Voting and Reputation, How do you feel about it?

[speechles]

Just today it happened again. Another script download from the tcl archive here is found to have detrimental flaws. Which script, which flaw isn't important. What is.. is what this site lacks, that every other site in the world has. This is 2013 isnt it?

So here is the jist:

Imagine, if you will, there were some way to vote up or down scripts within the archive. To make it appease coders with the ability to add any script they wish, but not pollute the pool of scripts available because users of these scripts can now down vote their appearance. After a certain amount of down votes, it would be up to the moderators how far they let the negative votes get before they decide whether to move the script to the "unpopular" section. This would be the only new section of that archive that would need adding, the "unpopular" section. Conversely the opposite holds true, after an appearance in the unpopular section with enough up votes it could also go back to normal. Of course only registered users can vote, the entire idea of this is to attract a larger registered user base. You would be given a certain amount of votes each day, and everyone would be limited to the same ration. There would be no one special or granted more than the limit of votes everyone has per day. People abusing the voting system of course would have their contributions moved to the unpopular section, and their reputation would be affected (for more on that see below).

The other side of the coin, is in regards to users themselves. There should be some sort of reputation system added as well. Perhaps where if you contribute something useful, a person can give your post an up vote. That up vote adds to your reputation points. If people up vote your post often enough. Your reputation follows. If you find yourself battling users, you may find you reputation plummets. Even I am guilty of battling users. But I find that this type of system would benefit this forum and encourage a more active participation. There are so many guests that view this forum, giving them a way to register and still have power without posting would go a long way to providing better experience for users. There would also be a limit of up/down (pooled) votes each user can contribute to reputations per day. This would be across the board same for every user regardless of position. This would keep an even playing field.

If you agree or disagree, well, that's why I've posted this in the script releases section. This section being the most active, this section should give this proposal the most eyeballs.

It is up to slennox or whoever actually runs this website to follow through. This is merely to see if this idea is even warranted. To me it would add immense value and attract a larger user base. What are your 2 cents?

[Madalin]

I agree with a system like this. But i think everyone knows that noone comed up with this ideas so far because it was well known that the forum/website wont be updated for a few possible reasons like "slennox doesnt have time/doesnt care that much/dont know etc" because im 100% sure that if slennox would have said that he needed help improving the forum/website he would have got it. I mean come on this is the best tcl/eggdrop forum/website on the planet and its 2013 as you said spechless things must evolve. As everyone else sees the forum wasnt updated for a long time this voting system should have i think had been here for sometime if im not wrong. And a special part for voting scripts on the main page should be existed for along time also because the list was being updated "constantly" users have 'uploaded' scripts so it wasnt a dead website. Yet that part is manually updated by slennox so is a slow process

[BigToe]

hey speechless,

I would like to comment regarding a few things you said.

Imagine, if you will, there were some way to vote up or down scripts within the archive. To make it appease coders with the ability to add any script they wish, but not pollute the pool of scripts available because users of these scripts can now down vote their appearance. After a certain amount of down votes, it would be up to the moderators how far they let the negative votes get before they decide whether to move the script to the "unpopular" section. This would be the only new section of that archive that would need adding, the "unpopular" section. Conversely the opposite holds true, after an appearance in the unpopular section with enough up votes it could also go back to normal. Of course only registered users can vote, the entire idea of this is to attract a larger registered user base. You would be given a certain amount of votes each day, and everyone would be limited to the same ration. There would be no one special or granted more than the limit of votes everyone has per day. People abusing the voting system of course would have their contributions moved to the unpopular section, and their reputation would be affected (for more on that see below).

So the Reddit model? personally I think it has quite a few flaws, people might have an interest to downvote other people's scripts for reasons that have nothing to do with 'does the script do its purpose, function properly and has no errors' and of course upvote certain scripts for obvious reasons.

Would the upvote/downvote be limited just to registered users or can non registered users also upvote/downvote scripts?

The other side of the coin, is in regards to users themselves. There should be some sort of reputation system added as well. Perhaps where if you contribute something useful, a person can give your post an up vote. That up vote adds to your reputation points. If people up vote your post often enough. Your reputation follows. If you find yourself battling users, you may find you reputation plummets. Even I am guilty of battling users. But I find that this type of system would benefit this forum and encourage a more active participation. There are so many guests that view this forum, giving them a way to register and still have power without posting would go a long way to providing better experience for users. There would also be a limit of up/down (pooled) votes each user can contribute to reputations per day. This would be across the board same for every user regardless of position. This would keep an even playing field.

Again, sounds like Reddit, not a forum...

