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[Idea] Changing 'Votes' to 'Reviews'

Sir ArmaMalum·7/20/2014, 4:34:50 PM·9 votes·237 views

With all of the recent talk about the voting system and the pros and cons of such I just recently got an idea from JackYaqua's thread here. While not exactly the same, I hope this system will address the 'circlejerk' issue as well as keeping the old vBulletin problem of any comment supporting an OP down as well.

Reviews

I'm imagining something akin to Steam reviews. I'll walk you through the process.

You enter an OP, look exactly the same as it does now, and you decide to upvote/downvote it.

Upon clicking the vote a prompt will come up asking your explanation of why you voted that way. Upvote=postive review, downvote=negative review.

Similar to this:
http://apollo-na-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/1405881817441/Voting.jpg
Image courtesy of Rhlax

Your review will appear below the OP stating your explanation.

Other readers that read your review can select from an agree/disagree option and give your upvote/downvote slightly more weight, without having to explain themselves.

Similar to this:
http://apollo-na-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/1405892857186/Agreedisagree2.jpg
image coutesy of Rhlax

OP's can reply to these reviews either privately or publicly (I'm not leaning in either direction right now, what do you guys think?)

6)Comments and everything stay the exact same, reviews can have a seperate 'tab' or be default minimized at the top. Or possibly located to the right, all that unused space you know?

What I imagine this will do is allow for people who think logically and explain their reasoning to do so and give their well-thought out opinion and explanation more weight because they took the time to talk about it. This means more work to 'cast a vote' but hopefully limits sensationalism in posting as well as allows minority opinion to stand out a bit more (because those in the minority, stereo-typically, will work harder to get their voice out than the majority)

The problems I'm still mulling over are things like the possibility of one letter reviews just to vote and other 'lazy reviews'. Maybe a minimum word limit based on the word count of the OP?

24 Comments

MrBuffington7/20/2014, 5:04:17 PM2 votes

What about a multiple choice review (something like the honor system; "Friendly, Helpful, Teamwork(?), Honorable Opponent (???)"), with the option to explain? It might help to do away with one letter reviews, etc.

Heck, this could be used to categorize different thread (this thread has 20 "Helpful" upvotes, must be some good information here). Just an idea.

Hyrum Graff7/22/2014, 2:02:02 AM2 votes

I disagree with your post
I write a negative, 1 letter review.
I fairy up and downvote all the reviews.

I don't think this system has done away with the issues surrounding downvotes, just hidden them a layer deep.

It does help prevent downvote fairies from spamming downvotes on every post, but I think the bigger issue here is posts being downvoted because of the poster, which people can still do fairly easily.

Hyrum Graff7/20/2014, 4:52:39 PM1 votes

Not my thread, bud :P

Rhlax7/20/2014, 6:45:57 PM1 votes

Mock up 1

AnonTwo7/22/2014, 4:27:55 AM1 votes

The problem with this system as i see it is it would discourage votes from time constrained people. You would suddenly be required to make a fairly thought out response in order to vote...It's basically forcing you to respond to any message you disagree with...

...and honestly, i see people eventually getting tired of it and either ignoring the reviews or abusing the system, making sure to "upvote" the downvotes against a post they don't like.

You could say it really just turns every post into a low-effort thread, because it requires a layer of discussion people don't want to have, simply to support or go against an argument they either supported or didn't.

To try to put this into perspective, think of it this way:

I'm here

The thread is here

I disagree and post why here, then i get into a discussion about whether or not my downvote was justified It's a small sidestep from the actual discussion, especially when you consider that people are likely commenting similar reasons in the thread anyway.

In fact the more i think about it, the more i think "what is the point?". You're basically going to have reviews saying the exact same things as whats in the comments.

I wouldn't be surprised if say someone said Lee Sin is OP, you had a bunch of upvotes that just said: "Lee Sin is OP" or against saying "He's not OP, you just dodge"

Basically, the reviews become a low-effort response based on the comments, so people can get back to the comments themselves.

I can see why you would want this for steam reviews, because you don't want people arguing the validity of a review to people who are considering purchasing a game. The point of such a system seems to be to obscure the discussion, not a means to circumvent the voting system.

EDIT: Mockup 2 in fact highlights the key issue with such a review system: Most of the reviews are very low effort, "I agree" "I disagree" comments. They do nothing more than vocalize what an upvote or downvote means.

Pryotra7/25/2014, 4:28:41 PM1 votes

Honestly, I think over-complicates an feature to solve an only slightly similar issue. Similar to fixing hardware problems with software, but less efficient than that.

You are effecting the way votes are handled, to solve the "votes have too much power in thread sorting" issue. While that might sound correct, wouldn't it be easier and more effective to, I dunno, decrease the weight of votes in comparison to unique poster activity?

For example:

Joshua creates a thread. Mary, Fran, Sue, and Joan are posting in the thread, talking amongst themselves. Billy, Joe, ted, and phill, each downvote the conversation, as they don't feel it's relevent, while Mary, Fran, Sue, and Joan have all upvoted. This leave the vote count at 1, and the total post count is, say, 15.

In the current system, that would be below anything that got 2 upvotes, unless the 3 rated thread was old with no activity. I am suggesting that votes=unique posters in terms of weight. So in the above example:

The thread weight should be counted as 5 factored against age. 1 vote + 4 commenters.

Reason being, If something is neutral in votes, but there is a lot of discussion, it will still rise. It would still show as 1 upvote, but the system sorting the threads would see this thread as a more active thread. This means that just because something is Super active, it will rise, even if the votes would hold it down.