Voting should be disabled altogether IMO until we can figure out a way to stop the voting manipulation that is going on. Right now, it's turned the entire boards into a joke and good topics are being kept down for no reason. You can't even differentiate between topics at all anymore, it's complete chaos I tell you!
ModThe Djinn8 votesIt's irritating, certainly.
The thing is that, when we disabled voting in the past, we discovered the community really likes voting, and valued the features that require voting to work, such as the Boards Home Page, the Hot post sorting option, Discussion View, etc. The community has also seemed pretty good at looking for vote-manipulated threads, self-identifying them, and keeping good threads in Recent by posting on them and engaging in discussion. As a result, I'm not sure we're at the point where the nuclear option is necessary, given how much it frustrated people last time.
OneMustFall5 votes[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2019-12-12T15:02:20.499+0000)
It's irritating, certainly.
The thing is that, when we disabled voting in the past, we discovered the community really likes voting, and valued the features that require voting to work, such as the Boards Home Page, the Hot post sorting option, Discussion View, etc. The community has also seemed pretty good at looking for vote-manipulated threads, self-identifying them, and keeping good threads in Recent by posting on them and engaging in discussion. As a result, I'm not sure we're at the point where the nuclear option is necessary, given how much it frustrated people last time.
I think it's a much bigger issue than perhaps what you're seeing. When you have an entire page of topics with -50 votes, none of those topics can become "Hot" posts. I've seen a lot of topics with good discussion that maybe have 10 upvotes suddenly have -50 and are buried. So what is the point of voting if only certain topics can see the light of day? It's gotten to point now where it's so rampant that you don't know if the topic has been vote manipulated or if people really just like/dislike what's being said. The Recent tab keeps tabs of active discussion but if that is all that the community can use reliably, then why have the voting feature at all?
If voting is disabled at least every topic has the same chance at being noticed. I'm aware it's not ideal but I feel like something needs to be done or the boards are going to continue to devolve into a giant mess.
Sukishoo1 votesLike one of my recent topics had I believe 10-12 upvotes last night, I wake up to -50+ and just had kind of a laugh that they actually bother downing it THAT much.
The vote manipulation has gotten a bit ridiculous in the past few weeks with that.
Though with them keeping on their "recent / hot" thing, most places I know could sort those based on views, but this tech they keep using on the forum here is honestly pretty dated imo.
PaladinNO1 votes[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2019-12-12T15:02:20.499+0000)
The thing is that, when we disabled voting in the past, we discovered the community really likes voting
From a psychological standpoint, votes as such can make people feel better or worse about themselves depending on which way they swing.
Personally, I don't like a voting system as it sometimes make people make threads that share the same views as the general public only to get some sort of social approval.
Also, there is a reason why "like"-bots even is a thing. Would be interesting to see downvoting removed.
rujitra1 votesI was going to suggest a poll - until I realized that the requirements for voting on polls are even less than those for voting on threads (at least afaik) - so you'd run into an even bigger vote manipulation problem with it.
There's not really a good way for you to get a poll of community opinion beyond trying it I feel.
ModThe Djinn2 votes{quoted}There's not really a good way for you to get a poll of community opinion beyond trying it I feel.
Which we did previously, and we got a lot of backlash for it. We've talked about the possibility and determined that, at this time, we are not going to be locking all voting, although the option remains on the table and we may revisit it if the need arises.
rujitra1 votesI understand - I was pointing that out for others who may think "why don't they just do a poll, obviously we all think it changed" - a poll is not feasible here and I presume that removing voting on some/all boards would be quite a bit of work just to run an "experiment".
OneMustFall1 votes[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=000000020000,timestamp=2019-12-12T19:00:10.494+0000)
Which we did previously, and we got a lot of backlash for it. We've talked about the possibility and determined that, at this time, we are not going to be locking all voting, although the option remains on the table and we may revisit it if the need arises.
What about removing downvoting? Is that possible and has it been discussed already? Perhaps removing downvoting will at least prevent good topics from being hidden although it still wouldn't stop the issue of vote manipulation entirely. I believe it has been experimented with on the Gameplay+ board I but I'm not sure what the end results of that was.
What about removing downvoting? Is that possible and has it been discussed already? Perhaps removing downvoting will at least prevent good topics from being hidden although it still wouldn't stop the issue of vote manipulation entirely. I believe it has been experimented with on the Gameplay+ board I but I'm not sure what the end results of that was.
