Upvotes and Downvotes

[hags2k]

I read a lot of comments on the internet and I love TB. Some of my other favorite sites include Reddit, Ars Technica, Slashdot (back in the day), and a few others.

As any site becomes more and more popular and more populated, the number of people contributing unhelpful, uninformative, and inciteful comments naturally increases. TB is now one of the (if not THE) most popular forum online for bassists.

Anyway, one of the reasons I still enjoy reading Reddit is that, even though it has millions and millions of users now, the commenting system allows some degree of control over the crap - pointless/flaming/unhelpful comments are downvoted, and so a casual reader can still get a good helping of interesting commentary without having to read tons of crap. This is especially true in the individual communities, which often have far less "controversial" posts - even in /r/bass, the reddit bass community which is only a fraction of the size of TB, the upvote/downvote system has been quite helpful.

I feel like, more and more, I have to read more and more crap in every TB thread between the really good, helpful, informative, and interesting comments. It's more and more time wasted. I wish I had some way of "flagging" the good comments and the bad ones so that the next person reading the thread might have it a little easier.

I'm asking that the forum admins look into some kind of voting system to help with moderation. It doesn't have to be the default, and doesn't even have to be required (allowing users to view in traditional timeline view by default would be fine), but giving us an additional way to look at it would be very nice. Could be a supporting-member-only feature in the beginning, too, just to try it out.

I think if there were even a rudimentary voting system in place, it'd be much easier to quickly skip pointless or unhelpful comments, instead of each and every comment getting equal attention and forcing me to read every one of them.

Anyway, I know some people might think this is against the philosophy of a forum like this one, and as I said it doesn't have to be on by default, but where's the problem with giving us an option to have a potential "shortcut" and help us cut down on the time spent reading low-value comments?

[TNCreature]

I like it.

[Stumbo]

[hags2k]

+1. Upvoted. "This". Etc.

[tastybasslines]

It's a cool idea - I like it too, in theory. That being said, you introduce purposeful down voting, where someone may not like you what you say, even though it's not inciteful. And because people know each other so well here and have good friends on the site, they may on the other hand, upvote friends posts willy nilly. Then you would not be getting good info. Also, the proper flow of the conversation gets interrupted, and comments (read: posts) will get pulled out of context as they go up and down. I also don't like that a good majority of the posters here will get their posts buried right off the bat, and everyone deserves a chance to be heard.

That aside, I don't mind the trolls and silly comments, if that's what you are trying to avoid - at least it keeps things interesting. TBH, I don't want to read only "high quality" comments all the time.

[hags2k]

Originally Posted by tastybasslines

It's a cool idea - I like it too, in theory. That being said, you introduce purposeful down voting, where someone may not like you what you say, even though it's not inciteful. And because people know each other so well here and have good friends on the site, they may on the other hand, upvote friends posts willy nilly. Then you would not be getting good info. Also, the proper flow of the conversation gets interrupted, and comments (read: posts) will get pulled out of context as they go up and down. I also don't like that a good majority of the posters here will get their posts buried right off the bat, and everyone deserves a chance to be heard.

That aside, I don't mind the trolls and silly comments, if that's what you are trying to avoid - at least it keeps things interesting. TBH, I don't want to read only "high quality" comments all the time.

I agree that some people might not like it - hence why I think using the system could/should be optional. Just a click in your user prefs to "show/hide" up/downvotes or something like that. Then you could ignore it entirely.

Also, I think the nature of the community has a lot to do with how well voting works. If a community as divided and all-over-the-map as reddit can make it work, a generally-positive, good-natured community like TB wouldn't have any problems, I don't think.

Also, voting arrows allow a person's voice to be heard without having to reply. How many of us read thread after thread without ever replying? Wouldn't it be nice to have some way to reward interesting contributions without having to log in, quote the person, and then contribute a pointless "I agree" comment?

Take a look at the comments over on Ars Technica - the voting there is very unobtrusive, with little or no spiteful "burying" of comments. I don't think it'd be a huge issue here, either.