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fiend
Aug 11, 2002, 1:46 PM
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I have talked about this with various admins over the last year and some thought it might be good to see the rankings on this site dissapear.
I understand the reasons why they are in place but I offer new reasons to perhaps consider removing them.. or at least some of them.
Q-votes: I think Adam will agree that this is now somewhat of a sham. Under the old system (private votes) we had users giving votes as a means of casting stones at those who they disliked, it seems as though many could not resist abusing anonymity to attack someone's Q-score. Some of us felt we could fix this by making users accountable for their actions. That obviously didn't work, now almost everyone has a high Q-vote regardless of their climbing knowledge or personality.
I know the Q-votes were my idea, but I just don't think this community can handle the voting system.
Rankings: I don't have too much to say on this... I can't really say that I've seen the benefits of this because I'm not that involved with the routes database and don't know if this is (still?) triggering the friendly competition to enter new information and expand our DB. I may only be hearing the bad things but it seems to be a common problem for people to edit route information, not change anything, then leave their name on the route to claim the points for it.
I do see these points as a valid admin tool for ranking contributions and seeing who's doing how much work. Which is why I suggest that maybe these rankings could be made visible to admin only. I for one don't care about seeing my name on the front page as a top contributor, I did the work I did here because I love the site, not the credit, but we could still keep that list if others wanted... we just wouldn't have to attach a number to it on the contrib page.
Post Counts: I think it would be cool to just not count these at all. What does it matter if someone posts 5 times in a row VS editing one single post? If you're after a number then I guess it does matter to you but sometimes it's just less hassle. I know these have no real meaning so I don't really care if they stay or go, I just think it would be neat to not have the number displayed
Photo Votes: this I agree with. it's necessary to sort the photos in some kind of way and having the users vote works perfectly. I do think however that the actual vote should be kept private until 10 or 15 votes have been reached and then made visible. I also think these votes should be recalculated at the end of each day to keep them from moving through the rankings after each vote (I'm not sure if it's like this already or not).
This way a photo sits as a new photo with no number attached to it to sway someone's voting decision. I feel that this would give us a good base of 10 or 15 votes to place the photo before people start vote bombing it to move it down the list or something.
Hmm, I can't seem to think of anything else right now. The above is just a personal opinion and a suggestion to be taken with a grain of salt. I just think it would be cool to open up the site and not be confronted with numbers and popularity contests.
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jhwnewengland
Aug 11, 2002, 2:39 PM
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I agree fiend, get rid of the Q-votes, rankings, and post count. They all have more negative effects than positive in my opinion. As far as the photo votes, I've never voted on one and don't have much to say about that. I just look at the ones that I see and like, and couldn't imagine wasting my time "vote bombing" photos to change their order on the list. People should be contributing to the site for reasons similar to yours, not to boost their egos by making their user ratings higher.
Jan
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duskerhu
Aug 11, 2002, 3:46 PM
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I think fiend has some very valid points here and I generally agree...
The Q-votes are a popularity contest and for some reason, some users find it necessary to constantly make irrelevant or meaningless posts, numerous times to the same thread (re:post-master) to inflate thier post-count and "rank-title"...
REAlly, who cares...??? I think the original theory was born of good intentions, but has turned out differently.
As far as the photos go, I have looked at a good number of pics and voted for a few but I don't personally know how that works very well yet. However, from what I have seen, it looks to me that this could be the same deal as the Q-votes; a popularity contest. It might be better to just have a random assortment of photos pop-up on the front page as apposed to the voting deal (of course take this from a guy who doesn't totally know how the system works).
At any rate, I think this would be a good subject for discussion, say on the Topic Of The Week board...
We shall see...
Live Free!
Play Hard!
Climb On!
duskerhu (edited for "topic of the week" board)
[ This Message was edited by: duskerhu on 2002-08-11 08:51 ]
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jmlangford
Aug 11, 2002, 4:25 PM
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I don't think people stealing others routes to get points is a problem at all. If it happens, it is rare and I guarantee you that nobody in the top 20 does it. If you see someon has 'stolen' your route and it is that important, go 'steal' it back!
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beyond_gravity
Aug 11, 2002, 4:45 PM
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Q-votes: I dont care about this anymore. Almost all my recent votes are 10's, and I have a few 0's from people that dont even use this sight anymore. May as well ditch it, people dont care what your Q-rating is.
Ratings: Whatever works...I dont do anything on this site to boost me rating
Post counts: your just jealouse cuz I passed you ...I post because I Like to not for the post count, I may post somthing stupid just so I can get that extra post to give me my new title, but thats it. I think we should keep it, however. It's kind of nice having a record of how much i've actually spend on here!
