Negative Rep

[Anilkumar]

I award positive rep for informative answers, amusing posts and ones which are insightful or compassionate.

 

So it is logical to award negative rep for posts utterly devoid of valid data, deeply foolish ones, or those which are mind numbingly trite, or disgustingly self centred.

 

No one has explained what is wrong with that.

 

Edit: Insert missing word, one, in last paragraph.

 

Let us not discuss individual cases. Let us generalize things.

 

It is not the question of one individual.

I think we have discussed this in post #62. Nevertheless, let me put it in this way. There are two aspects here.

1. In extreme cases, if an entirely proficient person gives the points, she; could be absolutely right, would be mostly right. On the contrary, if a totally unknowing person gives the point, she; could be absolutely wrong, would be mostly wrong.
2. Since there is a margin of error in both cases, [less or more], the need for discussion arises.

 

StringJunky, on 11 Dec 2012 - 22:24, said:

 

Quite. Also one needs to be mindful not to potentially derail a thread with inserted comments about a person's style and negging them is a quick and relatively unobtrusive symbolic 'slap' without doing that.

 

Why do you think I am trying to derail the thread ??? Are you scaring me !!!

 

After all those mod-notes, trials, and sentences; the words, derailing the thread, thread hijacking, moderators have become scary words to me.

 

The inserted comments are facts that I have endured; not stated to nag someone.

 

A childhood incident comes to my mind;

 

I was a kid then. All the children in my neighborhood, used to gather and play cricket in an immediate area. There was this buddy ‘Ananth’, fondly called as ‘Antya’. He was not good at playing cricket. He couldn’t bat well or bowl well and never used to do the fielding. If he was asked to field, he used to just look at the ball pass beside him and never run behind it. If he was asked to bowl [Each one of us had the share of bowling two overs.], he would give a great time for the batsman [All the batsmen loved him!] and a hell of a time to the fielders. Before going for his batting skills, I need to tell you something. He had a grandmother. She was the eldest person and the scariest person of the neighborhood. All hell would break lose, if anybody disobeyed her.

 

Now when it was the turn of ‘Antya’ to bat, he was the darling of the bowlers. He used to get out in one or two bowling. However, he had a trick up his sleeve. He immediately used to start crying loudly, slowly inching towards his house. And his grandmother would arrive, furious over who hurt her darling. She would ask ‘Antya’ about what happened. He would complain, ‘these guys don’t let me bat. They bowl me out so quickly!’. And the lady would come towards us saying ‘Hey let the little one play. [He was elder than most of us!].’ She would snatch the bat and give it to ‘Antya’ and ask us to bowl and would go to the nearby shade and watch from there. We obliged, humbly, without saying a word. And ‘Antya’ played to his fill.

 

It is a different matter that, we later on changed strategy, by also stipulating two overs for each batsman, irrespective of whether he gets out or not.

 

I am already scared. Please don’t scare me further.

 

 

iNow, on 11 Dec 2012 - 22:35, said:

Again... Anilkumar, your opinion is noted. I have shared my opinion, as have others. Your recourse is to deal with it or leave. There's not a lot of space in between since the decision to keep the rep system was made long ago.

 

I am dealing with it, in the little space available in between. The doors of Justice/Truth/God are never closed totally. Only, one has to keep knocking at it.

 

 

Phi for All, on 12 Dec 2012 - 01:33, said:

Spyman,

When I feel this way I give the person some positive rep.

 

Without question.

 

I would like to say something here.

 

There is an aura of Tranquility, Deliberation, Prudence, Selflessness, Civility, Understandability, Calmness, Affability and Poise around some people. Usually, they are the mature seasoned & well-read people. And usually such people don’t err much and if at all they do, they accept and change, if it is made evident. So the acts [Like the giving of a positive rep, said by you above] of such people are equitable and necessary for society. Their decrees are like markers for the rest of the immature world, to tread on. I feel, people who lack those qualities must refrain from, Decreeing. [Considering the fact that a secretive rep point is; a decree.] What they should do instead is; place an opinion in the public domain, and seek its approval.

 

I don’t think a person who is, Turbulent, Impulsive, Hasty, Selfish, Playful, Incomprehensible, Hostile, and Ignorant should be allowed to decree.

