As I'm sure you've noticed, there have been some changes to the ratings system.
“Boost Rating” = 1 positive vote
There is no super-secret formula for determining voting weight. All votes are equal. You can remove your vote if you change your mind, but there is no longer any negative voting. We found that negative voting was often abused and rarely contributed.
As part of the change, everyone's ratings filter has been reset to “All Messages.” Please experiment with your filter and make adjustments to accommodate the new system.
It will probably no longer be feasible to use ratings as a personal filter to weed out posts you don't wish to see, and it is not intended as such. The ratings system is meant to be a community filter, not a personal tool.
Previous uses of negative voting, and what you should do now:
spam, repost, wrong forum --> send in a moderator alert
poor title, missing information --> reply with helpful suggestions to the poster
don't like the deal? --> walk on by, not much value in replying and bumping a crappy deal
scrabbler said: The vote button is missing?It says "boost rating" now.Also, what happened to the thread ratings? Threads that had double-digit ratings are now down to single digit ratings.Give it a few minutes while we work out the kinks. That's a lot of voting history that has to transfer over.
adiganifatwallet
Senior Member
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:14a
nunaliorte said: It will probably no longer be feasible to use ratings as a personal filter to weed out posts you don't wish to see, and it is not intended as such. The ratings system is meant to be a community filter, not a personal tool.
Previous uses of negative voting, and what you should do now:
spam, repost, wrong forum --> send in a moderator alert
poor title, missing information --> reply with helpful suggestions to the poster
don't like the deal? --> walk on by, not much value in replying and bumping a crappy deal
I totally disagree with this new feature. In fact, it is good for FW members (probably not for FW owner) to see if it is a hot deal or just someone newbie posting or self advertisement. When the red flag feature is reset like this, FW enforces all member to check out all new posting. After all, the FW members respond faster than the FW mods.
I hope this can be re-adjusted in the near future for members convenient and without reducing profit for FW. FW does not work like digg.com.
You should keep the negative rating. Just make the filter to all messages anyways. That way at least we can see the bad topics or reposts without having to sift through every thread. This change deserves a negative.
i like the neg votes bc like above poster, it filters out the spam and newbies reposts. now i have to read every post and scan myself. NOT a good improvement.
Obviously not everyone know what price is hot for certain item. And people in FW vote on item when they don't even closely keeping track of the price (or recent deal) of that item.
For example, a lot of people vote positive just for the effort (like those Amazon Friday deal post) instead of real Deal in the post.
If the price is not hot, even if 10 persons vote green because they think it is hot (or just thank for the effect), usually there will be enough people to counter those vote so the rating is closed to neutral (neither green nor red). This is how rating system supposed to work. But in this new system, you just need to have 10 friends sign up from school, and come in to vote green, then it will always look like positive (and hot deal). But in fact the price may be just ok.
Making this rating system useless to find out if the deal is good deal or ok deal. Let's say it again, not all member know what price is HOT DEAL and need other FW members that do know the hot deal price to balance out the vote.
cryptopunk
Tired Member
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:18a
This is, IMHO, a bad change. Especially in the finance forum which frequently cluttered with useless topics. Only by neg'ing threads below the threshold is the signal-to-noise ratio kept in any way acceptable. Bah.
nunaliorte said: don't like the deal? --> walk on by, not much value in replying and bumping a crappy deal So we can't neg it, and we also shouldn't reply? Great idea! And what about when someone posts a deal that involves a scam site or something? People who simply react to the price can give the thread a positive rating, but people who know that buying from that retailer is a bad idea can't counter. People can reply (and bump the thread), but that doesn't necessarily have the same effect. It's also more effort for members.
Removing negative voting is just another stupid, unneeded change. Oh well.
upNdown
Cranky Member
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:20a
Yeah, this is lame. Any abuses of the negative ratings could have only resulted in a few hurt feelings (which is silly). If something really was a decent deal, then isolated negative "abuses" would have little effect on the overall rating.
Perhaps instead of getting rid of the negative ratings, you should get rid of the people who for whatever reason (thin skin, ratings obsession) couldn't handle a few negative votes.
I second adip, pop & premed. Worst FW change yet. The negative ratings helped me scan past the useless posts without having to waste time. I HATE wasting time!
aool2msn
Senior Member
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:23a
upNdown said: Yeah, this is lame. Any abuses of the negative ratings could have only resulted in a few hurt feelings (which is silly). If something really was a decent deal, then isolated negative "abuses" would have little effect on the overall rating.
Perhaps instead of getting rid of the negative ratings, you should get rid of the people who for whatever reason (thin skin, ratings obsession) couldn't handle a few negative votes.
