Upvoting/downvoting

[greyhoundcode]

Hot on the heels of this post, it made me wonder: would there be merit to some sort of upvoting/downvoting feature here at phpdn?

I've noticed a natty feature on other forums where people can like or dislike a post (substitute whichever verbs you prefer) and if the balance of votes is negative then it is hidden or reduced in prominence. It's not a bad way of reducing background noise.

I do vaguely recall reading that it is a phpdn policy to run a stock install of phpBB without adornments (can't find the post though, maybe that was just a bad dream) but does anyone else think there might be merit in this?

[Celauran]

To what end? No, really. Spam already gets reported and dealt with, so what do you propose we downvote? Posts encouraging bad practice? Without downvotes, upvotes become meaningless.

[Weirdan]

We tried to steer clear of any karma-like things as we felt it would encourage people to game the system. Trust me, it was discussed many times. Instead anyone disagreeing with something said on these forums may express that freely, arguing their point all they like and let the reader form their own opinion on a sapienti sat basis.

[greyhoundcode]

To what end? No, really. Spam already gets reported and dealt with, so what do you propose we downvote? Posts encouraging bad practice? Without downvotes, upvotes become meaningless.

Posts encouraging bad practice or that are poorly thought out or misleading, certainly. Spam may already be reported and dealt with but there's also a category of post that falls somewhere between spam and the useless that isn't really dealt with currently.

@weirdan "karma-like" suggests the aim is to give people whose posts are in receipt of upvotes a warm fuzzy feeling, whereas I see it as a way of making the forums distraction free. For instance, some relatively straightforward UI changes mean downvoted posts could be greyed out or otherwise reduced in prominence (but still be available for those who wish to read them).

That said, if this has been discussed lots of times in the past then so be it

[califdon]

The slippery slope, to my mind, is that it makes it just that much easier for someone, or some group of someones to beat up on somebody who might have a language problem or even perhaps be a little slow on the trigger. Abuses of any kind are usually picked up pretty quickly by the moderators and, if it's necessary, we discuss it in the moderator's lounge and decide whether to take action. I think nearly all really egregious behavior is corrected. In any case, thanks for thinking about what might improve the usefulness of the forums. Even if we don't rally around your suggestion, we appreciate receiving it.

[greyhoundcode]

Well, nothing ventured nothing gained I appreciate you listening to my suggestion.

[Benjamin]

Unfortunately, there are two issues here.

The first issue is the fact that we tend to discuss things here. That's what people experience as a member and it's also what our long term members are used to. It's the reason we love this site.

The second issue is that people searching for a problem don't care about reading back and forth discussion. They just want to see the answer.

The fact is that we do indeed need a way to allow people to vote on posts, in order to move forward with the times. That way, we have the data required to somehow display this to users in a way that doesn't affect the core operation of the site. We certainly would not re-order posts, but we could certainly modify the system in a way that allows anyone to easily view the top answers to a question.

It's not a matter of if this needs to be done, it's a matter of who wants to do it, who has the time, and when can it be done?

This combined with some SEO changes I would like to see would take devnet to the next level and put us back as one of the top sites for PHP development.

I have programmers on staff who can do this, but they cost money. If anyone wants to volunteer either time or funds to get this done, let me know.

[requinix]

Might I point out how MS's forums do it: "answer" replies show up at the top and the entire thread follows. Allows for discussion like the Stack Overflow-style doesn't really do, and allows for jumping to answers like traditional forums don't really do. Not quite perfect but it seems to work well.

And since I'm posting, +1 to a voting system of some kind but +1 to the fact that there aren't really any good solutions. My home forum uses "reputation" and it's way too easy to abuse it - last I knew we agreed to get rid of it. All the systems I've seen devolve into competitions (who has the most points) or fights (who can do the most damage) or nepotism (friends get preferential treatment, newbies get none).

[Benjamin]

No reason to show the number of votes or who voted.