New format test

[JRG]

5 hours ago, navybankerteacher said:

DOWN.

 

did you want that on White or Rye bread?

[ilikeanswers]

As someone who frequents the Travel group in R I have to say up voting is not that bad, and you tend to get most informative answers at the top. However R's whole thread structure is that they nest reply conversations so the flow isn't interrupted by the reorganising of up votes. If my reply to a post doesn't go directly under that post, it will end up a disorganised mess. You can't have up voting without changing how conversations are threaded. 

Edited January 25 by ilikeanswers

[navybankerteacher]

10 hours ago, Charles4515 said:

On the left side of every post at the top is a large  ^. Click that to vote. You can’t vote on your own post. I don’t think they give any instructions. Probably only curious types click and find out about clicking the ^ . 

Hitting that “^” allows you to vote UP.  But there is not a symbol which allows you to vote down.  It is reminiscent of Soviet elections during the Stalin era - ballots permitted voters to approve of Stalin - but no other option.

 

Understanding this approach to “voting” is what makes some of us express disenchantment with this “improvement” provided us by the moderators.

[navybankerteacher]

7 hours ago, ilikeanswers said:

As someone who frequents the Travel group in R I have to say up voting is not that bad, and you tend to get most informative answers at the top. However R's whole thread structure is that they nest reply conversations so the flow isn't interrupted by the reorganising of up votes. If my reply to a post doesn't go directly under that post, it will end up a disorganised mess. You can't have up voting without changing how conversations are threaded. 

So you like this change - instead of allowing conversation concerning a topic we are limited to participating in a popularity contest among posts - with absolutely no indication of what it is that a voter might have liked about that post.  Kind of pointless, if you ask me.

[ilikeanswers]

35 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

So you like this change - instead of allowing conversation concerning a topic we are limited to participating in a popularity contest among posts - with absolutely no indication of what it is that a voter might have liked about that post.  Kind of pointless, if you ask me.

 

You do realise you can still reply to posts? Up voting doesn't take away that feature, therefore you still have a conversation. As for popularity it is not that much different to likes which already cruise critic participates in. No one asks posters who like posts why they like it so why should people who up vote justify their choices?

 

If you have a post that is really informative and answers the OPs question it can be useful to have it at the top especially if there are pages and pages of posts. Not everyone has time to read through hundreds of posts sometimes veering off topic to find the answer they are looking for. Up voting itself is not a bad feature but within the current linear thread structure it won't work. 

[VMax1700]

58 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

 It is reminiscent of Soviet elections during the Stalin era - ballots permitted voters to approve of Stalin - but no other option.

 

If that is the case, then they already know the result.

Off to the gulag with this format.

[Charles4515]

1 hour ago, navybankerteacher said:

Hitting that “^” allows you to vote UP.  But there is not a symbol which allows you to vote down.  It is reminiscent of Soviet elections during the Stalin era - ballots permitted voters to approve of Stalin - but no other option.

 

Understanding this approach to “voting” is what makes some of us express disenchantment with this “improvement” provided us by the moderators.

I think that the idea is that if you don’t vote up you are voting down. Upvoting  works on R as @ilikeanswers explained because the thread structure nests. It is not suited to the straight thread structure on Cruise Critic. 

[leaveitallbehind]

44 minutes ago, ilikeanswers said:

 

You do realise you can still reply to posts? Up voting doesn't take away that feature, therefore you still have a conversation. As for popularity it is not that much different to likes which already cruise critic participates in. No one asks posters who like posts why they like it so why should people who up vote justify their choices?

 

If you have a post that is really informative and answers the OPs question it can be useful to have it at the top especially if there are pages and pages of posts. Not everyone has time to read through hundreds of posts sometimes veering off topic to find the answer they are looking for. Up voting itself is not a bad feature but within the current linear thread structure it won't work. 

So since there already is a "like" feature - which allows one to express their support of a given post, thus indicating its' popularity - what then is the purpose or value in "upvoting", especially when that results in the reorientation of the response stream thus taking that "upvoted" response out of context? Isn't that just another "like" feature? Seems kind of redundant - at best.

