that Chaos just posted about how people should feel free to use downvotes but even so the prevailing culture on 17s is that people really only downvote things that are offensive, rather than just wrong or overappreciated. I know plenty of cases where people have balanced a negative reputation out with upvotes but I don't know of anyone that downvotes posts just because they think it doesn't deserve as many upvotes as it got.

The idea that if a post has an 8 and a person feels it should be a 7 was one of the very first things I wrote in my "reasons you could downvote someone." Quite a few people, in private, have told me of this kind of usage. I think it is totally fine and reasonable usage. That a member who I had not interacted with thought this was reasonable usage only reinforces the prevailing opinion.

You probably just don't notice this because noticing the much more obvious -2 on a post is much easier. Those tend to be really rude remarks--another fantastic reason to downvote a thing.

The reputation on a post is a community average on how the overall community feels about a post. If someone finds a post that has a high amount of upvotes and feels that, hey, the post really wasn't that funny, then it is perfectly reasonable to lower that average a bit.

This is why an individual downvote rarely matters, because the very positive community on 17S balances out the voting. This is also why it confuses me that some get so upset that someone dared to downvote a post, and yet I see the post ends up at a +5.

As for Kobold, I do think some scarcity has value. I also think downvotes have value. I think with the low downvote quota it is not an issue, and allows a posts rep value to be an accurate reflection of how the community feels about such a post.

[Voidus]

I will readily admit that I've done this, but it's usually just for jokes/memes that deserve maybe 10 rep but have 30-40+. As has already been said, you don't need to click the little up arrow just because you found something funny if 15 other people clicked it as well. Unless you think it's a joke that deserves that much rep, and if you think that, then carry on.

While I don't personally do so I can understand the idea behind doing something like that, since it seems that often the only reason some posts get so many upvotes is because of the audience size, they're posted in a thread that a lot of people view so they get a lot of upvotes, whereas in the RP threads while we all post a lot and are pretty liberal with upvotes I don't think I've seen many posts get above 10 reputation. It's a very friendly section of the forums but a limited one so the few times that upvotes on a single post numbered in the double digits it's a good sign that it really is an excellent post.

But in for example the meme topics where there are dozens of viewers I've gotten upwards of 15 rep on a post that was really just a throwaway joke.

[Mashadar Mistborn]

I will readily admit that I've done this, but it's usually just for jokes/memes that deserve maybe 10 rep but have 30-40+. As has already been said, you don't need to click the little up arrow just because you found something funny if 15 other people clicked it as well. Unless you think it's a joke that deserves that much rep, and if you think that, then carry on.

I would like to disagree with this idea, as to me how many upvotes a post deserves isn't a value that I can quantify. An up vote to me means that I find your post funny, or worth something on the bad day thread, or contributing an interesting idea, be it theory or not. I think that an upvote is how I smile at what someone says on the Shard and if I don't give myself a quota of smiles per day, and don't decide that a joke is only worth so many smiles and got too many in real life, I see no reason to do it on this website. I don't frown at a joke because I think too many people are smiling.

 

I'm really sorry if this is rude. I tend to occasionally be a bit more blunt than is polite.

[Kobold King]

But in for example the meme topics where there are dozens of viewers I've gotten upwards of 15 rep on a post that was really just a throwaway joke.

 

 

Again, there's no good reason why that's a problem. Reputation is neither a currency nor a competition. Upvotes represent the concept of appreciation itself; the laws of supply and demand do not apply to them, and I don't at all understand the insistence that they must be strictly limited and regulated.

[Kurkistan]

Again, there's no good reason why that's a problem. Reputation is neither a currency nor a competition. Upvotes represent the concept of appreciation itself; the laws of supply and demand do not apply to them, and I don't at all understand the insistence that they must be strictly limited and regulated.

I beg you consider for a moment, Kobold, the possibility that this is not the only way to think of upvotes. I accept that this is how you see them, but others have differing assessments.

EDIT: To expand, I invite you to explain why we should view upvotes this way, rather than having us take it as a given.

Edited January 8, 2016 by Kurkistan

[Kobold King]

I beg you consider for a moment, Kobold, the possibility that this is not the only way to think of upvotes. I accept that this is how you see them, but others have differing assessments.

 

 

Conceded. But I believe this to be a very common way of looking at them.

 

 

As a side note, I will point out that very few of the people who regularly post on RP and off-topic joke threads are participating in this discussion. I believe a very skewed perspective of the forum as a whole's leanings may be represented here.

[Chaos]

Conceded. But I believe this to be a very common way of looking at them.

As a side note, I will point out that very few of the people who regularly post on RP and off-topic joke threads are participating in this discussion. I believe a very skewed perspective of the forum as a whole's leanings may be represented here.

