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Negative voting on coRank, explained by coRank developer RBA
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http://corank.zoomblog.com/archivo/2007/03/13/the-negative-v...
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60 months, 1 day, 17 hours agocoRank developer Rogelio Bernal Andreo has a blog-post about the problems of negative voting. He says: "Originally I meant the negative vote to be nothing but a "I don't find this interesting" statement. And somehow, I still think that this would be the best way to have coRank deliver good results. But as we shall see, it's not as easy as it seems... Because I fear my negative vote might upset the submitter."
#1 - By jobless, 60 months, 1 day, 14 hours ago.
I absolutely agree with your decision. Thats a good way to keep spam under control.
#13 - By i48998, 60 months, 9 hours ago.
I was making a comparison with the features being promoted here with that of Clipmarks. As far as I'm concerned, sharing the snippets of relevant text/pictures versus just the plain old boring link is a huge improvement in the evolution of web experience. Like yourself, I've been using Clipmarks and I use delicious to store plain URLs, but the community experience provided by Clipmarks is far superior to digg. Okay, I haven't been with coRank for long so I may be biased a little for now, but aside from coRank's upcoming group feature, I really don't see anything new here which I haven't seen at Clipmarks already.
I take my "whining" back on the general state of things, you're right, it is not appropriate under the subject. As for the subject matter, vote down or negative votes are really not the way to go under any democratic society (virtual or otherwise). Perhaps this site can learn at least this from the Clipmarks. #14 - By L1Wulf, 60 months, 8 hours ago.
:) I'm glad to see that you replied. This type of conversation is much more productive--and I do see your point (more clearly now); the social features here really aren't anything revolutionary. It is how the features tie in with each other that provide a novel end result is where it's at. I still say that, ultimately, the end purpose of Clipmarks and coRank are different.
I see coRank as providing me with a means to find certain news and pages that are relevant based on sources I choose (based on their merits in submissions and like-minded voting, etc.). The more I toy with the settings, the more I've come to appreciate the fine grained control over what appears on my front page. It's not quick and easy (not that it's hard or anything), but for having just released, I think it is pretty stable in providing what I expect. I think that given time, coRank will polish nicely--let's not forget that Clipmarks has more than a few months over coRank in age. Truly, my jibe at your "whining" was not really aimed directly at you, but was an off-handed way of showing that coating a jab with "no disrespect" still carries a negative connotation. Seriously, I have no ill will towards you and I'm glad that you returned to comment. Let's shake hands and move on! :) #12 - By RBA, 60 months, 20 hours ago.
Yes, during the closed beta there was a member very vocal about getting rid of the "down" vote, but I found - and still find - very useful to also gather and apply that information, and that's why it did stay. And it is going to stay.
For now, the +/- labels have been changed to "Interesting" and "Not for me", but I agree some work will need to be done to make it more obvious, not only to the people who vote but for the people who submit stories. I also think that it "helps" the fact that the site is still learning how to walk and still has a small number of users. If I today send a story and it gets 1 + and 3 -, I may feel like "well, if only one person found interesting what I submitted, why bother?". That feeling might change if I had got 100 + and 300 -, because even 300 people said they didn't care, at least I know 100 people benefitted from it. #11 - By Achro, 60 months, 23 hours ago.
I think a label that conveys that up and down votes show a personal preference of what people want to see would be: More / No more
#10 - By L1Wulf, 60 months, 1 day ago.
Watching usage patterns sounds like a sound idea--but, as evidenced by the small sample of people here, I think there remains a lot of confusion on how to use the votes. Doesn't this mean that the results will most likely mimic what we already have a la Digg, etc.?
The novelty of having control, on several different levels, of what gets my attention on My Front Page is what many of us ex-Diggers are salivating over. I like the idea, no I LOVE the idea that, with a little bit of work no and again, I have a reasonable assurance that 90% of what I see on My Front Page will be interesting enough to warrant a look. Being able to give weight to what is or isn't interesting to me via votes is quick, easy to understand, and /almost/ natural. I think the main issue is more about how negative votes will be perceived and how they affect not only myself, but others as well(fans, sources, and random Joes not in either category). Tell me "this is how it's used" and "this is how it affects things" and then watch usage. Yes, I know this is mentioned somewhere, but it wasn't obvious enough or persistent enough to keep me from wondering if I remembered this right. When I came across the blog post in discussion here, I started off by saying, "Aha! I was right..." and ended with, "Um, so is this going to change, is it broken, or what?" I say, keep the original intent of the voting, but clarify and nudge us in the right direction--then watch and adjust as needed. #9 - By L1Wulf, 60 months, 1 day, 1 hour ago.