 

But as mentioned before, this also just makes responses far more subjective v objective as they are "upvoted" not based necessarily on correctness but by other's "liking" of the answer.  Sorry, I just don't get it. 

 

To me there is absolutely no value in it and I clearly hope the mods listen to the overwhelmingly negative responses and go back to what didn't need "fixed" in the first place.

Edited January 25 by leaveitallbehind

[John Bull]

 

@ilikeanswers 

 

Errrr, no. 

When a post is up-voted it goes up the chain - replies don't. So the conversation is broken, eventually by several pages. .And that's particularly pertinent if the reply corrects inaccurate information in the first post.

 

A few days ago I proved that point by up-voting a reply to a post. The result was that the reply came waaay before the post it was referring to, and made a nonsense.

Added to that, the up-vote changed all the post numbers. The reply had also referenced another post by its post-number, the up-vote meant that the referenced post-number was an entirely different post. And the same would apply to references to all the intervening threads.

 

Those are just a couple of the many cans of worms that get opened.

Up-voting has also sacrificed number of views on a thread and any reference to the last post - name, day/date, even which post is the latest

I will now up-vote your post to see what confusion that creates (with apologies to @leaveitallbehind whose post will doubtless, along with mine, get detached from @ilikeanswers post

 

JB 🥴

EDITED TO ADD. And hey presto. Ilikeanswers' post is now way back on Page One, whilst my reply to that post is stuck here on Page Three, along with leaveitall's (my apols to leaveitall)

Edited January 25 by John Bull

[leaveitallbehind]

15 minutes ago, Charles4515 said:

I think that the idea is that if you don’t vote up you are voting down. Upvoting  works on R as @ilikeanswers explained because the thread structure nests. It is not suited to the straight thread structure on Cruise Critic. 

It would seem to me, as others have mentioned, that the true value of "upvoting" would be realised if there was a "downvoting" feature as well.  Would this not allow the truly popular responses (note that I did not say correct answers) as the cream to rise to the top, and the more unpopular responses to drop to the bottom?.  Would that not be the most accurate way of gauging popularity?  Not "upvoting" only allows for the most liked responses to be noted but does not result in any balance of popularity that would result from allowing unliked responses to drop.  

 

Either way the whole thing IMO is a mess and a waste of time and not worth any further time invested analyzing as clearly the lack of support and no "upvoting" for this feature says it all.

[ontheweb]

56 minutes ago, ilikeanswers said:

 

You do realise you can still reply to posts? Up voting doesn't take away that feature, therefore you still have a conversation. As for popularity it is not that much different to likes which already cruise critic participates in. No one asks posters who like posts why they like it so why should people who up vote justify their choices?

 

If you have a post that is really informative and answers the OPs question it can be useful to have it at the top especially if there are pages and pages of posts. Not everyone has time to read through hundreds of posts sometimes veering off topic to find the answer they are looking for. Up voting itself is not a bad feature but within the current linear thread structure it won't work. 

But if you move it to the top and someone clicks on the star fo go to the first unread post, how do you find it in the pages and pages of responses when it is now at the top?

[navybankerteacher]

27 minutes ago, Charles4515 said:

I think that the idea is that if you don’t vote up you are voting down. Upvoting  works on R as @ilikeanswers explained because the thread structure nests. It is not suited to the straight thread structure on Cruise Critic. 

Have you ever heard the word “abstain”?  Not voting up is nothing more than not voting up.

[leaveitallbehind]

10 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

Have you ever heard the word “abstain”?  Not voting up is nothing more than not voting up.

But in fairness and to be truly democratic and objective in determining the most "popular" answers, there should be a "downvoting" option as well.  You then complete the full measure with all points of view included by allowing for an "upvote", abstaining with "no vote", as well as being able to express an alternative view with a "downvote".  

 

Or just throw the whole thing in the trash where it belongs in the first place....

