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soaring crane

The profile star system / split from member rankings thread

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I'm fearful of the effects of cliques on the board.  I worry people will pile on 'dislikes' against others and it may lead to long term vengeance dislikes for old quarrels. 

 

The star system on the other hand is relatively invisible.  In most cases its a silly skewed number, in a few it may send a genuine message that they should change there tone. 

 

Lastly, imo, half the crap on the board is due to someones hurt feelings.  We should not bring in a system thats guaranteed to create more.

Edited by thelerner
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The anonymity of the star system can result in inaccurate presumptions among members. Furthermore, if someone dislikes you and rates you poorly, and 10 people like you and don't rate you at all, what does it all mean?

 

yeah, this is basically where my thoughts were when I started this. But I have to admit I feel a little guilty now, being the one who instigated the change. We were having fun discussing it here.

 

But, no, your statement really says it all and on the whole I'm glad it's gone.

 

I sure didn't expect it to go this fast, though! Gazinga!

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I'd never even noticed profile stars until recently. Personally, am glad they're gone, thanks dawei.

 

At some point though I would like to reopen the conversation around the post Dislike button.

 

I recall some of the concerns around it damaging member's public reputations, etc. But I think if the reputation aspect were separated and/or privatized, and the Like/Dislike buttons were repositioned as Upvote/Downvote this could be a beneficial feature. 

 

In this case, ideally speaking, an Upvote would come to represent "I may not agree with your post, but it contributes value to this topic" and a Downvote becomes "I may actually agree with your post but it detracts or contributes nothing to this topic". 

 

I could then add a feature where you might choose to have posts below a certain configurable threshold be "collapsed", i.e., the post is not shown in full unless you click a link to "expand" that post inline. For example you might specify to auto-collapse posts that have received more than 5 downvotes and less than 2 upvotes.

 

With some tweaking, I feel like this might empower the community to then curate a "least common denominator" filter within topics.

 

TL;DR Imagine browsing a topic where the derailing posts are all auto-collapsed to your specifications, but you still have a one-click option to show any of the collapsed posts if you choose.

 

Sean

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I think about 50% of the "likes" I give are actually intended to let the person know that I read their post and may have responded to it. It's an acknowledgement button (half the time or thereabouts). The other half are genuine likes.

 

Others?

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I like others' posts when their words really strike a chord with me. If there were a dislike button I would never use it. Frankly, I have never seen a post on this forum that genuinely deserves a "dislike." People are being authentic, sharing knowledge, asking genuine questions, and solving problems together - what is there not to like!?

 

I have definitely felt things like, "Gosh, that's a long rant from a potentially mentally ill person," or "That person didn't put any thought into what they said," but never "I just really dislike that." Besides, I've been the mentally ill or thoughtless or distasteful person, and what I needed was support, not a "dislike" for not conforming to another's perception of good. I think I have seen some bickering between members that has been disagreeable, but that's because people have different opinions, and sometimes feel strongly about things, and I don't think one person should get a bunch of likes for being on the "right side" while the other gets "dislikes" for being on the "wrong" of the argument, since there fucking isn't one. 

 

...

 

That said, if we replaced the "star system" with an actual Star System, that'd be cool. We could have like, an Andromeda clique and an Alpha Centauri gang, and a 16-Cygni crew. You could still judge people 1 through 5, but instead of seeing the 1-5 system on your own profile you'd only see that you belong to one of five star systems, of which only admins would know the corresponding rating. But then you could check TaoMeow's profile to see what a "5" looks like and spend your whole life trying to join her star system. lol

Edited by Yasjua
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I think about 50% of the "likes" I give are actually intended to let the person know that I read their post and may have responded to it. It's an acknowledgement button (half the time or thereabouts). The other half are genuine likes.

 

Others?

My situation is about the same as yours.  Sometimes I have nothing additional to say (Yes, it really happens.) but I want the person to know that I have seen their post.

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I just joined August or something, and I started off with 5 stars - presumably like everyone else. I think I noticed that dawei had last visited my profile (this was a month or two ago) and I suddenly had 1 star, so in my mind I thought dawei had rated me poorly.

 

Whether that's the case or not is not my business, as I'm not here to please anyone or particularly to make friends, but it did create a [?] in my mind: what did I do to dawei? I guess I should avoid that guy. Later (as in today), I find out that he's a fantastic administrator and is making positive changes to the site's code at my own and others' requests.

 

And of course, I don't know who rated me.

 

The anonymity of the star system can result in inaccurate presumptions among members. Furthermore, if someone dislikes you and rates you poorly, and 10 people like you and don't rate you at all, what does it all mean?

 

I'm glad it's gone, personally. Opinionating on your comrades, especially passive-aggressively through anonymity, just doesn't smell of Dao to me.

 

That is a great example of the problem with it :)

 

I actually never knew of it till this thread and I immediately felt it was troublesome.

 

And as Thelerner rightly says, it is a heavily skewed result based on the very few who decide to use it...  

 

Of 4200 members, only 650 have any rating applied by others...  and of those rated (650),  550 of them have only 1 or 2 ratings applied...

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One more stat which made me laugh...  

 

what is the highest rating given the most?

 

 

 

rating_value count(rating_value)
1             924
2              16
3              25
4              55
5             881

 

 

 

 

 

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Yep, I'm a 1-star... and I never engage in flame wars or back and forth kinda stuff. I guess people are doing this because I bring in stuff to my posts outside the scope of TTB - like mentioning what I do for work, combining stuff from reddit with TTB, or the pickup community, or mentioning skrillex or tony robbins in the same breath as taoist masters or yogis.

 

I kinda feel like a good part of my path in life is that my personality is given to moving between these worlds, but people really seem to HATE this. I do the same thing on reddit, I go into nofap and write about chi cultivation, or I go into forums about skrillex and talk about nutrition or yoga... in every case the "scene people" seem to really detest any information outside of the boundaries of their scene creeping in. It's a really weird ostrich syndrome. I used to think this would be taken as a breath of fresh air... somebody bringing in fresh energy that people might never otherwise be exposed to... but it's never taken this way. It's always seen as a kind of pompous affront to the purity of the scene or something.

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I wonder what stars I have given... ha

Any individual stats?

I think it is better gone overall...

Maybe tally the likes people get as a form of credit... would be a more accurate indication.
 

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as a new member I was surprised about these stars in my profile, not daoist at all imho.

 

I use the like button when i really get something out of a comment, or when it is an answer to a question of mine, or when it makes me laugh, feel it's beautiful, some such.

 

If you want to have something like stars and dislikes i would indeed use the already present like button and maybe a change to see how many people ignore your posts...But I'm not for it to be honest. It's all egoplay

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Wait, where did mine go?  It was handy, as tech/staff it helped to figure out which new members were causing trouble ;).  Though really, a popularity contest...

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