 

Imagine the number/percentage of the people of the former kind and the latter kind.

 

We can’t allow for decrees to be made indiscreetly for the sake of its recreation value.

 

Thank you

 

 

 

Spyman, on 12 Dec 2012 - 15:25, said:

Hi Anilkumar, long time no seeing!

 

Hello Spyman,

 

I was fulltime into something.

 

 

I think individuals can misuse the system but the community as a whole are able to counter this. For instance when I find a post with a negative vote it doesn't seem to deserve I can vote positive on it to undo one unfair negative vote. Since we in the community are many and we can give much more positive votes than negative, any alone individual trying to cast unfair votes will normally get outvoted by the community as a whole.

 

Also to consider is that the staff are able to see who votes what and can take action if needed.

 

That’s great.

 

Pretty consoling.

 

That was a nice one, Spyman.

 

This gives a mission to the community, to check the drawbacks inherent in the system.

 

No doubt, this would counter balance the drawback, if the community is serious and willing, which it should be.

 

Also the fact, that the, staff are able to see who votes what and can take action if needed, too is consoling.

 

Having said that, I would like to know your opinion on this;

 

However, one thing is lurking in my mind & I would like to bring it onboard, that, every opinion has its share of bias [except in case of some technical issues] attached to it [more or less]. There may be people who are correct in every decision made by them, though their number is very few, I suppose, we need to consider the fact that vast majority are not total perfect beings, who don’t err. And I feel, this factor of ‘bias/error’ can only be countered by discussion.

 

(BTW, I think you mixed my quote with Michel's.)

 

 

Both, yours & Michel’s opinion, were partly addressing the ‘motive’ behind the Rep system.

 

 

 

 

Thank you

 

[Spyman]

Having said that, I would like to know your opinion on this;

The reputation system we have is not perfect, it has flaws and drawbacks, but while there is still room for improvement it also has advantages and most importanly it is a system already in place, it has a function and despite smaller problems it actually does work: I have yet to find a member with 20 or more negative points that I don't think deserved most of them and members with 20 or more positive points are also likely decent and polite persons worthy of them.

 

Sure, a lot of people make mistakes, I even manage to click on the wrong button from time to time, but the main argument with a community's total votes is that even if people vote wrong, by mistake or on evil purposes, the end score made by the average of votes smoothes out personal biases. The vast majority may consist of not total perfect beings with personal bias but the community as a whole is greater than its parts, where we all can contribute to its consensus.

 

I agree with you that it is better to post a reply to acknowledge agreement, thank for a great answer or to explain why one think something is wrong, but sometimes such posts can derail the thread. Another big issue is for me is that I come here to participate in discussions I enjoy and arguing with people who behaves badly is not fun and can take a lot of my limited time that could be better spent elsewhere. In those cases I can instead use the reputation system and choose to place my only negative vote this day, to show others my anonymous opinion as part of the community that I think the post is bad.

 

As already said above, someone who has managed to accumulate 20 or more negative points is either on a very good way to be permanently banned and/or have repeatedly spouted nonsense and should not be considered a trusted member. Making a long and comprehensive explanation for such a person will not likely be meet with any gratitude and are probably a complete waste of time. As such the community's judge of members bad behaviour serves as a warning for both the offender and readers, but is also as a rough measurement of our credibility.

 

I guess what I am trying to say is that my time is limited and valuable for me and I don't consider it lazy when I down vote what I think is a bad post, instead of spending lots of time in a futile argument, banging my head against a brick wall replying to a troll, a deceiving crackpot or some other type of misfit.

 

So while it is a drawback for the person gaining negative reputation to not get any explanation for it, it is still a slight advantage to at least get an indication that there was something wrong with the approach in the post, but it is a big advantage for me to not have to spend valuable time when I don't want to and it is also an advantage for people coming here searching for knowledge to get an heads up that someone think that there is something wrong with that post.

 

Without the reputation system I and others would not be able to show our opinion with a fast mouse click and we would still hesitate to write a long reply, which would make more bad posts uncontested, increase the burden on the experts and in the long run lower the good credibility the site has achieved.

Edited December 18, 2012 by Spyman

[StringJunky]

 

Why do you think I am trying to derail the thread ??? Are you scaring me !!!