Photo Votes: I've just started with the whole Photo thing, and i've notised that some balless Jackass is giving all my photo's a one. I think that if you vote on the picture, a comment should be mandatory
I think that you should have a clock that counts all the hours we have spent on the site...oh man, 12 hours+/day!
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roughster
Aug 11, 2002, 4:50 PM
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I agree, remove all votes, they have really turned into a weapon rather than any kind of feedback system.
I would say keep the rankings for route/photo/additions to site. I like to see who is active. I think route stealing for points is very very rare.
Photos IMO are in need of a retooling.I would say make the default listing should be by Date, therefore new pics make the front page. Then allow a "vote" not a number but just a vote. Then rank them by shear number of votes. No Qualitative numbers.
I like your idea about not updating photo rank/votes until midnight if we stay with the old system. That would stop someone effectively ruining a picture by hitting it with a one as a second vote, thus removing it from people every seeing it.
Maybe have the front page alternate between page loads from new photos and ranked photos, so we get some variety on the front page. Variety is a good thing when it comes to climbing photos. Hell I would think just make the 1st page photo COMPLETELY random from all submitted photos. Just have it randomly generate photo ID #s and put the associated photo on the front page
All in all Fiend, I think this would be a great move for the site. Some of my friends that I have showed the page too say its to "click-ish" for their tastes and just don't bother adding info/photos/or posts. Removing alot of the ranking systems would help that go away and not hurt the community at all.
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jds100
Aug 11, 2002, 7:44 PM
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I agree completely (and have said so for a few months, in different forums). The focus on points and ranking don't add to the RC.com experience, and do in fact detract from it.
I hadn't thought about the "number of posts" matter before, but I agree that it really doesn't provide helpful information.
I think the idea behind the rankings and the points was to reward users for their contribution. But, clearly, the reward has become too much and too often the objective. I too have heard from others about the "cliquish" tone that visitors often perceive from their visit to RC.com.
I also agree that a greater breadth of rotation for the photos on the front page would be nice to see; I think a random generation from the entire database would be great.
I'm tempted to talk about this in terms of "fairness" and such, but I recoginze that RC.com is a private business, and the owners have the right, for the most part, to do with the site what they want. A way of discussing this which I think is valuable and valid to everyone, though, is to consider the experience of a visitor's time spent on the site. What adds value; what detracts? A reward from one perspective could be seen as favoritism -or punishment, or the lack of a welcome- from another perspective.
I don't think a contrived system of reward, however well-intended, will improve quality of the site, nor increase participation.
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climbinganne
Aug 11, 2002, 9:51 PM
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I know the Q-votes were my idea, but I just don't think this community can handle the voting system.
can you elaborate on this??
[ This Message was edited by: climbinganne on 2002-08-11 14:52 ]
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natec
Aug 11, 2002, 10:25 PM
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Hey Tradpuppy,
Why don't you watch it with the freaking slams against where people live. There's no need to single out someone's home like that. I live in Ohio, and your comment pissed me off pretty good. Ever been there?
You could have made your point without singling anyone out and talking about them or their family as "Billybobs lookin for a purty mouth".
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natec
Aug 11, 2002, 10:59 PM
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I don't make those comments. If you are referring to another post of mine, those words were taken directly from the guidebook.
I didn't mean to take it the wrong way but reread it and put Tennessee in there. You would probably feel similar.
It's all good man, I understood the point you were making.
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fiend
Aug 11, 2002, 11:24 PM
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To clarify things maybe...
I don't take the post counts seriously, pretty much all forums have this feature, I just personally think it'd be kinda neat to axe them
As for the routes database, I don't think people 'stealing' routes is really that big a problem but I do know that it has been an issue a few times in the last year or two. As an admin (and even when I'm not I still discuss admin stuff with the current admins ) maybe I just hear about it more than others.
Anne: My comments about the Q-votes stem from the fact that the idea came from another site for programmers. Every user had a ranking although they used titles instead of numbers... so you could rank someone a Code Master, or a Generic Joe, or an Incompetent Octopus or something ( I don't remember them and I'm not feeling creative ).
On everyone's profile you could see all the votes they had for them and all the votes they'd given out to others. The majority of posters had a large number of votes which tends to even scores out a little bit. People seemed to vote honestly and those that didn't were usually drawn out in the wash. Users also seemed to stand behind their opinions. These ranks weren't just names by the way, they reflected the merit of any technical information you provided so that users could see if someone was known for posting bad information.
On another site ( photo.net ) you can see all the votes that have been made for your photos. People vote low, they make bad comments but they stand behind their votes and exhibit accountability.
I myself have voted people low scores because I didn't like them rather than scoring out of 5 for technical accuracy and 5 for personality. I have also voted some people 10's because they are great people, but I realize now that they are still beginners and may not have a lot of technical knowledge just yet.