Comparing this site to Clipmarks is like comparing your house to your car. They really don't serve the same purpose and functionality overlaps in only minimal fashion.
Clipmarks is designed for "bite-sized" tidbits from the web. Its main purpose is giving visitors and users quick nibbles of the important parts of a page (this is reflected in the change with public clips being limited to 1000 characters). For the record, I've been (and continue) using Clipmarks for a while now (same name over there), so it's not like I've just run over there and read the FAQ page to make the comparison. This site (as well as others) deal more with linking to actual pages of interest--the difference from these sites and plain old link blogs (et al) is that the chaff gets filtered out and "the good stuff" is right in front of you. Yes, this is a difference from Digg and coRank. I've spent less and less time on Digg simply because I find more and more junk has to be waded through, just to find something of interest. The wisdom of the masses used to be people with interests similar to me--this is no longer the case. Here, I have control over who is influencing what as it appears on my front page. Even at this early stage I can control which categories each person influences and assign a weight on their influence. Show me where I can find this same functionality (or something equally as functional) and I will gladly check them out and decide which gets my daily visit. So, while you are entitled to think the features here are absurd, I think that making a brash judgment and criticizing without being constructive is a waste of everyone's time, especially your own. Regarding your last paragraph: nobody is dragging anybody from one site to another--we, as users, have control over where we click on the web. If you are that unhappy, you can either do your own thing, or try being productive and help make an existing site better. No disrespect, but whining about the state of things in a comments section under a post that is not really relevant to your complaint is far from productive. #8 - By shinynew, 60 months, 1 day, 2 hours ago.
kind of like stumble upon
#7 - By RBA, 60 months, 1 day, 6 hours ago.
Let me add to this that we're considering a few ways to neutralize this issue, and some of them make sense to me. Just let me chew on it for a few days and I'll write a new blog post about the subject. I think in the end everything's going to work out just fine.
#6 - By RBA, 60 months, 1 day, 6 hours ago.
I believe that a great website is the one that adapts to how people use it, rather than dictating how it should be used. Having said that, I also believe it is good to have some guidelines.
Regarding this issue, my take is that while I vouch for the vote being a personal preference (vote + if you find it interesting, or - if you don't), I think the best thing is to let everyone use it however they want. I will be keeping an eye on usage patterns and will definitely act accordingly if I see a trend. Does this make sense? #5 - By i48998, 60 months, 1 day, 6 hours ago.
Don't mean to sound disrespectful towards the efforts here, but I find the claim that there is something new here on this site, is rather absurd. Agreed that there are lots of disgruntled visitors from digg and other places but the features which are being advertised here as new are not really new. Clipmarks has personalized page, follow the fellow clippers page, and no negative voting ... plus much, much more.
I really think people ought to work together on these social-networking-bookmarking craze, it seems every other developer is working on the same thing over and over again and people are just being dragged from one site to another achieving nothing new in return. #4 - By liquidboy, 60 months, 1 day, 7 hours ago.
the information was great but there was still no clear indication how we should use that button?
I hope i got this right, you went on to say that RBA uses it to vote down stuff he doesn't like then he just stopped doing this because of negative connotations. So how does he use it now? If that button is used half heartedly then it's not really going to be useful in any algorithm because it's usage pattern is irregular and unstable.. #3 - By L1Wulf, 60 months, 1 day, 9 hours ago.
I found myself thinking this same thing and wondering, "Am I doing this wrong?" I think the up/down voting definitely carries the wrong connotation--especially for Digg converts, etc. More emphasis should be placed on it being a personal rating (and thus a rating for your fans). Maybe some way to segregate the up/down votes when looking at my front page and all sources, or something similar--a dual vote if you will.
#2 - By trojan, 60 months, 1 day, 10 hours ago.
But how many really understand the concept of negative voting???
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