 

After all those mod-notes, trials, and sentences; the words, derailing the thread, thread hijacking, moderators have become scary words to me.

 

<Snip>

 

I am already scared. Please don’t scare me further.

 

Just seen this. My comments you quoted were general comments and not pointed at you. If I was I would have quoted you or named you. I apologise if you thought otherwise.

[StringJunky]

Has it been decided not to make our repping open for a while to see how it fares? I think it's worth a test and addresses Anikumar's concerns about accountibility...it's not shot from the dark. There maybe bigger over-riding concerns than this but we won't know 'til we try. We can keep a commentary going in this thread for the duration of the trial for purposes of general overview amongst us. I personally accept that if someone negs me in revenge for negging them due to the open system I'll just take it on the chin because as Spyman says the rep is about overall trends and one or two spiteful points received are neither here nor there. I think more importantly, as Ophiolite mentioned, it can matter who gave you neg/pos rep which may prompt you to reappraise or encourage your position/style as the case may be..

[Ophiolite]

 

Ophiolite on 11 Dec 2012 - 23:43 said:

 

I award positive rep for informative answers, amusing posts and ones which are insightful or compassionate.

 

So it is logical to award negative rep for posts utterly devoid of valid data, deeply foolish ones, or those which are mind numbingly trite, or disgustingly self centred.

 

No one has explained what is wrong with that.

 

Edit: Insert missing word, one, in last paragraph.

 

 

 

 

Anilkumar responded:

 

Let us not discuss individual cases. Let us generalize things.

 

It is not the question of one individual.

I think we have discussed this in post #62. Nevertheless, let me put it in this way. There are two aspects here.

1. In extreme cases, if an entirely proficient person gives the points, she; could be absolutely right, would be mostly right. On the contrary, if a totally unknowing person gives the point, she; could be absolutely wrong, would be mostly wrong.
2. Since there is a margin of error in both cases, [less or more], the need for discussion arises.

 

No one is entirely proficient. Well informed persons may still make an error. That would not deserve and I would not award neg rep for that. If they rejected the correction without valid justification, or trivialised the significance of giving an incorrect answer that could deserve neg rep as this could fit the categories of deeply foolish or disgustingly self centred.

 

No discussion is required in these instances before giving neg rep. You have created an example which is simply not relevant to the discussion.

 

It is not about being right or wrong, but the methodology employed to acquire, assess and present those data has to be scientific. It is only in instances falling far short of this requirement that merit neg rep. Are you opposed, Anilkumar, to awarding neg rep in such cases?

[iNow]

It's definitely possible to allow more negative reputation per day.

There seemed to be consensus that this was okay to do and something the community wanted, right?

What does everyone think of making votes public?

Same as above. Thought we had consensus to proceed with this.

[ydoaPs]

I like that if a post is positive repped and then neg repped, it still shows up in your reputation feed.

[Spyman]

I am missing that I am unable to see any voting score on posts when I am lurking and browsing the forum without logging in.

 

I think it would be good if people without accounts coming here to read and learn also could be able to see the voting score.

 

Is it possible to change the rights for Guests to also see the voting score on each post?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

There seemed to be consensus that this was okay to do and something the community wanted, right?

How many negative points per day do you think is a reasonable quantity? Currently the limit is one.

[michel123456]

How many negative points per day do you think is a reasonable quantity? Currently the limit is one.

 

Make it cumulative: 365 a year.

 

-------------

Edit: don't take that too seriously.

Edited January 10, 2013 by michel123456

[StringJunky]

Three in 24 hours is enough I reckon.

[michel123456]

Three in 24 hours is enough I reckon.

 

Fine: in 100 days you have zero rep.

 

----------------

 

I have the feeling that Capn could make money with selling neg rep.

[swansont]

I have the feeling that Capn could make money with selling neg rep.

 

He'd better not undercut my business.

[Moontanman]

If we get 3 neg reps we should get more pos rep too... I like to give out pos rep.

[iNow]

How many negative points per day do you think is a reasonable quantity? Currently the limit is one.

 

I'm fine with 3 down votes daily. I don't up-vote quite as much as moonman, so am less concerned about that myself. Thanks for the reply.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Okay, try three. Let's see how this goes.