My main piece of evidence that shows people here don't stand behind their votes is that when the votes were private people had very low votes. When the votes were made visible all the Q-scores shot up. Why would they change? If you voted someone a 4 last week why not stand behind that? Perhaps we should have given the option to remove votes because I do see situations where you may have voted a friend something they might not like and since that vote was made under the assumption that they'd never see it then you should have the right to remove it because we decided to make it visible. I did however suggest that maybe we should just erase all votes and start from scratch with votes visible but not too many people really wanted to go that way.
I've been rambling too much lately
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pushfurther
Aug 12, 2002, 12:25 AM
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posts should not count toward your website ranking.
keep the photo votes, but make a comment mandatory.
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climbinganne
Aug 12, 2002, 12:30 AM
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thank you mark for the lengthy clarification...i knew what you meant by your origial post, but i thought you should expain you were not in fact saying the members here are a bunch of morons....
about q-votes and rating/rankings:
frankly my dear...i don't give a damn
i find it archaic and precocious
anyhow, on that note it was a nice commentary though mark...interesting reading...
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eric
Aug 12, 2002, 1:18 AM
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The people who visit this site with any frequency know who can be counted on for reliable, quality information and who are just generally nice people. The number is nearly meaningless in this regard and as most people here seem to agree is used often as a means of punishment or rewarding a friend, not identifying valuable contributors to the site.
I think the number of posts is a reasonable indicator of how long a person has been a member and how active they are. And obviously it's a number other people have no effect on.
But the systems of ranking, particularly the Q-ratings and photo ratings, are clearly inadequate. On well-developed community sites such as Slashdot.org there are ways of auditing user voting so that low scores are negated or minimized (sometimes called "karma"). It would be hard to apply such a system here, but not impossible.
Roughster in this thread suggested a single vote for a photo -- not a number. I think this is a really good idea, and perhaps not just for photos. It doesn't give people a means to punish, only reward.
As a new member of the site, I actually like being able to identify people who have made valuable contributions to the site and even with the current system that is possible. But perhaps simple, single, non-retractable votes coupled with number of posts and the "member since" info in the profile would work even better.
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climberchic
Aug 12, 2002, 2:10 AM
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Look at me, I'm a perfect example:
93 votes. All 10s with one 6 and two 9s (both from very good friends of mine ). I don't know how this happened. Not only am I a climbing gumby, but I'm a b*tch to boot.
I don't know how to really elaborate on what Mark said other than...
You said it brother. I agree completely.
Get rid of the Q's, the ratings, and the post counts.
Picture votes should stay.
~Erica
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soulclimberchick
Aug 12, 2002, 2:23 AM
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All I can say is that I completely agree with fiend about everything...and I dont have much to add because everything he says I agree with! Great idea, I'm all for it!
Rock On!
~*Kira*~
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metoliusmunchkin
Aug 12, 2002, 2:44 AM
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Personally, I believe that the setting that allows the reader to view the number of posts made by a particular user is a great feature. It gives a sort of seniority of sorts (with some exceptions to a few who shall remain nameless).
I also believe it would be pretty cool if the posts did not count toward a user's rating, only photo submissions and route submissions. I think if this happened, there would be a great increase of the DB regard. I would feel, however, that I would be missing out on some massive points on that one though... but oh well.
Thirdly, I think that the User ranking should continue to exist, simply with differing terms (differing from those which hold today). It is up to you guys (admins) in my opinion, to compose these new "terms."
I'm easy, it's your call you guys.
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wildtrail
Aug 12, 2002, 2:50 AM
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Well, I like it for a couple of reasons.
I like to watch to see if anybody thinks I am an asshole (pardon). If so, I like to make sure I didn't offend someone and if I did, as an adult, I like to apologize. I'm very opinionated, and so far I have been amazed by the responses people give me. No one attacks me outright and I have only had to apologize once. Which was to orngave, as I had offended him. Graciously, he accepted my apology.
The other reason I like them, is they let you know who the assholes (again, pardon) are. Usually, popular opinion is generally correct. If one doesn't like someone, its no big deal, but if 50 don't, it makes a difference. Perhaps, not fair to label someone like that, but I still heed the warning.
Other than that, many good points were given and I do believe that they should be removed. Outside of my opinions/beliefs for keeping the ratings.
Steve
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rickoldskool
Aug 12, 2002, 3:06 AM
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Good discussion!
These are the points I agree with:
Eliminte the Q votes
Eliminate user ratings
keep # of posts
Change voting of pics to none numerical votes
Randomize front page images
Keep the profiles as is with the links to users posts and photo contributions
Route database is a non issue.