I tended to think that with how vocal you are about this (and have been) that it may be skewed the other way. Maybe a lot of posts come from there, but not the majority of people post there?

But arguing this point is not particularly relevant.

[Mashadar Mistborn]

I beg you consider for a moment, Kobold, the possibility that this is not the only way to think of upvotes. I accept that this is how you see them, but others have differing assessments.

EDIT: To expand, I invite you to explain why we should view upvotes this way, rather than having us take it as a given.

Okay, we know what Kobold's opinion  of upvotes is. Mine is a very similar idea. Could those of you who believe that they are inflated, explain what your opinion is. If I'm going to try to make my point here, I'd like to know exactly what I'm arguing against.

 

And I have explained why I think we should see upvotes that way. I'm not in the top fifty, probably barely in the top two hundred, and I would like to make it clear that the most uprooted shaders are not the only ones with his view.

Once again, sorry if any of this reads as rude.

[Voidus]

 

Again, there's no good reason why that's a problem. Reputation is neither a currency nor a competition. Upvotes represent the concept of appreciation itself; the laws of supply and demand do not apply to them, and I don't at all understand the insistence that they must be strictly limited and regulated.

The only reason it becomes a problem is because it's a centralized system, there's no way to distinguish between reputation gained by a single joke in a very popular thread and the reputation gained by posting 15 pretty detailed and thought out theories.

I went on something of a hiatus from the Shard a few years ago and so I guess it's because I share that feeling that reputation used to be used quite differently, I still managed to be in the top 20 (Maybe top 10, I honestly can't remember) reputed members on the site but it just felt more earned than they do today, I remember when the 'popular post' feature was added and I personally knew of every post that had achieved that milestone. It was a really big achievement and when I finally got a popular post it felt like an accomplishment (Though admittedly I think my first popular post was a joke rather than a theory which somewhat undermines my point, but it was something that I actually put some amount of effort into) now though all it takes is to pop into a meme thread, take five seconds to put a vaguely Sandersonesque spin on a meme and bam, 15-20 upvotes, popular post.
 

Yes upvotes are used to show appreciation but that doesn't mean that they can't be devalued, in school the praise from a normally grumpy and sullen teacher is valued much more highly than that of the fun-loving teacher who praises everyone no matter what they do because they're all special. The only way that upvotes could be incapable of being devalued is if they have no value, and if they have no value then why do we have them at all?

[Mashadar Mistborn]

Can we call this thread Nearer the Flame?

Nearer the Flame: Rosharan horror story chronicling the slow descent of a man into madness after watching his upvotes die.

[Kobold King]

I tended to think that with how vocal you are about this (and have been) that it may be skewed the other way. Maybe a lot of posts come from there, but not the majority of people post there?

But arguing this point is not particularly relevant.

 

 

One vocal person can't speak for an entire class of the forum whose voting habits are being prohibited by your new rule.

 

Chaos, consider the fact that you, plural, the administrative staff, stripped away the full voting rights of the entire forum without warning or consultation of its members. You explicitly did this as a counter-measure against the fact that the highly active jokers and RPers of the site tend to get more frequent shows of appreciation than the theorists who only post sporadically.

 

I may be alone on this, but to me this feels like an attack against the jokers and the RPers. It is our habits that have been banned without warning from the forum, and it is we who are already most strongly affected by the change. Policy was created behind our backs to handicap us, for the stated purpose of leveling the playing field for some strange pseudo-economic competition that I didn't even realize people were serious about.

 

And yet you claim that not hearing the opinions of the people whose forum experiences you've most impacted is not particularly relevant? I challenge that assertion, sir.

 

 

Suddenly changing the rules to handicap a class of your forum's members is not cool, Chaos. Restrictions like this are serious business, and to implement one suddenly, without even talking to us, for the purpose of tying us down and preventing us from communicating what we want to communicate... well, it's hard to see that as anything else but an attack against the way we interact with each other.

 

You don't have to agree, but do you at least see the point I'm trying to make?

Edited January 8, 2016 by Kobold King

[STINK]

 

I will say, however, that even among the most toxic of web communities the admins are usually the first to caution that the downvote button is not a disagreement button. It is stated in many guidelines that it is not to be used as such, and I happen to be part of several highly successful subreddits that do not include a downvote feature at all, with absolutely no resulting problems of "balance."

 

 

You can't really compare subreddits to a forum though, as reddit sorts its content through how many total upvotes it has gotten over a period of time on the 'hot' setting, which is what most people use. This means that eventually content goes away and isn't really contributed to after a period of time, and even later on the thread itself would be archived. 

