The Game of Likes (Split from some thoughts thread) (Update)

[_wb_]

Down with moderators!

+27

Actually I rarely do anything at all as a moderator. Sometimes I split or merge a thread (when asked to), I hide redundant posts (when asked to), and very occasionally sticky/unsticky or lock/unlock a thread. Sometimes I remove spam accounts (obvious spam, like viagra or rolex stuff), and sometimes I participate in mod discussions when problematic posts or behavior are reported; most often the resulting action is "do nothing" or "send the person a friendly informal private message to ask him/her to behave better".

So this is a really nice forum to moderate: we have a nice team of moderators and there's barely any real moderation needed

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Why is viagra a spam?  We need it here because Ziz/ekianjo said this forum contains a bunch of oldies and has not been as active as before and needs some "erectile" treatment

What are those Bing and Google?  Are they some sort of spam accounts?

 

[Nintendo]

They're official trackers.

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

What is that?

 

[Null]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_crawler

 

[rygD]

Down with moderators!

+27

Actually I rarely do anything at all as a moderator. Sometimes I split or merge a thread (when asked to), I hide redundant posts (when asked to), and very occasionally sticky/unsticky or lock/unlock a thread. Sometimes I remove spam accounts (obvious spam, like viagra or rolex stuff), and sometimes I participate in mod discussions when problematic posts or behavior are reported; most often the resulting action is "do nothing" or "send the person a friendly informal private message to ask him/her to behave better".

So this is a really nice forum to moderate: we have a nice team of moderators and there's barely any real moderation needed

I am not really against the mods most of the time, and I understand that most of the time they get abuse for doing what they are asked to do.  I wish they didn't have unlimited likes, because I am jealous now that I know.

It is good to know that we don't require too much moderating.  Even though it seems minimal I woudln't be surprised to find this place burnt down within a week or two without them.  I would probably be the one with the matches.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

You can now actually try out what it's like to read this forum without the "Like" system again these days. I've created some files and instructions, which I've added to the first post of this thread, with which you can do this in your browser. Of course this will only /pretend/ that there is no "Likes" system here, others will still be able to see and use this system, so your experience will not actually be entirely realistic. It may depend on the number of people who will take part in this. In any case, if you install this then you will be having the fun benefit of realizing how much you've come to rely on the "Likes" system, and how that has changed your user experience on this forum. Personally, I'm starting now, and I will participate for at least a week or so. I would like to ask you who are reading this to please consider doing this too even if you are unsure about the "Likes" system, or even strictly-ish pro the "Likes" system, if just for a day or two.

If you try this for a couple of days or so, I would be happy if you reported back about whether, and how, this has improved/impaired your user experience on these boards.

[...] Think of ptitseb posting news about a new - much apprechiated - port, which just works, and a lot of people likeing it and showing their appreciation by pressing the like button. As the like mechanisms has no real visual representation on this board (other than a more or less invisible link on the bottom of the page), news about his new port will quickly loose attention, as there is only one post in the same subsection necessary to hide his post

...it also affects other data that conveys information about threads, such as the ranking in the "View New Content" list, or the number of pages that's displayed in the overview sections, but yeah, same principle. I find this aspect particularly troublesome, because I think that it might be a factor that encourages people to resort to the RYRYRY principle (for those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, see DRY principle).

Damnit, I've reached my daily limit of likes for the day.

ps: I would have "liked" your post. But I am out of likes for today.

(I wonder whether this thread has already reached the point where every post that isn't "Liked" enough is automatically perceived as having a mallus, that's always fun. It results in increased skipping of lesser-liked posts, so that anything that's a bit complicated more-or-less automatically sees its chances of receiving meaningful participation being reduced.)
-----

To all of you who have noted that you like receiving feedback via the "Likes" system, or that you use "Like This" sensibly: fair enough, you're of course right, some of this does work well, I'm not questioning that. Yet I'm wondering whether there aren't long-term effects which make it not worth it, for the type of things that this forum is there for, that is.

