I believe thread rating is just plain silly. I did not pay attention to it when it was on. In fact, I don't believe I was ever aware that it was turned off until I stumbled upon this thread.

So maybe two people don't like each other? Do you like every single poster on FT? If not, don't you feel that you should be allowed to express your dislike? To warn other (newbie) FTers that a person's posts are not worth investing time reading?

One one-star vote shouldn't cause the thread to go to one-star. There's no point having a rating system unless you can set the threshold to something meaningful, like 25 ratings.

Furthermore, ratings should be on individual posts, not on the thread as a whole. When the greater community has decided, through ratings, that somebody is an idiot, then the software can automatically filter out the trash. This is how Fatwallet does it, although I'm not sure what their minimum size is before the rating is applied to the filtering.

You just hit the nail on the head. Thread ratings is not for whether or not you like a poster. It's to rate the information in the thread. These people were being single starred just for posting, and it was by more than one person. How do I know? In order for the star to even show up it had to be more than 1 or 2 people rating it. I tested by giving 5 stars to a few of the threads. Again, I feel it was a small group of people running around and searching for the threads of a few people they didn't like.

No way... from some of the behaviors I've seen around here there is no doubt in my mind that people have multiple ids they have in their back pockets. There is no guarantee that the extra ids won't be used for this purpose. To ask the HOM to police this is asking too much, plus, there are some people with enough skills to hide their IP addresses or even redirect them to avoid being found out.

The greater community wasn't deciding - it was a group of about 5 or 6 people going after about 4 or 5 people they just didn't like.

And tivocommunity doesn't allow political or religious topics . This is FT and has it's own quirks and RP has made it very clear he doesn't care what happens on other BBs.

Mary, with all respect, your statement about the purpose of thread ratings is simply one way looking at the matter. And it is certainly one that can be defended and argued for.

But when the new software debuted and thread ratings were turned on, there was no instruction give about their use, no guidelines for what they were and weren't for. All the little link said was "Rate this thread."

So I think the case can also be made that rating threads can be done for a variety of reasons, and in the absence of definitive instruction from the administration, who knows?

Among those variety of reasons could include (if you are rating a thread that I started):

-- You do or don't like me.
-- You find the information I post to be consistently unhelpful or helpful and you want to warn or commend re.
-- You don't think yet another thread on this topic is needed, or you do.
-- You don't -- or do -- like who has posted in the thread.
-- You just don't (or do) like the poster, the other posters in the thread, the topic, or the occasion.

Any of these can be legitimate uses of the ratings feature, imo.

cblaisd, with all respect, my personal opinion is that you are wrong. As the name of the feature already indicates, it is the thread rating feature, not the "I like you" or "I don't like you" feature. I am curious to know why you seem to want to defend that sort of use of the feature.

And even if, as you say, the use of the feature to say "I like (dislike) this poster" was a "legitimate" use, what good does it do for Flyertalk to allow the use of the feature to do that? How does it make Flyertalk better if a group of people uses the feature to say "I don't like this poster"?

I am not sure how one rates a "thread" absent some evaluation of the components of a thread -- the quality of the posts therein and the quality of the posters, in the opinion of the one rating. How would you rate a thread otherwise without all reference to these things?



There are posters, imo, whose posts I don't think much of in general. As do you, I suspect. That's one component of "thread rating" (and it's one that all of us do informally every time we read FT).


Please do note all the other reasons that I believe are "legitimate" uses, above. Absent definitive guidelines for rating (and, again, how could those be enforced?) thread ratings have only entertainment value.


I think one could say the same about "I don't like this post." Same difference, imo.

I don't really have a dog in this hunt, I just think that there is much ado being made over little.

But we disagree

Actually, that's where I disagree... let's say, purely hypothetical, of course, poster X, whom I (hypothetically) might sometimes view as a disruptive influence on Flyertalk, posts great information on something. Or poster Y, who I sometimes disagree with, posts great advice on something. If I were to use the thread rating feature (I don't think I'd use it much anyway, if at all), I would give those threads a positive rating.

Why should I give the thread a negative rating, just because it was poster X or poster Y who posted it?

That seems to be the logic you seem to be in favor of.

