OT/meta - Bring back the negbang/posbang.
January 9th, 2012 at 6:51 PM ^
I don't care what Brian does on this. There are positives and negatives both. What I don't really like is that it makes mgoblog into a beauty contest. Probably shouldn't be commenting anyway.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:02 PM ^
Or 1 person go around and downvote everything in this thread, that's fine too.
Edit: upvoted everyone to restore comment point equilibrium.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:03 PM ^
Yes, please let's go back to the old system of all votes counting and Neg-Banging for free. Once this well performing and fun system was abandoned in favor of a sequence of changes that each each made things worse, the quality of comments deteriorated as the incentive for only making quality post completely went away. At this point, the comments are not even worth reading anymore and that is sad as this was once the strong point of the site.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:09 PM ^
January 9th, 2012 at 7:10 PM ^
Bring 'em back, but with a ceiling and a floor. You can only go up so many points or down so many points for a single post.
Think New Jersey, not Bolivia. You have to really earn your way to Bolivia over the course of multiple irritating posts.
Anybody can have a bad post. We want to save the negbangs to Bolivia for bad people.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:30 PM ^
Previously, a horrendous comment may get -50 at very worst, and that's if its offensive and borderline ban-worthy. You can get out of that hole in a dozen good comments, its hardly Bolivia. Capping comments makes voting less satisfying, and makes skimming through threads more difficult when all of the good comments are capped at 5 (say, if I only have time to see the great ones in a thread with 100 comments).
January 9th, 2012 at 7:50 PM ^
the few Bolivian level negged posts were a thing of beauty.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:11 PM ^
Welcome to imaginary Bolivian. I too, would like to join in a negbang!
January 9th, 2012 at 7:13 PM ^
I still think there needs to be a deduction for neg-banging. I think that is reasonably effective in discouraging people from negging posts just because they disagree, rather than reserving the negs for truly inappropriate or trolling posts.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:31 PM ^
Otherwise it's prone to abuse and enforce group-think. I would start X at 5, and perhaps increase it with certain thresholds.
I'd cap the number of free +1s as well to make it more difficult to upvote your own posts with sock puppets.
January 9th, 2012 at 11:57 PM ^
Both good ideas. I agree.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:21 PM ^
Neg bangs scare me. Just being honest.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:51 PM ^
Well, that, poor spelling, and that one guy who negs everything. Other than those, you're in fine shape!
January 9th, 2012 at 11:30 PM ^
It was like setting the sky on fire during flamewars. Epic stuff.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:54 PM ^
As you can see, I can't afford to lose any of those things we were not supposed to talk about. At this rate I should hit 5 figures in 19 years. How about an interest-earning account? That should help me reach retirement age. Please pardon my karma level of 1.
January 9th, 2012 at 7:57 PM ^
The current system is designed to moderate the content, while the old system was designed to moderate the users. Moderating the content should work in theory, but the issue comes with determining how many downvotes are required to collapse a post. Then, when a post gets collapsed, there should be no incentive to read the collapsed post because that's the whole point of having this system. This means the current system has 2 problems with it:
--The threshold to collapse a post is too low, even for people with good (2) karma.
--After a post was collapsed, readers have 2 reasons to read the collapsed post anyway; to make sense of any replies to said collapsed post, and to judge if the post was rightfully collapsed (often; this wasn't the case as given by the low threshold).
To fix the current system, the threshold to collapse a post needs to require more downvotes to ensure enough readers want it collapsed (I actually think a dynamic threshold would work best), and, once a post gets collapsed, it should be unreadable to anyone, along with all posts that replied to it. If this is too difficult to enact, going away from the current system would also work.
OTOH, the old point system gave users an incentive to add something useful and/or worth reading to the board/comments in that they could amass enough points to unlock additional privileges on the website. The downside to this system is that unpopular material was often viewed as inappropriate material and downvoted instead of refuted, and point inflation due to unnecessary posbang threads. While these was a real problem, the point of self-moderation is such that neutral parties or people in agreement with the negged user can act to prevent wrongful negging. Thus, a giant negbomb shouldn't be the result of "I disagree" unless it showcases user ignorance.
The only way I can see to completely prevent wrongful negging and useless point inflation is through moderator interference such as removing all point swings from a thread or removing and penalizing a user for starting posbang threads. Also, negs have to be free.
January 9th, 2012 at 8:20 PM ^
I didn't think it were possible to write a doctoral thesis on pos/negbanging. Today you have proved me wrong. My compliments
As someone who lurked for a long time before actually joining here, I'd say that it isn't a great idea to make negged comments unreadable. Only the mods should be able to do that. There's no real reason to make them unreadable. If I see a comment at -13, if I read it, it's my own fault, knowing full well that it was going to be proposterously bad.
I'd be in favor of a pos/negbang situation in which you could be posbanged limitlessly, but negbangs would bottom out at 5. That'd stop people from destroying users needlessly for one stupid post. On the other hand, if someone has a really really good post, I don't think that there should be a limit on how much others want to show their appreciation. And yes, in my world, pos/negbangs would actually count for and against MGoPoints
January 9th, 2012 at 8:07 PM ^
NEED ME MY EFFECTIVE POS AND NEG BANGING NYAH
January 9th, 2012 at 8:14 PM ^
Brian is a practicing dictator, and wants to hold onto power with his 45,000 points! We must overcome! Bourgeoisie uber alles!
January 9th, 2012 at 8:54 PM ^
Just write "I love michigan" and you will never get Neg-banged
January 9th, 2012 at 9:21 PM ^
I don't know whether this is technically feasible, but it seems to me that an ideal voting system would allow two separate types of votes for each comment: an agree vs disagree, and a separate flag for original/well reasoned vs waste of space. An example of where this would be useful: someone posts a picture of M fans at the Sugar Bowl holding up signs referring to Michigan State, commenting that they love/hate these signs. MGoDenizens could then agree/disagree that they love/hate these signs separately from indicating whether the poster has added something useful to the discussion about them, or simply re-hashed something that's already been discussed ad nauseam.
Speaking also of technical feasibility: any way we can get voting added to the MGoDroidApp?
January 10th, 2012 at 2:55 AM ^
I agree 100%. Seeing people neg well reasoned, interesting comments that they happen to disagree with is irritating - and I think increasingly common around here.
January 9th, 2012 at 9:22 PM ^
I would really like to have posbangs, at least a max of five points, I work very hard for some of my comments. All kidding aside, it would be pretty cool, but we cant have people being like "OMGZZ I GOT MOAR POINTZ THAN U I M SO MUCH MOAR BETTER THAN U!!!!1" and the people that are like "I DISAGREE WIF UR OPNION SO I NEGBANG U!!!1"
Also it would be cool if we could actually view all of our old posts from our accounts, whenever i hit page 2 it just goes to the latest board entries. I like going back and seeing my comments for some reason, DONT JUDGE.
January 9th, 2012 at 10:26 PM ^
Viva la pos bang
January 10th, 2012 at 1:26 AM ^
Myopic, superficial fanboys make up a good portion of this board (like virtually all online communities in sports, but many MGoers see their place as exceptional in this regard because a few members like to play around with pie charts). Giving some of these uniform blockheads a larger sword to swing probably isn't such a hot idea.