Should Flayrah's comment/story ratings be locked after a certain period?
Posted by Sonious (Tantroo McNally) on Fri 26 Oct 2012 - 17:47 — Edited by GreenReaper as of Sat 25 Jan 2014 - 22:51
No
45% (17 votes)
Yes, after a month
13% (5 votes)
Yes, after three months
24% (9 votes)
Yes, after six months
3% (1 vote)
Yes, after a year
13% (5 votes)
Yes, other timing
3% (1 vote)
Votes: 38
Comments
It has come to my attention that people who get extremely upset with someone will go and take out their frustrations upon historical comments and stories post by the user that has garnered their ire. In order to prevent this sort of behavior I'm putting forth this solution that will make a comment/story "historical" and remove it from the popularity vote. Basically if after a certain period people really shouldn't be looking at it unless they are actively searching for better or worse.
Obviously there are other methods too such as voting bans/suspensions for people who do this. Don't know which would be easier to implement.
I expect votes to be made in consideration of the content being voted on. If it is clear that a user is abusing the system, the votes concerned will be removed, and other appropriate action will be taken — up to and including removing the user's own ability to vote, comment, or post on the site.
A time limit on voting is probably not a bad idea, but there are several other options might can be considered, including a limit on the number of votes in a certain period, or limiting voting to a certain group of users.
Let me make it clear right now that making 322 one-star votes in 45 minutes is one example of unacceptable behaviour.
I've been victim to that kind of voting but I don't think locking all rating is the solution. Maybe better moderation and looking at people's voting breakdown would be better. If people only vote 1 or 5 stars then they are just abusing the system and more likely then not voting according to who shares their viewpoint. Also the problem is other people don't vote.
For example the AFA story has comments written by between about 9-10 people but most comments have less than 5 votes and some have none. That means people just aren't voting so a single 1 or 5 star completely throws off the system.
If comment x is average and gets one 2 star, four 3 stars and 1 4 star it gets an average of 3. If someone now votes a 1 or 5 it only move 0.3 points. If it's average but no one has voted it will move by 2 points (from where it should be).
If everyone votes on every comment or every story then the system works because no one vigilante can throw it off. If people don't even bother then one person with a grudge can completely wreck a registered poster's karma.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
This isn't about locking all voting, or about getting 1 starred in general this is about saying past a certain point feedback is no longer necessary because the comment is no longer new. The person who said it may no longer feel that way, the situation has moved on.
Basically what happened is that I had someone go though to 322 of my comments and 1 star them dropping my karma rating from 3.38 to 3.07 in the course of 45 mins, this one oddly came out of nowhere as I hadn't angered anyone lately that I'm aware of. Only reason I noticed it is because I'm good at numbers, enough to know when such shifts are natural or manipulated. Maybe that brony bob? Who knows, except the person that did it.
All the AFA comments wouldn't fall under this because the story is less then month old. Clearly shutting off comments too soon is too punishing to the purpose of the comment system. But leaving it open too long is also too punishing. I mean, I thought we were looking at current events, not history at a certain point a comment/story is just that.
More readers, more voters, and this becomes less of an issue. (What Sonious said is also true; this is more general.)
Everyone can help out here. Do you use other furry sites? Get us a link, or have them syndicate our feed (I can help). Have a homepage or personal site? Link us there. Contributor? Use the "all stories" link on your user page in sigs. Think of yourself as an ambassador of the site, whose task it is to show off the best that we have to offer. I know some of you are already doing this, but the less promotion I have to do myself, the more time I can spend on news.
We're on track to publish 80 stories this month. I would be highly surprised if none were of interest to your friends elsewhere.
Speaking as one of the site admins who reviews new comments to old posts (and has to remove spamlink posts fairly often), I have not observed this to be a problem in general. I recall a single instance in which one particular poster with an axe to grind would return periodically to an older thread to make one more comment, and I finally got tired of it and locked the thread, but that's an isolated instance. We do occasionally get a new reply to an old thread, but to my observation they have not usually been trolling or harassing in tone.
The issue is more comment ratings, i.e. someone with a grudge goes through all your comments and rates them down, causing a significant fall in karma. The poll is whether comment and story ratings should be fixed after a certain time.
Ah, I see what you mean. Mea culpa for not reading the question and the comment carefully enough. Do we have the ability to identify the parties guilty of vote-bombing a user like that, blocking them, and undoing their votes?
I have the ability to do that, yes. It is ultimately just a waste of people's time if they try.
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