(Also, as a sidenote, if you admit that there are posters whose posts you don't think much of in general, and that causes you to treat their posts differently, are you sure that is a good prerequisite for being impartial (which in one of your roles would be a good idea, I think))?

I think this post should be nominated as Most Concise Post Explaining All The Reasons Why Thread Ratings and Reputation Were Turned Off And Why They Should Remain Off.

(Not that I personally care about this issue one way or the other; just saying... )

I think we're going to have to disagree here . It's "rate this thread" not rate the poster. I've seen it used on other boards and when I see it, to me it means that there's a lot of good stuff in that thread and the stars are bringing it to my attention. BTW - it is very infrequent that I see single stars on any thread on any boards. Most often the ratings are used to bring attention to very informative threads.

To have the feature abused by a few people on FT, as it was, makes the entire system worthless. How can a post about a birthday be a terrible thread? How can a post telling someone some tips about how to navigate a FF program (all 100% correct) be bad? It was the poster who was being rated, not the thread.

It was being abused, plain & simple by very few people who got together & hunted down the posts of certain people. They called attention to themselves when they started rating posts in forums in which no other threads had ever been rated.

I don't have any skin in this game either, but since I was moderately involved in discovering the abuse, I'm adding my two cents now.

Thank you . I've been called many things, but concise usually isn't one of them .

I thought I had tried to explain that above. The discussion had been causing me to do some thinking about this, though (at least until your next point).

This was an interesting discussion from which I was learning -- until you decided publicly to impugn my integrity.

I did not do that. I merely asked a question, based on what you posted - did not mean to insult you.

However, when you say that there are "posters, imo, whose posts I don't think much of in general" and that that would be one consideration for thread rating for you, it did sound like you thought it was ok to rate the same thread differently depending on who started it.

If that is your opinion and if that means you look at posts differently based on who made them and if that is not only the case when you are rating threads, then I believe my question is valid.

Perhaps I misunderstood you, and you could explain what you meant. Again, I only responded to what you yourself posted.

[Will comment more substantively later]

Last time I checked, there were 78,000 members of FT. Even if 90% of them came and went and are not coming back or are actually duplicate accounts, that is 7800 individuals. For twelve people (5 or 6 who don't like 5 or 6), 7788 have to not have access to functionality?

BTW, the thread rating is still on, you just can't see the results. Yesterday, I voted this thread "excellent," FWIW, because the discussion was still civil.

I couldn't give a **** about the twelve people involved. I don't think either one of us was one of them.

Unfortunately, it's probably against the TOS for me to publish my ignore list.... I'd like to be able to have that ability. My list is actually very small, only because there are a few posters that I should put on ignore but they amuse me with their self-indulgent behavior (hey, look at me, I have a marginal thought and I demand that you pay attention! ) so much that I still glance at their posts. But I'd probably rate at least 70% of their comments as 2-star at best.

But, I know of at least one prominent FTer who did not realize that (s)he was being a horse's patootey when posting until told quite frankly in person by multiple people, and has changed posting habits in a positive manner. Maybe a rating system would have gotten the message across much sooner. That's why I'd like to see an intelligent system implemented.

I'm not talking about posters who are horse's patooties . There's far more of them around than I'd even like to think of. I'm talking about an organized attack on someone who simply wasn't like for one reason or another. It had nothing to do with their posts, which were informative and very good. Some people just didn't like them. Perhaps this person had a disagreement with one of them.

The rating system is to rate threads and the information contained within. Not to rate personalities.

There's a bunch of people who I would actually avoid, and a few, which after taking it off line, have become friends. I never would even think of rating their threads negatively simply because I, at one point, couldn't stand to read a word of what they wrote.

BTW - I've only had one person on ignore ever - the person with whom I now have a civil relationship.

I agree that a very small group of people ruined it for the rest of the membership. However, until RP decides to get rid of the troublemakers or they decide to grow up and get a real live non-cyber-life, the best option, IMHO, it to keep the rating system off.

I guess we're just going to keep on looking at this issue differently - you're saying that it's ok to rate a thread based upon the person posting, and I'm saying that I don't care who posts as long as it gets me more points, miles or information I need. It's 5 stars in my book. If they post a stupid useless topic, or if it insults another person THAT thread should be rated 1 star. Not all of them.