I agree this new system bites
WKnt
Senior Member
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:25a
I think the Negs were alrite... Occasionaly people would use it to hide a really good deal but only rarely were they used inappropriately. Not often enough to warrant taking them away I feel.. I feel they were more beneficial than malicious. I hope the newbies don't get conned just because they don't see any negs..
scrabbler said: nunaliorte said: scrabbler said: The vote button is missing?It says "boost rating" now.I don't see "boost rating". Where is it located?It's only available to "super-secret" people!
DsNRaY
Senior Member
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:26a
i think this is a terrible move, we need the red flag back. some users that are unsure of a certain product's currency rely on the red or green flag to tell if its a good or bad deal. Also, this will waste us memebers a ton of time filtering the good deals from the bad deals by reading every thread. bring back the red flag
And while this idiotic change is being implemented, the system is broken? Everything is at either 0 or +2 now.
mescad
Member
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:27a
Ok, I'll try to put a positive spin on this, because everyone (including me) seems to think this is a bad idea.
Who thinks this is a good idea?
krazykris
Senior Member - 2K
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:27a
I think this is a horrible idea. Sometimes I honestly don't know whether a deal is good or not, and I rely on some feedback from the FW crowd. Without the ability to rate neg, if a deal has no ratings, how can you tell if its a BAD deal vs. a deal that is ok, but nothing special?
buffalobreath said: scrabbler said: nunaliorte said: scrabbler said: The vote button is missing?It says "boost rating" now.I don't see "boost rating". Where is it located?It's only available to "super-secret" people! Ok, gotcha. All votes are equal now. Though only certain people get to vote.
udonoogen
Thrifty Member
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:28a
poor change! red!! makes the readability of fatwallet go down tremendously. this was the only thing that fatwallet really had over Anandtech. the people aren't as helpful or funny here, but i kept coming because shopping for deals was more efficient. back to AT. cheers.
yanks0114
Senior Member - 1K
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:29a
adiganifatwallet said: nunaliorte said: It will probably no longer be feasible to use ratings as a personal filter to weed out posts you don't wish to see, and it is not intended as such. The ratings system is meant to be a community filter, not a personal tool.
Previous uses of negative voting, and what you should do now:
spam, repost, wrong forum --> send in a moderator alert
poor title, missing information --> reply with helpful suggestions to the poster
don't like the deal? --> walk on by, not much value in replying and bumping a crappy deal
I totally disagree with this new feature. In fact, it is good for FW members (probably not for FW owner) to see if it is a hot deal or just someone newbie posting or self advertisement. When the red flag feature is reset like this, FW enforces all member to check out all new posting. After all, the FW members respond faster than the FW mods.
I hope this can be re-adjusted in the near future for members convenient and without reducing profit for FW. FW does not work like digg.com.
I would "boost" your post except I can't find the freaken button.
nunaliorte said: To weed out useless posts --> raise your ratings filter. but wouldn't that keep you from seeing new hot deals posted, possibly not showing up until after the deal ends up dead?
buffalobreath said: scrabbler said: nunaliorte said: scrabbler said: The vote button is missing?It says "boost rating" now.I don't see "boost rating". Where is it located?It's only available to "super-secret" people! It'll be there soon...
fentonpcrackshell
Senior Member - 3K
posted: Sep. 13, 2006 @ 11:30a
nunaliorte said: To weed out useless posts --> raise your ratings filter.Thats silly. Then no one would see the HOT DEAL that could've been... This is the best idea since the new gey look.
nunaliorte said: To weed out useless posts --> raise your ratings filter.Taking your suggestion to extremes and assuming everyone did this, new posts would not be seen by anyone, so good deals would not be "boosted", and then FW fades into obscurity.
nunaliorte said: To weed out useless posts --> raise your ratings filter. You mean so we can't see anything that hasn't been "boosted?" Yeah, that's brilliant... very helpful.
I don't like it either. It makes making critisism harder. If we critisize a post, it gets bumped to front, and there's no visual indication that the post isn't good. We just have to hope it gets buried deep under without people replying to it.
shopliftinginva said: nunaliorte said: To weed out useless posts --> raise your ratings filter. but wouldn't that keep you from seeing new hot deals posted, possibly not showing up until after the deal ends up dead?I was thinking the same thing. Green for you!
To paraphrase Mr. Orwell.... All votes are equal, but some votes are more equal than others
I like the negative vote option, but am willing to see how this works.
scrabbler said: buffalobreath said: scrabbler said: nunaliorte said: scrabbler said: The vote button is missing?It says "boost rating" now.I don't see "boost rating". Where is it located?It's only available to "super-secret" people! Ok, gotcha. All votes are equal now. Though only certain people get to vote.
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