Indeed. It looks like the desires of 400+ members out of an estimated 10K active users is going to drive this decision. They've made up their minds, and this discussion has been essentially pointless.

Ironic it's happening on talkboard, eh? ;)

Done Deal? Really?
 

Since a TB motion on this feature is yet to be seen, I would think it's still too early to draw such a conclusion about which direction TB and/or CD will be taking. Like I said earlier up thread, they do have to decide:

1). what is FT majority and whether 433 yes votes speak for the FT majority;
2). whether there's a unmet need in FT that has to be fulfilled by implementing a Helpful/Like button so FT can excel itself.

In other words, if Delta Skymiles were voted the Best (Fly) Award in the 2015 Flyertalk Awards with 433 votes, would FT admin proudly announce this award, claiming it's FT consensus and/or majority?

SkiAddock, thanks for the Wiki. Meant I didn't need to wade through the last 7 pages! (just a couple days away from FT! :eek:)

?

I haven't seen any sign of someone providing that documentation in this thread; the only definite negatives provided were the Fatwallet/Slickdeals discussions, and those are a much, much heavier reputation mechanism than has been discussed here.

There have been a very small number of old-timers who've implied that, and it's a pity. That it's a more general threat has not been demonstrated at all, that I can see.

Not that what I can see matters, on that point. I've said my piece, you've said yours, and the people who actually get to make the decision are unlikely to give either of us any more weight for repeating ourselves.

Short of providing that documentation, or running another poll to try to demonstrate that people would self-censor in appreciable numbers (again, nobody's proposing down-voting) I'm not sure there's more to be said.

^

[QUOTE=nkedel;24205164...
Short of providing that documentation, or running another poll to try to demonstrate that people would self-censor in appreciable numbers (again, nobody's proposing down-voting) I'm not sure there's more to be said.[/QUOTE]

It is just a few clicks away for the driven person.
http://sauvik.me/system/papers/pdfs/...pdf?1369713003

Funny how the opponents must provide proof while the supporters only have spoken about their feelings and whishes throughout this thread.

From the paper:
By that definition, I self-censor my FT posts all the time. I call it using good judgment as to what adds value and what does not. Those authors can call it self-censorship but that does not make it so. They misuse the language.

Jargon aside, I fail to see how adding a positive-only reader feedback could possibly result in a net reduction of high-value posts or a decrease in the average post quality (impossible to quantify, I know, but post quality is nevertheless a real attribute).

I would argue that on MP, the likes system has reduced the average quality of posts. Many people post meaningless nonsense, such as "hi", just to create more posts that can be liked. Some even advise newcomers to do this. Of course, it's an apparent race for status, but I also suspect that some people over there just like to see all the likes they're getting. It all started with a thread entitled something like "I just want to be liked...." that begged people to like the OP's posts. IMO initially it was cute, but all the likes over there have become rather ridiculous and off-putting.

Welcome back to High School all over again. :D

Isn't that why Facebook exists? :)

Where in the paper do they draw a linkage between a "like" feature and self-censorship?

Is your position that somehow we're not a social networking site now, but become one by getting a "like" feature?

Self-censorship undoubtedly happens here as well, with or without a "like" feature, and the only way they draw a connection between social networking features and self-censorship has to do with audience settings -- an irrelevance here, as except for a handful of sub-forums like OMNI, the whole place is open to be read by the world at large.

OTOH, we don't have a "real names" policy like FB does (even if a few of us do use either real names or aliases long-connected to our public identities, and even if it's trivial to create a second fake account on FB), and the various boards are self-selected, so the analogy is weak there -- a point they bring up in the "related work" section that's frankly more relevant to the discussion of FT than the paper itself. Their findings would seem to indicate that by allowing anonymity -- such that people's identity here is specific to FT, or perhaps to FT and overlapping communities -- people will self-censor less.

I mean, I can come up with non-sequiturs with related keywords too:
https://developers.facebook.com/blog...button-impact/
...which has absolutely essentially equally little to do with my actual point, but it talks about like buttons and boosting engagement, no matter how unrelated to context is.

No, you needn't provide proof; you're the one who made a specific claim about documentation (that "[t]he self-censoring however is documented on other social media sites") so I asked about it; having proved and seem to be basing it on faulty premises.

