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Personally, I think it's kind of dumb to discourage negative ratings. When you rate something at the lowest, you get that page saying, "woah, wait a minute... what are you doing?" I say, either have it for all, or have it for none.

Yeah, people on these forums are reasonable intelligent. If they decide that something is Spam of Flamebait, it probably is, and a little warning screen is not going to deter them from ranking it down. Its just a nuisance, and it makes it seem like rating them down is a really, really bad idea, when in fact, it is necessary to fight worthless posts. I say have it for none, because having it for all would discourage people from rating at all.

"It was not God who created man, but man who created God." --Santa Caserio

This post was edited by Anduril on May 12, 2003.

AFAIK, the main reason why this extra page is here is that some time ago, people gave plenty of negative ratings for no acceptable reason (e.g. because they disagreed with the post, didn't like the author or whatever). This has been discussed before (see here or here). Also, some new users (used to?) have a tendency to misunderstand how the rating system works, and thus gave/give wrong ratings in error.
A negative vote is a pretty powerful thing, so the little extra warning might not be bad: if you know what you're doing it doesn't cause too big a problem, and if you've mistaken the whole rating thing, the page keeps you from giving undeserved bad ratings. After all, we luckily don't need to deal out so many of them, so the additional warning page should not cause too much work in the long run. :-)

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

This post was edited by null on May 12, 2003.

The same things apply to positive ratings. People just prefer seeing the green ratings instead of the red.

There are so many posts rated up that don't deserve it. I think when people post, they need to consider how good their post will be at provoking discussion. And people rating need to consider this as well.

Nearly unintelligible posts that provide no basis for discussion are getting rated excellent because people feel sympathy for the poster.

An exellent rating is as powerful as a negative one. If you encourage positive ratings and discourage negative ones, you negate the effects of the rating system.

I rate everything excellent unless it's a blatant troll or something like "I agree". This site isn't overflowing with worthless posts. In fact, it isn't very busy at all. I think things are just fine the way they are. If anything, posting needs to be encouraged. This will change when the level of crap surpasses the level of decent posts, but we aren't even close to that point

Mmh. I think I somewhat agree with you on that.

As said, the extra page for red ratings was mainly introduced because people dealed out too many of them. When the rating system was introduced (and it was changed twice since then) it wasn't very clear to everybody how it's supposed to work. People gave green ratings for posts they agreed with (or to people they like, no matter the content of their posts), 'nice' ones for below-average posts (just because the yellow color of the button suggested 'below-average'), red ones to people they don't like or posts they didn't agree with. Whatever could be done wrong, somebody did it. :-P Also, some people started complaining about the kind of ratings they got, sometimes justified and sometimes not.
The main problem were the people giving undeserved bad ratings, and that changed when said extra page was introduced.

Maybe it's debatable whether it's a good idea to have it there or not. I for one would leave it there, because there's always a new user who doesn't (yet) understand the rating system and may change their mind / learn something when they see the page for the first time.
OTOH, if you, as an experienced user, are about to deal out a well-deserved red one, you know the page in the meantime and can just click okay. After all we're in the lucky situation of not having to give so many reds, so I think the additional effort is acceptable. What do you think?

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

This post was edited by null on May 13, 2003.

Yeah, personally, that page doesn't make me stop and think "gee, maybe i don't want to downrate this person" it just irritates me into "yes, i want to downrate this person" occasionally i get annoyed and will rate something spam instead of mediocre. For me tht page is insulting. It is like it's questioning my judgement.

Just my thoughts...

Look at me! I'm a prostitute robot from the future!

occasionally i get annoyed and will rate something spam instead of mediocre.

You shouldn't do that. Besides rating down users when they don't deserve it, it also decreases your rating power.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

Giving negative ratings decreases your rating power???

Not exactly. Say, dealing out 100 negative ratings a day, or always rating things bad when 10 other users have rated it 'nice' or better, may decrease your rating power over time. (The same applies to greens.) Basically the system tries to identify obvious repeated misuse of the rating system and adjusts your power accordingly, or there's also an option for moderators to do this manually. At least that's how I understand Jaz. For the complete algorithm you'd have to ask him. :-)

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

This post was edited by null on May 13, 2003.

So having a conflicting opinion decreases your rating power then?

I just don't think a rating system can have justified biases.

I do see your point. But I don't agree that the system should try and compensate for certain people's stupidity, because then it doesn't work as well for the people who use it properly.

And honestly, it's not that hard to understand how it works. If people don't get it, then maybe they fall into the category of those we respectfully ask to stay outside.

Edit: Just for clarification, I'd like to say that I love the idea of a rating system and I think it's been implemented really well aside from a few fundamental flaws. Which are, of course, debatable.

This post was edited by mace on May 13, 2003.

So having a conflicting opinion decreases your rating power then?

Uuh, absolutely not, what makes you think this?

I do see your point. But I don't agree that the system should try and compensate for certain people's stupidity, because then it doesn't work as well for the people who use it properly.

Altho I don't know the voodoo behind it - only Jaz does -, I'd say it's rather unlikely that regular users (raters) are affected by this. (In dubio pro reo - if it's not obvious that you're abusing the system, you stay untouched.)
The other way to have your rating power decreased is when a human (moderator/admin) determines that you've abused the system, and adjusts your powers by hand. The drawback of this method is that they need to see your rating history first, which is an intrusion into your privacy. So basically this is only done when/if abuse is suspected.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

This post was edited by null on May 13, 2003.

Rating things bad when 10 other users have rated it 'nice' or better, may decrease your rating power over time

Rating things bad when 10 other users have rated it 'nice' or better, may decrease your rating power over time

Well, that was just an example. (As said, I don't know the exact voodo behind it.) Anyway, I think I see your point now.

Maybe it's a bad example, I don't know. The thought behind it is - if, say, there's a post and 3 people give it a 'nice' or 'excellent' rating, and you rate it red, it might (read: "might") be a hint that you're abusing the system. The more occurences of this, the more likely it is that you're deliberately dealing out bad ratings, especially when it's always the same user you're targetting.

I can just tell you this - rating different than the majority doesn't do anything to your powers. Let's not blow this auto-adjust thing out of proportion, because it's not meant to act upon normal (not definitely abusive) users.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

This post was edited by null on May 13, 2003.

This post was deleted by request of the author.

People do not use the red rating to mark spam. They use it to rate something they disagree with. Or they think in their mind this is spam because I disagree with it so they rate it red.

Could we pretty please not start this crap for the 100,000,000th time??
Funny how nobody ever gets rated bad because of their offensive style, but it must always be because 'their opinion is unpopular.'

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

This post was edited by null on May 13, 2003.

Your post makes me thinking. I mean, it shouldn't be the aim of the rating system that people leave Netalive or refuse posting... I don't think that's what Jaz intended.

BTW, the red rating really is only for spam, if one disagrees, he should chose "mediocre".

"Sie wollen nichts anderes. Sie wollen kämpfen! Sie sind Soldaten! Fucking Wahnsinnige!" - Noel G.

if one disagrees, he should chose "mediocre".

Sorry but: wrong answer!
You should never rate a post based on whether you agree with the author or not!

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

Yeah sure, I know, but if he thinks he wants to rate it down (maybe not just because he disagrees but also because he thinks the post is badly written) and he really is not convincable for not giving a rating at all it's at least better to rate it mediocre than red.

"Sie wollen nichts anderes. Sie wollen kämpfen! Sie sind Soldaten! Fucking Wahnsinnige!" - Noel G.

because he thinks the post is badly written

Well yeah, this is a perfectly acceptable reason for a bad rating. :-)

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid