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Nish,
Gimme a day or two to get over some fairly rough jetlag so I can go through the messages and form a sensible answer. I've been following this debate for months now and the only thing that has come out if it is that members disagree on what's best, and that it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing answer across the entire site.
Here's my most pressing question:
If you remove downvotes how do you distinguish between a poorly written (but not offensive, not inaccurate, not reportable) and an OK article that hasn't been voted yet?
The answer is (probably) that eventually the OK article will probably get a vote and will rise about the crap / pointless article, but there will be a period of time that the articles will be sorted as equals. Having the ability to mark an article, for posterity, as not of useful value means unvoted articles will not be lumped in together with them.
So the problem isn't necessarily downvotes, it's getting people to vote more often. With consistently high voting numbers we can do some statistical analysis and cut spurious down votes. Or, with consistently high voting rates we know that new articles will very quickly rise above the "nothings".
However, removing spurious votes may stiffle a true vote that a true expert has made in opposition to the voices of those who vote for the pretty pictures or popular author.
Alternatively, having only upvotes may still leave articles lumped with the "nothings", especially if other articles are getting voted so quickly that they rise up quickly and never give the OK article a chance at some fresh voters.
If the argument here is actually "I don't want to see a single downvote, even if I have 50 5 votes" then that is a very different argument and one I can understand and listen to, even though I don't agree. If the authors feel that ensuring an unblemished record on their articles is worth not having the ability to put distance between their articles and plain crap articles then I'll listen to that call.
If the argument is to stop voting wars then my feeling is I would prefer to fix the root cause rather than cripple the system. However, I'm realistic enough to accept that may not be possible, but in the meantime it's easy enough for me to undo the actions of down voters.
If the argument is to remove the random downvotes, then the previously mentioned statistical analysis combined with a push to increase voting rates is a better answer here.
And this doesn't even cover discussion boards like the Lounge. I truly feel that removing downvoting would take away something. Something mean spirited somtimes, yes, but also a flavour, an acceptance of differing opinions, an ability to poke a stick in someone's ribs and stir things up.
We need to act carefully here and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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If people want to offer criticism or negative feedback, they can easily use the tried and tested forum system. Each article has a forum, so why not use that? That way, every bit of criticism is well represented and backed by a thread/post explaining why someone thinks there are issues with the article.
And anyone reading the article can quickly go through the comments to see what's good or bad about the article and what peers think.
And regarding your point about how it will make it hard to distinguish between a new but excellent article with say 7 votes and an old but ordinary article that accumulated 7 votes from say 2 years, that's not really so. Higher number of votes do not always go with good articles. For example a WPF or SilverLight article with flashy screenshots will quickly collect a few dozen 5s in a few weeks. While if you write on the new features in MFC's CString in VS 2010 (just an example, CString did not change) it'll be unlikely that you'd get even 10 votes here. The voting patterns vary hugely across articles depending on how popular the topic is, and whether the article caters to a specific level of audience (beginner to intermediate articles will get way more votes than advanced topic articles, unless the advanced article is on an extremely popular topic).
Also, it's the averaging out of the rating that makes it even worse in my opinion. It's one thing to see that you got 20 upvotes and 4 downvotes. But to see that you now have a rating of 4.6/5 (meaning you lost 8% just like that) is not a great feeling for authors, specially new ones.
Now consider the case where an article absolutely sucks and a critic wants to express that; in this case he should use a "report article to editors" link that will tell the editors that it may be a good idea to nuke the article.
And all this has been about articles. As for posts, I don't really know why there needs to be down votes there either. If you don't like a post, don't read it. If you think it's abusive/spam, then mark it as abusive/spam (does not count as a downvote though), and a mod/editor will delete it later.
Same with the QA forums. Many times a newbie OP asks a question and someone replies with a perfectly accurate answer. The OP expected something else (usually copy/paste-able code) and gives the answer a 1. Of course, there are people like Espen (and myself) who are usually quick to spot these and counter it with 5s, but that's not the best way to do this. The post may not really deserve a 5 but we have to do it to counter the 1 which it didn't deserve either.
