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Just voted you a 5. I'm sorry I had to, but I guess you realize now that downvoting is Codeproject's dirty little secret. Really, there is absolutely no need to downvote anyone or anything. If a post obviously violates site rules (spam or racist or personally threatening), it should be removed, and anyone can click on Vote to remove message. If an article is very poor (or tries to sell something), there is the Report button.
You say "Answerers often get down voted just because the OP didn’t like the answer". Unfortunately, that is a very generous viewpoint. There is often no reason at all for the downvote; or maybe the downvoter is just having some fun, and doesn't care what your answer is; or maybe somehow you have offended someone and he is "getting even".
In any case, like Nish says, we do appreciate your answers, and I hope you keep a positive attitude about this situation, until we can eliminate the downvoting entirely.
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Hans Dietrich wrote: until we can eliminate the downvoting entirely.
I am all for this. 
Either vote a 5, or mark as abuse. There is no need for a down vote!
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Thank you!
OK, so far there's you, me, and Pete. How many more do we need to beat up on Chris to make Chris see reason on this?
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Count me in.
“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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I mentioned it because I try to "upvote" whenever I see an answer that's been unfairly downvoted.
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Hans Dietrich wrote: there is absolutely no need to downvote anyone or anything. If a post obviously violates site rules (spam or racist or personally threatening), it should be removed
I'm happy to get Luc in here to debate the opposing side, but from where I stand I still like to vote someone a 1 when I totally disagree with them. They aren't being abusive. They aren't posing spam. I just don't agree with them and like to be able to have a mechanism that shows the overall feeling of myself and others towards a post.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: I just don't agree with them and like to be able to have a mechanism that shows the overall feeling of myself and others towards a post.
It may have its rare uses, but the negatives far outweigh any good it has. Removing down-votes from posts and articles will make this a much better community in my opinion.
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Maybe so, but wouldn't the 3's become 1's instead? I agree with Chris on this. A 1 also gathers views in its own way, it just means that I am in disagreement and I want others to notice.
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Bassam Abdul-Baki wrote: Maybe so, but wouldn't the 3's become 1's instead? I agree with Chris on this. A 1 also gathers views in its own way, it just means that I am in disagreement and I want others to notice.
Not sure what you mean. I am proposing having only 5s (no 1 to 4 votes).
That's how it's in other forums like the MSDN forums. You either vote a post up or don't vote at all. You can report abusive/spam posts (does not count as a down vote).
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That's a bit too restrictive though. Everyone has some interest in some article or another. That would come down to just who having the most votes (count) as opposed to who having the best votes (total). I can understand if you wanted to change it from 1-5 to +/-1, then that would equalize all votes. But then again, that means votes for what works quickly as opposed to what works best might put the former ahead of the latter. I think the current methodology safeguards against all these scenarios.
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Well if you change you perspective of how votes work, then you will see that having only up-votes does not lose any functionality over having up/down votes.
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Sadly  , I'm just not seeing that. 
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That's because you have only used these forums. If you look at other popular forums, then you'll see it's not so bad. Once you get used to a specific set of rules/expectations, it's hard to change.
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. It's basically come down to his opinion vs that of a few others' opinion, and rightly he's going with his opinion as the right one.
That said, I will re-visit this issue in future and maybe I'll see if he can be convinced
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote: you'll see it's not so bad
Not really a motivator, is it?
Nishant Sivakumar wrote: That said, I will re-visit this issue in future and maybe I'll see if he can be convinced
If that happens, you'll have to change your name to Nishall.
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I think what's happened is that the membership has changed. 10 years or even 5 years ago, malicious 1-voting was (almost) non-existent. Chris has built CP to be a community, but now there are members who don't give a damn about that. It makes me very sad to say that, but we can't pretend it's not true, and the people who come to this forum with their anguish deserve better.
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Hans Dietrich wrote: and the people who come to this forum with their anguish deserve better.
It's not a case of the first time author complaining about a few 5s.
This is more about regular members who've been contributing and participating here for years feeling sad (rightfully so) about how anyone, absolutely anyone, can down vote their posts and articles.
And while down votes won't kill you, it can certainly ruin your day. And I don't think that's what Chris wants this community to be about - bitter vote wars.
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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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