(And just a sidenote: A "+1 post" is /very/ different from a "Like", in many ways. Just one of many examples that I could give, a "+1 post" is much more specific in that you can quote just partly. Think about it, how many people would ever "+1 post" an entire big software announcement post? By contrast, how many people would "Like" it? "Likes" and "+1 posts" really lend themselves to significantly different uses, for many reasons, and the overlap between the respective most common uses is rather not-big-ish. If you claim that ~"Likes are basically there because they're supposed to replace +1 posts", then I honor your contribution, but unless you can convince me otherwise, I will consider this particular argument to be wirklichkeitsfern.)

 

[Neelix]

Actually I seem to recall that that is literally the reason that prompted ED to enable the current like system.  And for the most part I would have to say it worked,   as there was a noticeable reduction in such posts (enough to shift them from being far too common to being rare) after it was enabled.

- Neelix

 

[rygD]

For longer posts I break them up and respond to pieces of it, and unless it is good overall (like updates about software or the Pyra or whatever) I don't just like it unless I like it all.  In that sense you are correct.  Killing the "likes" would make things less fun for that reason.  When there are posts that include bad news without likes how can I see:

I overcooked my lunch and decided to eat it anyway , then the cat knocked it on the floor.

You and 13 other people like this.

 

[comradekingu]

Down with moderators!

+27

Actually I rarely do anything at all as a moderator. Sometimes I split or merge a thread (when asked to), I hide redundant posts (when asked to), and very occasionally sticky/unsticky or lock/unlock a thread. Sometimes I remove spam accounts (obvious spam, like viagra or rolex stuff), and sometimes I participate in mod discussions when problematic posts or behavior are reported; most often the resulting action is "do nothing" or "send the person a friendly informal private message to ask him/her to behave better".

So this is a really nice forum to moderate: we have a nice team of moderators and there's barely any real moderation needed

Growing ever more disillusioned and detached from the classes he left behind, the reality was still clear, before the days towing the party line, wb had been a member of the people, one of us. That was a long time ago now.

But the game was decidedly up, one whos very description bore warnings stood between them and perpetual rule, one whos frantic screaming unlimited likes could not drown out.

Mod-raters resting assuredly on their newfound titles, knew the real up-rank was still the power to be.

In a world without dislikes, the likes of many are +one. 

Mod-raters made the mistake of thinking this was all a game. But they could not split them all. For every faceless prolific 3000+shiftposter, there were 10-fold more to reply with meaningless banter.

Days came and went, but one day the slit went splat. The kebabs were coming, they had caught wb off-guard.

"Crush the moderate-ry. They have no particular flaws to speak of. They are not human!"

Thus read their banners. Great in numbers, only individually limited in their care of the world.

 

[thatgui]

Actually I seem to recall that that is literally the reason that prompted ED to enable the current like system.

Why is that a very bad thing ?

 

[Neelix]

I never said it was a bad thing.  I was pointing that out because Christoph.Krn suggested that that reasoning was unreasonable.

- Neelix

 

[Nintendo]

The reality is...its here to stay and we all have to live in harmony amongst the Likes.

 

[thatgui]

I never said it was a bad thing.  I was pointing that out because Christoph.Krn suggested that that reasoning was unreasonable.


- Neelix

Apologies, this wasn't worded right and you weren't the correct addresse either. The agenda behind this post was to point at the fact that ED needed to update the board in order to get this functionality, which usually is a rather tall hurdly one has to take, so I figured the "+1" post were something that bothered Ed enough so he was motivated to do the update.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

I never said it was a bad thing. I was pointing that out because Christoph.Krn suggested that that reasoning was unreasonable.

Ah, no, that's not what I was trying to say, sorry. It was well reasonable back then. I just think that using the same reasoning today and in this discussion, when the point is whether or not over time "Likes" have had additional, possibly negative effects (that may outweigh the benefits on this forum), I think is ignorant of the reality of things (which, the way I see it, is that "Likes" and "+1 posts" encourage rather different "typical" uses).