Edited January 25 by leaveitallbehind

[Charles4515]

10 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

Have you ever heard the word “abstain”?  Not voting up is nothing more than not voting up.

There are forums with both upvoting and with a downvote feature too. It really depends on what the admins want and the community may have some say in what features are used. My guess is that the developers of the software used here have added new features one of which is upvoting. I have no idea of all the features possible. Downvote could be a possible feature. I don’t know. The Cruise Critic admin has decided to test the upvote feature. 

Edited January 25 by Charles4515

[leaveitallbehind]

12 minutes ago, Charles4515 said:

There are forums with both upvoting and with a downvote feature too. It really depends on what the admins want and the community may have some say in what features are used. My guess is that the developers of the software used here have added new features one of which is upvoting. I have no idea of all the features possible. Downvote could be a possible feature. I don’t know. The Cruise Critic admin has decided to test the upvote feature. 

I've just re-read my recent posts and it could be interpreted that I am advocating adding a "downvote" feature in order to make this garbage acceptable.  I want to clarify in the strongest terms that none of this is acceptable to me regardless of features added or subtracted.  I am in no way endorsing this mess.  As was said before on a rather popular comedy show, "Delete, Delete, Delete....."!

[*Miss G*]

Now I’m wondering what the travel group “R” is!  😂

 

I think a better location for this format would be the “Need Help” forum.  But there’s probably a lot less traffic over there for testing.  Clearly, though, this forum isn’t the place as it’s more of a conversational board than a best practice board.

[ilikeanswers]

1 hour ago, leaveitallbehind said:

So since there already is a "like" feature - which allows one to express their support of a given post, thus indicating its' popularity - what then is the purpose or value in "upvoting", especially when that results in the reorientation of the response stream thus taking that "upvoted" response out of context? Isn't that just another "like" feature? Seems kind of redundant - at best.

 

But as mentioned before, this also just makes responses far more subjective v objective as they are "upvoted" not based necessarily on correctness but by other's "liking" of the answer.  Sorry, I just don't get it. 

 

To me there is absolutely no value in it and I clearly hope the mods listen to the overwhelmingly negative responses and go back to what didn't need "fixed" in the first place.

 

I would assume if they adopted up voting they would remove the Like button but that is up to the web designer. As for whether the post is correct I can only go with my experience in the R travel group and usually the information is pretty good. To be fair if you don't like the top response you can set it to newest post first so you do have choices. As for the reorientation you clearly did not read my original post when I said they would obviously have to change the threading of the conversations. Every site that uses up voting use nested threads because otherwise the conversation would be taken out of context. 

1 hour ago, John Bull said:

 

@ilikeanswers 

 

Errrr, no. 

When a post is up-voted it goes up the chain - replies don't. So the conversation is broken, eventually by several pages. .And that's particularly pertinent if the reply corrects inaccurate information in the first post.

 

A few days ago I proved that point by up-voting a reply to a post. The result was that the reply came waaay before the post it was referring to, and made a nonsense.

Added to that, the up-vote changed all the post numbers. The reply had also referenced another post by its post-number, the up-vote meant that the referenced post-number was an entirely different post. And the same would apply to references to all the intervening threads.

 

Those are just a couple of the many cans of worms that get opened.

Up-voting has also sacrificed number of views on a thread and any reference to the last post - name, day/date, even which post is the latest

I will now up-vote your post to see what confusion that creates (with apologies to @leaveitallbehind whose post will doubtless, along with mine, get detached from @ilikeanswers post

 

JB 🥴

EDITED TO ADD. And hey presto. Ilikeanswers' post is now way back on Page One, whilst my reply to that post is stuck here on Page Three, along with leaveitall's (my apols to leaveitall)

 

Thank you for the detail response and your little experiment but you could have saved the effort by re reading my original response that already addressed your issue. I clearly said that up voting will obviously not work on linear threads. 

1 hour ago, ontheweb said:

But if you move it to the top and someone clicks on the star fo go to the first unread post, how do you find it in the pages and pages of responses when it is now at the top?

