Points And Voting And Whatnot Comment Count

Brian

Step two in the master plan to provide users tools to moderate themselves has been deployed: there are +1/-1 buttons on comments and posts now. This has been met with some displeasure. An explanation of what's going on right now:

  1. You can vote up or down on any comment, forum post, or diary entry. Up votes are worth two points, down votes minus one. This, combined with the points you get for posting stuff, should make it hard for anyone who's not seriously annoying the great majority of the commenters to see their points dip as a result.
  2. Dipping into negative points will put you into the "troll" role and spur me to look at the user's recent activity to see whether the user should be banned, or just told to cool it, man.

There are some abuse failsafes built in now and more will be added if—when—people start abusing the system. For one: I am probably going to make a downvote cost the voter points, too, to further restrict wanton point-bashing. Please report any bugs, or ideas, to [email protected].

Comments

BlockM

July 6th, 2009 at 11:28 AM ^

Are you referring to the know it all tough guys that tear apart the trolls to the point of tears in an attempt to retain order on the boards? If you don't like what they're writing, you're free to give them a thumbs down.

Blue Balls

July 4th, 2009 at 10:35 PM ^

on a blog? Mgoblog is raising the bar-can't wait to see how this pans out. Hats off to Brain, I for one appreciate your efforts to keep this blog precious to those of us that follow Michigan Football.

chally

July 5th, 2009 at 9:46 AM ^

I don't see the thumbs up/down buttons. Is it just my browser (Safari), my board settings, or did Brian suspend them while working out tweaks? It's sort of weird to come back from being away for a day and seeing everyone talking about a feature that's not visible.

jericho

July 5th, 2009 at 9:57 AM ^

From my long experience of one day on the board let me take a swing at this. You need 20 points to see or use this feature. I think you need that 20 point level to do some other things as well, but I'm sure I'll pick that up as I go along.

JLo

July 5th, 2009 at 7:14 PM ^

I honestly think that this whole points system is just part of an experiment for Brian's masters thesis in game theory. What strategies can people use to maximize their points? How do you "win"? "I call this game... Blogger's dilemma."

BleedingBlue

July 5th, 2009 at 10:04 PM ^

I think it's set up that way as a deterrent for spammers, trolls, general riff-raff, etc. so they can't just sign up and start posting topics and diary's immediately. Also, they can't run around messing with people's points right away either.

ZooWolverine

July 6th, 2009 at 12:32 PM ^

Is there a way to tell which posts are being voted up or down? All I can tell is that I've gotten a few points from somewhere but it would be nice to know which posts are appreciated and which are not :) Or is that something I'll be able to see once I get to 20 points and can rate posts myself . . .

Blazefire

July 7th, 2009 at 10:48 AM ^

Gotta love live examples, folks. The point of the whole 20 point thing is to help one learn what the board is about and how and why we post, before you make a fool of yourself, as below, in the case of Sweeny03. Not to be circumvented (or to attempt to circumvent it.)