In this thread I have been challenging the post voting system (or perhaps just the usage) at Planet maemo. Rather than depend on assumption or hearsay, I want to perform fact-based analysis.

This poll is designed to gage how people think the "thumbs down" function should work. That data will be compared against its designed function to help identify corrective action.

Thanks for your participation!

EDIT: lol... how ironic. Someone gave this poll a 1 star rating. to you.

EDIT 2: "disinterest" also includes keeping the post off the front page of maemo news.

Mhm... very interesting. The only reason I thought the 'thumbs down' is for isn't even an option here: Prevent it from being listed prominently on the front page (because it isn't Maemo-related and would look odd there).

I voted for 'inappropriate content for Planet maemo' now because it covers half of this aspect. - Interesting to see 'My dislike of the post' gathering votes meanwhile, directly and indirectly (via option 4).

The thumbs down should be given for inappropriate blog posts, i.e. stuff which isn't related to maemo, the internet tablets, etc., and also for posts which are on-topic, but are rubbish for whatever reason (don't make sense, etc.)

I can't remember how the karma metric is calculated for blog posts (and it has probably changed too), and specifically for the negative impact of "thumbs down", however I proposed that only the blog post tally is affected by the negative thumbs down, so it doesn't impact on the karma gained from the rest of your work on/for the tablets.

---browser went mad and submitted twice---

Yes, I agree with this lardman. "Not voting" is basically reading something and going "ok", voting yes means that "I approve of this message" and voting no is "I don't really want to see this here". I think it's pretty simple and functional. The more complicated something gets, the harder it makes to think about it and the less people use it.

"No" is not the end of the world. Otherwise you'll turn out like George Costanza. As this site says,

"Inferior extraverted feeling shows up in nearly every episode, but comes out explicitly when his girlfriend asks him rhetorically, "Does everyone have to like you?" George answers, "Yes! Everyone has to like me!" Here we see George's quixotic quest laid plain. He wants to be liked. But always on his terms, never on others'.

Whenever anyone doesn't like or respect George, he views this as a failure of reason in need of correction. The other person must be set straight so they properly appreciate George and see for themselves that he has only been doing right, only for the purest motives of respect for the right order of things. Thus he appeals to introverted thinking. He tries to get people to see what truly makes sense--that they should like him."

Texrat,

You've started two threads (including this one), and posted on your "vanity" thread. Don't take things so personally :-)

I have to admit that - in general (and I've been too busy the last few days to do this) - I'm more likely to thumb a post which is off-topic, or self-introspected, than one which is something I disagree with, or is Maemo related but not of interest to me. So, for example, I probably would thumb your post about numbers - why do I care, as a reader of maemo.org/news/ what makes your blog popular?

No matter how interesting it might be in a forum on "making blogs popular", it suffers from the same issue as Karoliina's airplane posts (well, the ones which weren't talking about using tablets as instrumentation), or zeenix's holiday posts. No matter how much of a community rockstar you are, the group consciousness of the post ranking system just doesn't like stuff with no Maemo connection in its content at all.

Cheers,

Andrew

Its very black/white and judgemental. Harsh truth hurts.. it is in almost all cases not personal though, I'm convinced about that.

If you'd get into some type of tags like Slashdot it gets pretty advanced and complex.

The total thumbs down could be hidden. Or the whole result private. Or the voters shown. This leads to a more positive feedback system but the end result is the same. Only the perception isn't. The harsh truth is that there is a limited amount of space available on the frontpage.

Maybe a better discussion is what do you mod up and down, and why?

Perhaps the moderation could be more personal. Like, bound to your account, and if you thumb down a post you don't see it anymore. Its hidden. You see another one. Combined with tags could become (optional) advanced learning. Or ignore posts from specific personae.

IMO this is a bigger, general problem. I experience it a lot when reading blogs...

I wasn't trying to be oblique, or clever, or make "such" a comment. You've started a blog. You've had some thumbs. Now you're shouting about the rating system.

That's fine, and understandable. The best way to get involved in a cause is because it affects you personally (see the "scratching your own itch" bits of the community cohesiveness thread).

Don't be so trite. You've talked about both your posts and those of others in the other threads. This thread talks about neither, but the abstract.

This poll does not mention the content of specific posts. You asked how the thumb function should be viewed; most of the time I've seen things dramatically and consistently thumbed down are when a post contains no Maemo content at all. You asked for views as to how we think it should be used, that's a view.

I was also trying to extrapolate the view of how the "people"[1] view how it "should" be used. (FWIW, I think trying to pin down how it "should" be used is a hiding to nothing, and we're better off just understanding how people do use it).

Cheers,

Andrew

[1] "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it." Agent K, Men in Black (1997)

You've thrown around your fair share of snide remarks in threads I'm quite certain their own creator's thought were very important. Don't try to push a double-standard.

No, you're the one that's losing his cool over nothing.

Hi,

I completely agree with Jaffa, the thumbs down, should be a way of moderate the maemo.org front page, so far in my opinion it works quite good.

This feature is also a form of 'education' for the people inside planet maemo, if I post something about X and I got some "thumbs down", I will think twice when mark posts about X with maemo tags again, because the community showed me that X is not appropriate/related stuff for the planet.

I wish other planets that I read, had a similar system