And I'm not all that against Reddit but I'm just saying if thats the way its going, it sounds more like talking about a subreddit for egghelp.org than an actual way to rank good/bad scripts

[speechles]

sounds like Reddit, not a forum...

Reddit doesn't work quite the same way. It itself is more of a message board, like an old bbs than a forum. You would have 2 ways to sort the forum.

The normal way, which displays everything by age. Newest floats to the top. We know how this works. It promotes bumping, etc..

The relevance way, which displays threads by value. The value of each thread is important.
The formula is Value = ( (amount of up votes for every post in that thread) - (amount of down votes for every post in that thread) ) * (amount of total posts for the thread) / (total users posting in that thread).

for example:
A thread has 15 posts. All of which consist of the person created the thread and one other person. In those 15 posts, there were 5 up votes and 2 down votes.
(5 - 2) * 15 / 2 = 22.5 value

A thread has 12 posts. There are 5 users participating. It has 30 up votes total, and 9 down votes.
(30-9) * 12 / 5 = 50.4 value

A thread has 9 posts. There are 8 users participating. It has 2 up votes total, and 50 down votes.
(2-50) * 9 / 8 = -54 value

A thread just created has 1 post. There is 1 user participating. It has 0 up votes total, and 0 down votes.
(0-0) * 1 / 1 = 0

So you can see, this isn't like Reddit. The user contributed the post which obtains up/down votes. This affects that individuals reputation.

Reputation = ( (total up votes of every post ever made by the user) - (total down votes) ) * (total amount of threads) / (total amount of posts)

A user with 8 threads created having a total of 59 posts total. They have 15 up votes, and 2 down votes.
(15-2)*8/59 = 1.76271186

A user with 152 threads created having a total of 3972 posts total. They have 2020 up votes, and 925 down votes.
(2020-925)*152/3972 = 41.9033233

How would this be like reddit again?

[BigToe]

How would this be like reddit again?

Users Upvote/downvote and populism.

What guarantees that a user will only downvote scripts that don't function rather than just scripts he found no use of or doesn't like the guy who wrote it or the script itself?

[speechles]

Exactly. There is no guarantee. But you are limited by quota. You only have so many votes per day to use. Say 5 perhaps. Do you spend these every day as down votes for same people (ie, you are a sad sad person), or do you spend them happier on up votes to deserving posts/scripts/etc? This is where morality comes into play. The human condition also rears its head; jealousy, revenge, spite... This creates drama. People love drama. It would also encourage longer visits to the site.

But really, the idea was much more simple. The site is antiquated and promotes post bumping, has semi-frequent spam abuse, and demands quite a bit of time of moderators. To alleviate alot of this, the system I'm talking about reduces the need for moderation at all. There can simply be a box in the upper right corner says [spam] and [bully]. When people click it the system forwards that post to a moderator (repeat forwards for spam of course go nowhere, repeat bullies get reported) on that users behalf. Once identified as spam its junkyarded. Once identified as bullying that poster can be disciplined. Little details. Where it looks like you actually expect the users to participate in defending this site. So as people do down vote for spite, you can bet that the reverse side happens, people will band up to support this person being bullied to prop their votes back up. This is how a system of this type works. It gets you into thinking less about yourself and more about you and others reputations.

[slennox]

Have moved this thread into the announcements & other section since the discussion has gotten a bit more generalised.

From my perspective, egghelp.org basically has legacy status nowadays, much like IRC and eggdrop itself. If there's enough interest in dragging these things into 2013 and beyond, it's up to a new generation to step up. Maybe the continued presence of this site creates an inertia holding that back, but I'd hesitate to overstate its importance in driving the community. It was really the other way around - egghelp.org rode on the back of the fervent activity around Eggdrop and IRC that once existed.

When it comes to the question of passing the baton to someone else, the answer is simply I haven't known who to turn to - I've always been a bit of a lone ranger and egghelp is my baby, so trust is a pretty big hurdle and most of the people I know have moved on. It's been my expectation that, if there was sufficient demand for it, the attention would've shifted to new and more active sites just as happens in other areas of interest online, and I certainly wouldn't have been shy about giving them publicity.

[slennox]

Re a couple of the other points raised:

- There were only one or two spammer signups with one or two associated spam posts in the past month or so, thanks to an improved anti-spam question.

- Apart from maintenance visits (keeping an eye on the junk yard and deleting spambot accounts), I don't often read new posts here, and inappropriate posts are brought to my attention when placed in the junk yard or reported directly to me by a moderator or user. It's pretty rare for this to be anything other than spam posts, so I'm not aware of other major moderation issues (it seems weird that there would be on a forum that gets maybe 5 new posts on a typical day).