 

[Neelix]

Wouldn't it be better to find a way to combat those perceived negative effects rather than swap them for known negative effects?

- Neelix

 

[Null]

That seems like a good idea, it'll never work.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

Wouldn't it be better to find a way to combat those perceived negative effects rather than swap them for known negative effects?

First of all, I'm not suggesting that we blindly scrap the "Likes" system, we're in speculation territory here after all. I'm suggesting that today it might make sense if we try out what it's like to use this forum without it, and with the update to the first post of this thread, people who are curious about this can sort-of do this now (and I'm very interested in hearing whether/how it has surprising effects on your user experience in day-to-day use). We don't have to flat-out disable the board's "Likes" system to get an approximate idea (at least of some aspects).
But yes, what some people have been experiencing and complaining about recently here is inside of the discussion culture of the remaining users, and because the discussion culture of an online forum /is/ the users (no users, no discussion), and changes as the users change, the sensible thing to do would be for us all to realize which problems exist, inform and educate each other about it, and discuss potential changes. I have a feeling that Ziz' Some thoughts about the board has served this purpose, several recent complaints and experience reports of other people have, and I hope so does this very thread.

(I think that other things which could be done would be much more splitting of threads when they go off-topic, and moderators could try to figure out which information could be organized and presented better to reduce the clutter and need for RYRYRY, such as maybe the information that users can use the "Report" button on off-topic posts to request a split, or the technical requirements for the keyboard/kebab layouts. But I'm probably biased there because I used to make good anecdotal experience with users noting that this helped them when I was a moderator and did these things at gp2x.de . This would require a certain amount of work that not every moderator would want to / would be able to do, which no one can, or should, expect or demand of any moderator. This thread here isn't the right place to discuss this either. But because I don't want people to leave, I've already talked about this with some of the moderators, and if any other moderators here would like my advice regarding the restructuring of information, feel free to ask me.)

 

[Null]

Someone needs to learn how to brevity.

 

[Neelix]

Wouldn't it be better to find a way to combat those perceived negative effects rather than swap them for known negative effects?

First of all, I'm not suggesting that we blindly scrap the "Likes" system, we're in speculation territory here after all. I'm suggesting that today it might make sense if we try out what it's like to use this forum without it, and with the update to the first post of this thread, people who are curious about this can sort-of do this now (and I'm very interested in hearing whether/how it has surprising effects on your user experience in day-to-day use). We don't have to flat-out disable the board's "Likes" system to get an approximate idea (at least of some aspects).
But yes, what some people have been experiencing and complaining about recently here is inside of the discussion culture of the remaining users, and because the discussion culture of an online forum /is/ the users (no users, no discussion), and changes as the users change, the sensible thing to do would be for us all to realize which problems exist, inform and educate each other about it, and discuss potential changes. I have a feeling that Ziz' Some thoughts about the board has served this purpose, several recent complaints and experience reports of other people have, and I hope so does this very thread.

I get what you're saying, but my own experience contradicts that in that I'm more likely to give feedback *with* the 'like' mechanism. In most cases I'm not going to say anything unless I feel I have something to add. If I agree with a post and have nothing else to add to it you normally wouldn't hear from me at all without a mechanism like the 'like' system in place, so I see no value in depriving myself of it.

I certainly understand where Ziz is coming from, but I think that it's a symptom of time and the product development cycle. These boards were focused around the Pandora, and while many are still using their Pandora and no doubt will for some time, it's popularity has peaked and is waning. With it interest in the boards has also waned, and discussion of the Pandora is much less than it used to be. If it wasn't for the Pyra I suspect these boards would be getting a lot less traffic by now. Once the Pyra has been released I expect the overall tone of the boards will shift again, and the kind of enthusiasm that was often seen at the peak of the Pandora's popularity will become apparent again over time, but with a new focus.

- Neelix