Unfortunately even if downvoting is removed, from what I've personally noticed it seems that vote manipulation via upvotes is the more common of the two, at least in PB anyways, so that wouldn't really change anything in my opinion.
ModThe Djinn1 votes{quoted}What about removing downvoting? Is that possible and has it been discussed already? Perhaps removing downvoting will at least prevent good topics from being hidden although it still wouldn't stop the issue of vote manipulation entirely.
This is something we've been actively discussing.
Bultz1 votes[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2019-12-12T15:02:20.499+0000)
It's irritating, certainly.
The thing is that, when we disabled voting in the past, we discovered the community really likes voting, and valued the features that require voting to work, such as the Boards Home Page, the Hot post sorting option, Discussion View, etc. The community has also seemed pretty good at looking for vote-manipulated threads, self-identifying them, and keeping good threads in Recent by posting on them and engaging in discussion. As a result, I'm not sure we're at the point where the nuclear option is necessary, given how much it frustrated people last time.
Force them to comment if they want to vote, at least until thisd bug/bot is dealt with.
Inkling Commando2 votes[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2019-12-12T15:02:20.499+0000)
It's irritating, certainly.
The thing is that, when we disabled voting in the past, we discovered the community really likes voting, and valued the features that require voting to work, such as the Boards Home Page, the Hot post sorting option, Discussion View, etc. The community has also seemed pretty good at looking for vote-manipulated threads, self-identifying them, and keeping good threads in Recent by posting on them and engaging in discussion. As a result, I'm not sure we're at the point where the nuclear option is necessary, given how much it frustrated people last time.
if what the mods say is true (which I doubt given how corrupt and biased they are) anything that has too much upvotes or downvotes is considered "manipulated" will be promptly locked. so to prevent mods from going trigger happy locking all votes would be best course of action.
ModThe Djinn1 votes[{quoted}](name=Inkling Commando,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=00000004,timestamp=2019-12-12T20:47:25.656+0000)if what the mods say is true (which I doubt given how corrupt and biased they are) anything that has too much upvotes or downvotes is considered "manipulated" will be promptly locked. so to prevent mods from going trigger happy locking all votes would be best course of action.
I'm one of the leads of the mod team, and I have never seen a mod state this. There are a number of heavily upvoted and downvoted threads that remain unlocked precisely because we do not lock threads unless we are basically certain there is vote manipulation going on. Do you have any specific cases you'd like me to look into?
Inkling Commando1 votes[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=000000040000,timestamp=2019-12-12T20:59:05.770+0000)
I'm one of the leads of the mod team, and I have never seen a mod state this. There are a number of heavily upvoted and downvoted threads that remain unlocked precisely because we do not lock threads unless we are basically certain there is vote manipulation going on. Do you have any specific cases you'd like me to look into?
tell me. how do you know the difference between a vote manipulator (I refuse to say vote bot because they don't exist) and an actual legit player who has a strong opinion about something?
ModThe Djinn1 votes[{quoted}](name=Inkling Commando,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=0000000400000000,timestamp=2019-12-13T02:24:02.462+0000)tell me. how do you know the difference between a vote manipulator (I refuse to say vote bot because they don't exist) and an actual legit player who has a strong opinion about something?
Mostly because we have (by now) years of experience with seeing how fast popular threads accrue upvotes and downvotes, and what percentages of votes-to-views start to become highly suspicious. Are we 100% accurate? No, and we're always seeking to improve, but we're definitely more accurate than not.
Inkling Commando1 votes[{quoted}](name=The Djinn,realm=NA,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=Bu3Axf7l,comment-id=00000004000000000000,timestamp=2019-12-13T03:20:58.663+0000)
Mostly because we have (by now) years of experience with seeing how fast popular threads accrue upvotes and downvotes, and what percentages of votes-to-views start to become highly suspicious. Are we 100% accurate? No, and we're always seeking to improve, but we're definitely more accurate than not.
so you don't know the difference. this means that you are allowing mods to abuse their powers and locks that they themselves don't like and use the excuse of "vote manipulation" and us as board community can't do shit about it otherwise us ourselves will be silenced.
Bârd1 votesAaaaaaaand -53.
F