 

17S sorts out threads through what was recently posted/replied to in the area you are looking at. Nothing to do with how many upvotes it has got. So content can stay on the first page for a long time, compared to reddit. We (as the users) can keep content on the first page for a long time and keep contributing, which means we have a completely different atmosphere than reddit.

 

EDIT: Ninja'd by Kobald, one quick thing, upvoting was your hobby?

Edited January 8, 2016 by IrulelikeSTINK

[Eerongal]

You can't really compare subreddits to a forum though, as reddit sorts its content through how many total upvotes it has gotten over a period of time on the 'hot' setting, which is what most people use. This means that eventually content goes away and isn't really contributed to after a period of time, and even later on the thread itself would be archived. 

 

17S sorts out threads through what was recently posted/replied to in the area you are looking at. Nothing to do with how many upvotes it has got. So content can stay on the first page for a long time, compared to reddit. We (as the users) can keep content on the first page for a long time and keep contributing, which means we have a completely different atmosphere than reddit.

 

EDIT: Ninja'd by Kobald, one quick thing, upvoting was your hobby?

 

 

This right here is an important distinction. Reddit (and imgur and things like it) are build on the idea of gamification, which is basically what you described here. Submitting the most witty, valuable, insightful, etc. discussions to a subreddit gets the most discussion, attention, and the most points. 

 

However, 17th shard is a forum. It works like traditional BBS style forums. Posts are seen based on age of interaction vs community merit.

[Mashadar Mistborn]

Limiting the quota and then telling us that we up vote jokes too much, to continue my smile simile, feels to me like telling me that I'm smiling at the wrong things. it seems like you're saying that I can't be trusted to decide for myself what makes me smile.

[STINK]

If only there was a smile emoticon to use in those situations....     

[Eerongal]

If only there was a smile emoticon to use in those situations....     

 

You're right. We should probably get one of those....i put forth this candidate.

[Kobold King]

No offense intended, Kobold, but I think you might be making a strawman of the admins. I really don't think they were trying to restrict freedom in some plot to tie down the jokers and RPers. Yeah, I think it wasn't necessarily the best choice to not inform you of their decision, but I seriously doubt that the malice you imply was intended.

 

 

Malice? Perhaps not. But an attack doesn't have to be rooted in malice. With my words I label only the raw effects of the admins' actions, not the intents that lie behind them.

[STINK]

Malice? Perhaps not. But an attack doesn't have to be rooted in malice. With my words I label only the raw effects of the admins' actions, not the intents that lie behind them.

 

I can verify that in no way was I attacked by a moderator/admin. 

[Mashadar Mistborn]

If only there was a smile emoticon to use in those situations....     

That's true...  If I have something to add. If I only have a smile to add, that's spamming.

[STINK]

Then you can add to that smile! 

 

 That joke was great, good sire!

 I appreciated this meme, and think you should do more

 That is really nice to hear! I wish you luck! 

 

Much like the responses to Voidus' statement (congrats) and how he got upvotes and feedback!

[Voidus]

Something that I think illustrates the problem, the top four members of 17s (Kobold, Twi, myself and Edgedancer) are all members and the most frequent posters of the Reckoners RP as well as all being involved pretty heavily in general discussion, while we do participate in theory threads pretty frequently as well I think we could all agree that most of our reputation comes from the RP and general discussion threads.

We have more reputation between the four of us than the next 20 highest members combined. That includes the admins & Mods, Brandon and Peter as well as the top theorizers and posters.

Whether you view reputation as a competition, as an accumulation of appreciation or as a rank of how prolific you are in all things BS related, for my part at least I believe that reputation count is insanely inflated.

If I was Chaos and I saw my reputation, no matter what it is that you think reputation is a count of, I would be pretty annoyed. If it's just a show of appreciation then why am I 3x more appreciated than the guy who keeps the site functioning, has frequently excellent theories and is an admin? If it's some kind of competition then likewise, and as a show of knowledge about the cosmere it's equally absurd, I've been corrected or informed by Chaos numerous times, I'm not more knowledgeable about it than he is.

 

 

Limiting the quota and then telling us that we up vote jokes too much, to continue my smile simile, feels to me like telling me that I'm smiling at the wrong things. it seems like you're saying that I can't be trusted to decide for myself what makes me smile.

We don't walk around in real life with a running total of how many people have smiled at us though, reputation is one of about 4 things that is public knowledge about every Sharder, along with their name, join date and post count.

[Kobold King]

We don't walk around in real life with a running total of how many people have smiled at us though, reputation is one of about 4 things that is public knowledge about every Sharder, along with their name, join date and post count.

 

 

Well is there any way to count upvotes on individual posts but not for a member's sum total? I'd be fine with that.