 

I have to be honest I am not sure I understand your question. The sites that use up votes don't have linear conversation threads therefore there is no first new unread post hence why I said in my original post which everyone seems to have skipped that it would not work with this current style of threading. 

 

Hopefully I have cleared things up enough that I don't have to repeat myself again😂

Edited January 25 by ilikeanswers

[Charles4515]

6 minutes ago, *Miss G* said:

Now I’m wondering what the travel group “R” is!  😂

 

I think a better location for this format would be the “Need Help” forum.  But there’s probably a lot less traffic over there for testing.  Clearly, though, this forum isn’t the place as it’s more of a conversational board than a best practice board.

It’s a huge popular forum site on all kinds of topics. When you do google searches answers pop from that site or the one that begins with Q. 
 

The Need Help forum is for technical questions about the forums. Most of the posts are from new people who post there because they don’t read the description. Back in the old days before we started posting on a forum site we read the rules and lurked a bit to get the lay of the land, find out where to post questions. Here it seems new people don’t bother they just make a mess. 

[ilikeanswers]

18 minutes ago, *Miss G* said:

Now I’m wondering what the travel group “R” is!  😂

 

One of the posts said if you write out the website name your own post goes to moderation so I was trying to be careful, but here is a clue, Snoo is the logo and I was referring to their Travel sub forum. 

Edited January 25 by ilikeanswers

[*Miss G*]

3 minutes ago, Charles4515 said:

It’s a huge popular forum site on all kinds of topics. When you do google searches answers pop from that site or the one that begins with Q. 

 

Oooooooohhhh.  The penny just dropped.  😂  Thank you.

[navybankerteacher]

57 minutes ago, leaveitallbehind said:

I've just re-read my recent posts and it could be interpreted that I am advocating adding a "downvote" feature in order to make this garbage acceptable.  I want to clarify in the strongest terms that none of this is acceptable to me regardless of features added or subtracted.  I am in no way endorsing this mess.  As was said before on a rather popular comedy show, "Delete, Delete, Delete....."!

Agreed - adding a “downvote” feature would only make this mess a bit less of an illogical absurdity.   It would remain a practical absurdity, since a popularity contest among posts is of minimal interest to virtually all posters.

 

The moderators should ask themselves if they want to provide something of interest to the users, or prefer to simply generate  statistics for their own survey — which will become increasingly difficult as the posters simply abstain altogether.

[clo]

14 hours ago, Kristelle said:

Or if we all don't play at all and dont vote at all ( which seems to be the case anyway, can only see 1 vote ) then they will see this isn't a winner.

I don't acknowledge their existence except here. And btw I really like change. When it accomplishes something good.

[leaveitallbehind]

2 hours ago, clo said:

I don't acknowledge their existence except here. And btw I really like change. When it accomplishes something good.

....and I see this at best as simply change for change sake, which IMO typically is a recipe for disaster that accomplished nothing good.  To be of any value, change should a purpose motivated by a defined need with a positive outcome goal.  Not seeing any of that here....

Edited January 25 by leaveitallbehind

[Charles4515]

26 minutes ago, leaveitallbehind said:

....and I see this at best as simply change for change sake, which IMO typically is a recipe for disaster that accomplished nothing good.  To be of any value, change should a purpose motivated by a defined need with a positive outcome goal.  Not seeing any of that here....

I doubt it was simply change for changes sake. Upvoting is a popular feature on a lot of forum. Trying new ideas is not a bad thing. They can change the forums any way they want. They could have just done it done it as a done deal without running a test. I think the criticism the first couple of dayswas constructive  but now the criticism is becoming repetitive.

Edited January 25 by Charles4515

[navybankerteacher]

3 hours ago, clo said:

I don't acknowledge their existence except here. And btw I really like change. When it accomplishes something good.

You mean that you are not thrilled to be given the opportunity to anonymously give a “thumbs up” to a post that virtually everyone has had the sense to just let pass?