[ This Message was edited by: rickoldskool on 2002-08-11 20:08 ]
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spank_spank
Aug 12, 2002, 4:31 PM
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What is the point of a Q-Rating? To stroke everybody's ego. I can care less what you give me. How is it going to effect me in any way. Its not. Yes, I do give out votes. And yes, I will be a dickhead if you are a dickhead to me. But the bottom line is: If I have a 3.14 Q-Rating are they going to ban me from this site. NO. The 0's that I do have, I am sure I pissed someone off, so what do I do. PM them and call them a bitch, which aggrevates them even more, and I have my amusement for the day.
In a way the Q voting can be fun in a way, but realistically it pointless.
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fiend
Aug 12, 2002, 4:50 PM
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Anne: see above post for further clarification as to why people can't handle the Q-vote system
A lot of new people come to this site with no prior knowledge of climbing safety. They come here and ask questions. Now, if some moron goes and posts something that maybe sounds right, but is very dangerous in reality, then someone could get hurt by following their advice. The Q-ratings were supposed to be a way of measuring who gave good information and who was known for giving bad or wrong info on a consistent basis.
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missedyno
Aug 12, 2002, 5:02 PM
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yeah, ditch it....
but honestly, what could we expect? climbers being competitive? I know with my climbing i'm always competing, against the rock, or against myself. I'm not sure we can help it, though i agree some have gotten a little personal on the quest for votes.
q-rating is not representative of personality/ contribution, but i didn't think it was that big of a deal. it's a faster way to send a compliment than writing a PM of "hey, i liked your remark in such and such a forum bla bla"
picture votes, keep these.
number of posts is just fun to know, but our titles shouldn't be directly linked to them. some of the people with the most posts are very young, new climbers. or people who are just social.
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pianomahnn
Aug 12, 2002, 9:30 PM
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(didn't read any replies)
Q-Votes: Lameness. Go away. There are people who do nothing but gossip in the community room who have higher ratings than those who contribute photos, routes, etc.
Titles/Rankings: Eh, why remove them? There really isn't a discernable rank unless one reads the Help File (which most don't), so if I were new here and saw someone's title I wouldn't know who was what and where. It's just a cute little thingie. But if they were to go away I sure wouldn't cry or anything.
Points: Points are nice. It's nice to award people who contribute with recognition. A fine way to see who is an active member of the site.
Post Counts: This can be somewhat of an aid to newcomers. One would quite possibly want to ask someone who seems to have been around a long time a question as opposed to asking some other newbie who has no idea. Post counts add another variable in determining who may be a person of value in a dilemma or something of that nature.
Photo Votes: Aight. Keep Them.
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jds100
Aug 12, 2002, 10:13 PM
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I'd still say, "What's the purpose of having rankings and points?" It has become a competitive situation that has nothing to do with climbing (the purpose of the website), and little to do with making this website better. People are going to contribute to the route database because they have something to contribute; if points are given for contributing, then the database gets useless fluff. I've seen it.
I'm not clear on why folks want the photos to be voted on, with numerical value or verbal rating, but it seems to me another opportunity for a contrived setting for competition, for no good reason.
Number of posts being visible? It might help with credibility, but just as easily not. A lot of posts is more likely an indicator of length of membership; it can't really speak of quality or qualification.
If somebody replies to a post with bad advice, or makes an asshole of him/herself, that person will be called on it in the forum, as they should be, since the reply was made publicly.
Where there are numbers, there is contrived competition, and it doesn't add to the quality of the website. If people need to be rewarded for being here, for adding to the Route Database, for replying to forum threads, etc., then they really don't need to be here at all. Take away the numbers, and the vast majority of users will still be here, as active as ever.
[ This Message was edited by: jds100 on 2002-08-12 15:15 ]
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jbone
Aug 12, 2002, 10:41 PM
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If ratings are truly inconsequential than why Should you do anything at all about them? If they really mean so little then why are they so bad that you have to get rid of them in the first place. Are your eyes magnetically linked to that line of information on the page? Why do they capture so much of your attention here on the site.
Get Real Folks, the best climbers are out on the road crankin their tips blue from day to day. The only times they see a computer is when they walk by the library on a rest day. They can't afford $20 internet fee's. That would be their whole food allowace for the month. Not to mention cut in on the beer funds..
I think the Ratings are neat. I don't correlate them to anything personal. When the majority of the Pic's on the site are from below 5.10. It pretty much speaks for itself. I do think there is an enormous Traditional Community here. That is amazing to me, because here in Arizona they don't really all get together in one place. (except here) I have meet some Hardcore Tradisionalists but the Availability to sport climb or boulder is so overwhelming alot are "Bi".
Ratings are what you make of them. Truth is too deep for a rating to explain or represent.
My solution: Quit Looking at them.
Have a great Climbing Day
J-Bone
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Removing Rankings.
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