Chris Maunder wrote: We need to act carefully here and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I totally agree, the baby needs to be kept safe, but the bathwater's getting dirty 
And by the way, thanks for listening and responding Chris. While I always compare with the MSDN forums, out there, there's no room for feedback. You get what you get. I think it's great that you are prepared to spend some time listening to feedback from the community, even if the returns from that may not be good (like now, where the suggestions you are getting are probably not that easily implementable) 
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote: it's the averaging out of the rating that makes it even worse in my opinion
I need a lightbulb icon because that's an excellent observation.
I like a "...out of 5" rating system because it gives you an idea of how close to perfect (or how far!) an article is, whereas a number of upvotes is without a relative measure. Is 10 a lot or a little. However, 10 people who like an article is still 10 people, and that's not a bad thing.
Voting helps me implement sorting and ranking in the search, and that to me is very important. However, I understand that in the balance between what improves, possibly to only a minor amount, categorisation of our content has to be balanced very carefully against what rewards authors.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Seems you don't have jetlag with that articulate and verbose response.
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That was the caffeine talking.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Hans Dietrich wrote: the people who come to this forum with their anguish deserve better
Better than what? Am I letting you guys down by listening to all the back and forth discussions, weighing all opinions, and then trying to squeeze in all the requests, features and changes with the limited resources we have?
I cannot promise to do better, Hans. All I can offer is my best.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote: It's probably the same with Chris. He's had negative voting for so long that he's not very willing to consider an alternative
Not quite Nish.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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we should also ban all negative words. So whenever one of:
abominable, amiss, atrocious, awful, bad news, beastly, blah, bottom out, bummer, careless, cheap, cheesy, crappy, cruddy, crummy, defective, deficient, diddly, dissatisfactory, downer, dreadful, erroneous, fallacious, faulty, garbage, godawful, grody, gross, grungy, icky, imperfect, inadequate, incorrect, inferior, junky, lousy, off, poor, raunchy, rough, sad, slipshod, stinking, substandard, synthetic, the pits, unacceptable, unsatisfactory, damaging, dangerous, deleterious, detrimental, hurtful, injurious, ruinous, unhealthy, base, corrupt, criminal, delinquent, evil, iniquitous, mean, reprobate, sinful, vicious, vile, villainous, wicked, wrong, moldy, off, putrid, rancid, rotten, sour, spoiled, disastrous, distressing, grave, harsh, intense, painful, serious, terrible, adverse, disagreeable, discouraged, discouraging, displeasing, distressed, gloomy, grim, melancholy, troubled, troubling, unfavorable, unfortunate, unhappy, unpleasant (the list goes on, message is getting too long)
appears, either the sentence or the entire message should be removed automatically.
Next we must ban all negations of positive sentences.
And that isn't enough either, as the lack of a sufficient number of positive words could be interpreted as a disapproval. Therefore all adjectives should be banned.
That will make an interesting read.
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles] Nil Volentibus Arduum
Please use <PRE> tags for code snippets, they preserve indentation, improve readability, and make me actually look at the code.
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Not working Luc. Neither funny nor helping you establish whatever the heck it is that you are trying to prove here.
If you've got some actual criticism that makes sense, I'll be happy to listen.
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You could always downvote him... 
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Truly, you are the master.
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Chris Maunder wrote: I just don't agree with them
Then debate them; show them and the world where they are wrong.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ~ H.L. Mencken
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That same argument could be used against upvoting, or against voting in general.
And sometimes you don't want to convince someone they are wrong because they may not be "wrong", they may just have an opinion that differs from you.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: That same argument could be used against upvoting, or against voting in general.
Yep. I have no problem with that. I think the voting in the chat forums is just wrong.
Chris Maunder wrote: they may just have an opinion that differs from you.
And because they expressed it, you vote them down??? So if I think Java is an antiquated language, I should downvote every article in here that talks about it, in hopes that everyone will stop using it or at least stop talking about it?
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ~ H.L. Mencken
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Let's say someone says something along the lines of "VB is the best language ever" and there's a huge debate on the pros and cons. Let's say I read through it all and - surprise, surprise - I can't add anything because everything in this argument has already been said in the thread. 10 times. I would like to quitely just vote this bold and clearly dellusional statement a "1".
