Originally Posted by
anabolism
If the intent is to rate the poster, then perhaps all forums should be eligible. If the intent is to rate a post for being helpful/having solid information, then I don't see the usefulness within forums or threads that are conversational.
I'm inclined not to have Omni threads count either. It's not an essential part of FT. There is some useful content in there, but I agree that it's mostly conversational threads. Don't think you want content marked as "helpful" if it's just a funny cat video or whatever the latest internet sensation is. That content can be "liked" on other social networks.
Without a doubt, Omni PR threads shouldn't have voting options. Topics are too divisive, it will cause far more pain than it's worth. Again, this is not a core part of FT. There's a nasty discussion forum under Travel Safety & Security where I'd expect the same sort of behavior to occur.
Similar to the StackExchange rating system for both questions and answers, where a member can upvote or downvote both questions and answers? That could be one way to implement this. I don't have enough experience with StackExchange to be able to say if such a system would be good for FT, but it might be.
I strongly support having a dislike option IF a like option is implemented (though I don't support that at all
). But some people on the internet are apparently very thin skinned, and easily get upset when there are too many downvotes. I've seen many forums where the posters end up just deleting their original content because they're pouting. It also leads to many useless "why are people downvoting this?" discussions.
I think a post rating system could be implemented that would be completely independent of poster reputation, and I'd encourage such a mechanism to be completely divorced from it.
In concept, this is a good idea. But it will be seen as a vote for the person just as much as a vote for the content. Especially so for any down votes.
Do you have a suggestion on how you could split these two apart?
A poster who provides helpful, solid information in one forum might not do the same in another forum.
And some posters don't provide useful info in ANY forums
Hopefully a system like this would catch those folks too, and action could be taken to show those folks the door.
Originally Posted by
anabolism
Maybe they should be able to go back and undo a 'helpful' vote. On StackExchange one can go back and undo an upvote (or a downvote).
Some forums limit the timeframe for you to change your vote. Not sure what the thinking is behind this. Maybe it's related to voting abuse, where you need to give <any users> some sort of votes before you can re-vote on posts from <user x>?
Originally Posted by
anabolism
I think it would be more feasible to implement a mechanism for ranking posts coupled with a (possibly later) mechanism to view large threads with only higher-ranked posts visible
I agree that some sort of filtering based on votes is needed. The devil will be in the details here. Basically we'll get whatever IB already has implemented in vB...take it or leave it. It would be great to see an example of a vB forum using something like this (native solutions only, not custom/plugins), so we can all get a better understanding of how it's used.
this entire endeavor might well be a fool's errand.
It's definitely sounding like it. And based on the poll, there's certainly not clear, overwhelming support to add this functionality.
Without an understanding of some key pieces - mainly how these votes will be used/what value they'll bring - it's hard to paint a picture of what the potential up/down sides might be. That's why there's so much speculation in this thread, which is just causing confusion. I know I'm adding to it, but it's based off my experience on other boards with voting capabilities (fatwallet and slickdeals being the main ones), and the reactions users have there.