Lots of forums on FT beyond that one.

If that's correct, should the desires of 433 members dictate the outcome? If this is a bad idea, it's a bad idea, even if the majority of the voters happen to favor it.

As far as comparison to the TB election, I don't see how that's relevant.

Agree completely. Trending posts, prioritizing posts, and a down vote option are all bad ideas.

One of the attributes of FT I like very much is the ability to follow the discussion chronologically - especially if I've been away - so that I can follow how a given discussion has progressed.

Just posted my view on this topic in the BAEC forum. Thougt it might interest members of other fora:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/24183620-post131.html

Unsurprisingly, I voted No

It's interesting that some discussion forums seem to inherently contain a richer number of intelligent, knowledgeable, and friendly people, while others have a dearth of such. Yahoo! Answers is an example of the latter, but in my experience reading it from various Google search results, I've always found City-Data to have a strong supply of the former. (On a separate but related note, another consistently rich source of deep, almost expert-level discussion is at Ask Metafilter; whenever I see an Ask Metafilter result in a Google search, I instantly go there, because I know the quality of discussion will be exceptionally high.

While the quality of discussion on FT is often quite good, there are times when it isn't. It would be nice to replicate the level of discussion on those other communities here on FlyerTalk.

The poll is now closed. In addition to poll results (and I would say & have said throughout this thread), I believe TB members when considering whether to move forward with this at all or in what format will consider BOTH the various discussion threads as well as the poll.

Some good questions, input, concerns, pros/cons, have been raised on them & especially with the concerns/questions, need to be addressed. Heck, there are some items that have been listed that in some cases neither side thought of until raised, which is why this long discussion in TB, as well as the other threads, has been a good thing.

Since some TB members don't necessarily go to Omni, I'm posting links to the 3 Omni threads as well as the BA thread. Obviously TB members don't need a link to this thread in the public forum but have been following along (or if not, then can now read it in its entirety).

BA thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...our-forum.html

3 Omni threads.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni/...ike-fb-ft.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni-...ike-fb-ft.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni/...t-ft-like.html **

** Clarification: The last thread was locked, not due to anything FTers did wrong but because the mod directed FTers to this thread in TB. The last thread dealt with some issues that cropped up when the internal mod/TB trial was underway that impacted non mods/TB members.

Cheers.

Ididn't see this in time but

I would have voted

oppose

so please take that into consideration when making this decision

I find this one of the more bizarre comments in the thread. FT not social? Unless you see FT only as a fact repository, it's one of the most obvious examples of social media on the web!

(regarding displaying a member's "Helpful" total)
If a member's "score" is displayed, that encourages members to find ways to manipulate the score. The Manufactured Spending crowd would be all over this, manufacturing scores in the thousands, just for the fun of it. If you think members play games to inflate post count, just watch what they do when you give them a score.

If and when a Helpful button has established a successful track record I'd be willing to run a short trial of publicly viewable score. I would not expect the trial to be a shining success, but maybe it would surprise me.

I was just providing information, I was not discussing anything about the current number of votes or percentages.

Not a poster on OMNI (not allowed to be yet - the perils of years of persistent lurking), but this type of implementation was what I was envisioning when I read the initial proposal. It would act as a means of indication to the poster without being a broad signaling mechanism to the community (beyond the reading of that specific thread and coming across a message that had a ton of likes). In theory, we would get a somewhat Skinnerian positive behavior reinforcement without the explicit ill will to others of a negative indicator (an "Dislike", for instance). Gamers or political likers could click to their heart's content with little systemwide consequence (spuriously making some posters feel good - the horror!), but some of the +1'ers would feel this is a good substitute and others who are silent (ahem, me) would click in support.

Perhaps the furthest I'd think it would make sense to go in terms of community signaling would be being able to sort a thread by number of Helpfuls/Likes. But even that is a bit troublesome, I'd imagine, because there's so much context to be gained by seeing discussions in order. (However, given that it would be an explicit choice a viewer could make, there's an argument for caveat browsor there.)

That's the biggest problem with this proposal - grouping posts by the number of likes will gut the context of some really good discussions.

You could have saved us a lot of time in finding the answer! :D

I have really enjoyed this discussion. I feel I have learned a tremendous amount about what could go wrong with all the fancy scoring schemes that I once thought were so promising.

The consensus here seems to me to favor:

1. A Helpful button that shows the total count for a given post.
2. Per-member totals of votes received are NOT viewable by the public.
3. Total of votes received are NOT viewable privately by the recipient.
4. Vote count has no effect on thread display. I.e., no filtering option.

I consider the preceding features to be mandatory. Feature 5 would have made that list too prior to this recent post.

The next two functions are a trade-off between value and implementation cost, and I don't yet have any information on the latter. So these will take time to research:
5. The Helpful button should be able to be turned on and off by forum.
6. Members should have the ability to disable all display of the new functionality.

Remaining questions to be discussed further here:
7. Should voters' handles be publicly viewable? I lean to Yes on this.
8. Should per-member totals be viewable by moderators? (This might not be an issue within TalkBoard's scope, but there's no harm in talking about it here.)
9. Should there be a post count and tenure requirement for access to the reader feedback functionality (like access to OMNI)? This might tie in with the implementation of item 6.

I obviously was aiming too high since the poll is now closed with 725 votes.

For me, Slickdeals isn't a social media either. The most obvious examples of "social" media are sites like Twitter or Facebook. If you consider FT in the same league as Twitter and Facebook, I don't know what to say.

Having said that, I am fully aware there are social threads on FT, such as the lounge threads. Due to our core missions, FT does facilitate certain social exchange/gathering such as DOs. FT has matured with a good number of devoted members participating in discussion. Over the years, passionate FTers develop connections and friendship that helps signify the social side of FT, but that doesn't make FT a "social" medium by default. YMMV.

Certainly; it's just the one most often named where it will be "abused" or "gamed," including in one post further back of yours that I was responding to, which you responded by quibbling about "like" vs. "helpful."

I'm still trying to find an explanation for how this is going to be abused that doesn't boil down to "people might click 'helpful' on something that was factually incorrect, and then other people might misunderstand that to be authoritative."

Nobody has proposed that, and at least a few of us who are in favor of the mechanism in general have actively disclaimed that.

Except for #3, that sounds about right; #3 is still, IMO, harmless but it also doesn't add a lot of value (I'm sure, as you noted above, it would be gamed, but I don't think that gaming for pure egoboo score is likely to come out in ways that are intrusive on others; if people with too much time on their hands really want to waste time liking one anothers' posts on Omni/Games, I don't see the harm in it, and that's definitely where they should be suggested to go if they feel the need.)

Nice to have if it's easy to accommodate, although who then gets to decide which forums it's turned on/off for?

IMO, also nice to have if it's easy to accommodate, although I think the way it was phrased up-thread ("opt out completely" -- e.g. to disable other people voting on your posts) is probably disruptive and confusing. If the main display is itself tasteful and not too obtrusive, I don't see an option to hide it as a necessity. If it's not tasteful, or it's huge, even those of us who like the feature are likely to be bothered by it.

IMO, this is a good bit less valuable if they're not. It's probably still worth having as an engagement mechanism, but it no longer has an individualized signaling function.

I don't see any real utility or harm in this; if there were a down-voting mechanism and we were trying to do a full-on reputation system, this would be necessary, but as you've said, the consensus is strongly against that.

The then-current TalkBoard would make recommendations to the Community Director, or the Community Director would act on her own.