Now let's say someone says "I think Starbucks coffee is the nectar of the Gods". I'll vote it down and then spend 3 pages drilling into exactly how misguided and patently absurd this statement is.
I'm saying I like the option of participation by adding my coin to the pile without having to hang around and get caught up in the deluge.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: 10 times
at least
Chris Maunder wrote: Now let's say someone says "I think Starbucks coffee is the nectar of the Gods". I'll vote it down and then spend 3 pages drilling into exactly how misguided and patently absurd this statement is.
I didn't know you had studied theology.
Chris Maunder wrote: I would like to quitely just vote this bold and clearly dellusional statement a "1".
Whereas I would have ignored the entire thread since I'd know from the subject that everyone would be talking out of the wrong end of the GI tract.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” ~ H.L. Mencken
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Chris, everything you're saying made good sense ... when you started CodeProject. The kind of rational, reasonable scenario you describe existed then; you didn't have fun-seeking trolls lobbing anonymous downvote grenades into the crowds.
Who does downvoting hurt? The people you are trying to attract to CodeProject, new members who don't understand what they have done wrong, and sometimes (rarely) end up on this forum, asking for help or at least an explanation.
Who wants downvoting? Every explanation I've heard boils down to one thing: I like downvoting because I want to vote without participating. It's all about me. I want it, and I feel sorry for those who suffer from it, but it's what I want.
Does downvoting help the CodeProject community? No. Not in any way. Whatsoever.
Does downvoting hurt the CodeProject community? Yes. You've seen the posts on this forum. I believe these posts represent just a fraction of the members who are affected by this. Do you honestly believe the benefits of downvoting outweigh the loss of potential contributing members?
Let it go, Chris. Let's move on. ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
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Just to backup and clarify here:
Are you talking about removing downvotes for articles only, for articles and programming Q∓A, or for everything including the lounge and soapbox?
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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This might not sit well with some, but I believe consistency offers more value than trying to preserve some small piece of downvoting in some corners of CodeProject.
So yes, I would like to see no downvoting on anything, anywhere.
Again, if you want to apply this only to members below a status of [fill in color here], then I will trust your judgment.
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Chris Maunder wrote: I still like to vote someone a 1
The problem is not and has never been a Chris Maunder 1-vote. I know that you would never vote 1 in a mean-spirited or troll-ish way. The problem is the many members here who have no respect for other members. A 1-vote is just another toy for these people.
I would like to leave you and other responsible members the ability to 1-vote, because I do understand why you want this. But the anguish that 1-voting causes is not IMHO worth it. As Nish says, the site would be better off without it.
Glad you're back.
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I think we're getting somewhere. And thank you, North America, for your insanely cold welcome.
What about upvotes only for < bronze, all voting options for Bronze+?
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: What about upvotes only for < bronze, all voting options for Bronze+?
Bronze is too low. I think you become Bronze just by spending a day or two here. Silver and higher (and Silver in at least 2 categories, for further filtering).
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My sense is that Nish is right, bronze is way low. I'll be happy with whatever you decide.
Let me ask this: is it possible - in special circumstances - to set this threshold on a per-member basis? If a - say, gold - member starts throwing 1-votes around, would it be possible to prevent him from doing that, without affecting other gold members? Just thinking this might be a helpful tool.
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Hans Dietrich wrote: Let me ask this: is it possible - in special circumstances - to set this threshold on a per-member basis? If a - say, gold - member starts throwing 1-votes around, would it be possible to prevent him from doing that, without affecting other gold members? Just thinking this might be a helpful tool.
I second this.
Now that you can see what reputation a vote comes with, I've been quite surprised by how often it's a gold or platinum guy that votes you down without any provided/valid reason!
People blame the new bronze signups, but often enough, it's some of the seniors here who indulge in petty voting games.
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Heh. I'm thinking of the James Bond film Goldeneye, where they sent a "spike" to mess with the other guy. I think platinum members should have the ability to send a spike to 1-voters.
What you're saying makes sense, though. Recently I was shocked that John C started 1-voting people who were annoying him in a thread, as if he thought the thread was his own personal property. I think anyone can have a bad day, and that includes senior members. If that happened to someone in my family, I would step aside with that person, and ask what was going on. Anonymity appeals to the dark side.
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