As for supporting my point, I've given two specific scenarios where I think it improves the board. These are based on supposition and opinion, but they seem fairly obvious.

The cases against do not seem nearly as obvious to me, and I've tried to demonstrate up-thread why the common objection about "gaming" is pretty pointless. Similarly, while there's certainly an aesthetic objection to be had (and I'd certainly support, if it's practical to do) being able to hide the new UI for those who don't like it -- just as you can hide signatures -- I don't see the potential risk of a few sour-grapes self-censorships as being worth a feature that lets people censor others from what is essentially just a more compact way of posting "Thanks!" or "This ^^^", or that someone might be offended by having the possibility exist that someone "liked" their post.

If you can offer a specific scenario beyond 'some people might be worried about what IB might later do with the "like" data' (possible, but discussed to death already) or 'some people may post less out of sour grapes,' please do share it. Same thing I asked of folks who were claiming 'gaming' -- the only two scenarios I can come up with for that (boosting an overall like count, and partisan liking one another) are ultimately in equal parts harmless but pointless (as is the post count, especially in an "OMNI posts count" era.)

Just adding a like button won't turn this into Facebook. Indeed, just adding a full set of social-networking features wouldn't (it would be a thorough waste of time and effort, but other than making the UI more confusing for no good effect, I can't see what the actual harm of any of the likely features might be. The main privacy-concerning features -- being able to see all of someone's posts -- are already there. There's already a friends list (although it's not really useful, nor do I see a reason to try to make it "useful".)

I stated that self censoring is documented and a real threat exists that posts will be fewer and/or of less quality. That I must "prove", while statements like "I don't think it can happen" doesn't need to be backed up by anything but the posters feelings?

So here is a scientific studie that suggest that likes (ie "positives-only") will lead to people limiting themselves. Is someone going to post a scientific study that suggests that like/helpful will maintain or increase post quality, or will all energy be spent on finding flaws in this one?


From the conclusions of the paper:
Regardless of the context in which this scientific study was made, I think it reflects some human principles - if you are unsure of what audience you are talking to or you are unsure if your views "fit in", you will be much more careful with what you say. Or maybe you won't speak at all.
These 2 principles fits perfectly with a positives-only system on FT. The ideas to use the votes for other purposes than immediate feedback, makes the audience fuzzy. When poster understands that the post may appear somewhere else or be used for an alternate purpose, it will make some poster (male posters in general, as suggested by study) more careful and limited in their speech.
And when snarky posts or posts by the clique leader gets all the likes, there is no reason for some posters to post a secondary view of a topic at all.



I think your comment about "using good judgement" is meant a bit jokingly, but if you truly mean that FT has a widespread problem of people excersing bad judgement and that the like/helpful is the right tool to recify that, then I feel even more worried.

It is those secondary uses of the like/helpful function that you keep hinting about that makes me continue pushing the counter arguments.
I don't think you mean it, but once again you've come off as having a second agenda.

I'll need to defer my answer a bit because I cannot devote the time needed to give you a decent reply, but for the first few paragraphs:1. I take the conclusions to be covering a more basic human interaction principle
2. No, not really. But I think the like-system has some major disadvantages if applied to a discussion board like FT.
3. I think the ordinary poster sees the home of the thread as the audience - Post in the BA forum and the audience are people with interest in BA and who more or less share the tone and attitudes of that forum. The same poster would most likely post in a different way in another forum, and if his BA post is at risk to appear elsewhere, then that self censoring will affect the BA threads too.
4. Very true - the more or less anonymous board will behave differently

Facebook's real name policy is a joke. Trying to discredit the research post upthread on that basis is laughable.

But you don't have any research to back it up, right? It's just opinion. In my opinion adding a like button provides no positive benefit, and instead, a negative impact.

So in the end, this all comes down to personal preference based on supposition and opinion, and because the majority of a tiny minority voted for it, FT should change what's been working?

Yes. And we have a vocal section of the membership that apparently wants to go back to High School again.

Don't know about you, but I sure don't want to go down that road.

I have accepted and now agree with the arguments against any kind of reputation compilation. That's just one way in which this thread has been helpful.

As to a extremely useful post ending up in TalkMail after it is selected by a human editor, that would happen with or without a reader feedback button. No difference.