Feedback on NI Community
Please shut-off 1-start - 4-star ratings!
Solved!
@Ravens Fan wrote:
The exceptions being that the person is particularly rude in their question or asked the same question in 4-5 other thread starts. Particular if they got help in those messages, but didn't like the answers so they think they should ask again.
That would be tough to program as a rule... How would the rule know the difference or rather the meaning of a question. For instance, check how often someone posts that they are looking for jobs in the LabView forum. Or those that post spam..
It's not that easy to improve the current rating system. If the system insisted on a reason why the posts received a single star rating and kept track of who is rating the 1 star, then there might be less abuse... However, you might not want to give a 1-star rating to a post that deserved a single star. Again... how to differentiate between them.
Basically, if you read Altenbach's post to why his average went down from 4.9 to 4.8, you'd have to question just how strong the bloody 1-star affects the overall rating. Maybe the solution is easier... Maybe the overall average should not be based on averages, where the bloody 1-star has more weight, but rather on the total stars rated.
For instance, to render a 1-star rating to a visible 5-star (avg 4.5 & up), you need to recive 7 or 8 five-star ratings!!!! And! in the overall average, the visible 5-star only counts as a 4.5 (if you got 7 or 8 additional 5-stars to offset the 1-star), That's because the overall avg is based on the number of posts that got rated and not on the overall stars received. <<< this was discussed in details somewhere... Hopefully I got the story right >>> If the overall average gave the same weight to the total number of stars received, then the average might not be as affected by a 1-star rating. But doing a bit of math... the solution is not as simple as we would want to think... 😞 or not what we'd like it to be.
Thus why this thread on changing the system... 
Even that requires a bit of thought.... As long as it is not malicious (ie someone blindly giving 1-star to someone in particular), the rating system depicts the different opinions of the users of the forum (like the answer or person = 5 star, don't like something.. 1-star)... Now getting a 0-star really hurts!!! 😄 LOL!!
=============================
EDIT PORTION:
Crazy idea. Whayt if the only person able to rate the answer is the person who asked the question..
(Hey!! I did say "Crazy idea"!!!!)
Message Edited by JoeLabView on 09-01-2007 01:43 PM
Ravens Fan wrote:The exceptions being that the person is particularly rude in their question or asked the same question in 4-5 other thread starts. Particular if they got help in those messages, but didn't like the answers so they think they should ask again.
See, that's the problem! What if it is an excellent question? Does it still deserve a low rating just because the poster accidentally posted it in the wrong forum first?
Again, "posting behavior" should not be able to be rated by users, just the quality of the post as it stands on its own. If you see duplicate posts, just add a reply, pointing to the main thread to prevent others from duplicating replies. If some of these duplicate stubs are located in the completly wrong place, you can leave a note for the moderator to delete them.
Sometimes, a question involves two things (e.g. LabVIEW and DAQ) so it might be appropriate to post in two places. If the poster forgets to add a link to the main thread in all the other locations, just reply and add a link to keep all answers together.
Often, newcomers have problems with the forum mechanics, so why should they get slapped with a low rating just for trying to contribute? Since a low rating has a serious impact on the overall rating for a long time, the only thing we will see is that the member abandons the account and starts with a new one. Nobody wins! A rating should be only zero or positive.
I don't support derived units, (e.g. stars/posts) for the same reason. Again it contributes to account churn.
If we emphasize the total numer of stars and base a "gold bar" on it, we encourage account retention and also encourage quality replies. For example, if users would get a coffee mug after receiving 200 stars, that would be an incentive. Users that don't get stars will just take much longer to get there and no amount of irrelevant serial posting will help. (Of course there should be mechanisms in place to prevent abuse. For example of somebody would create two accounts for the only purpose of voting each other into the stratosphere, that should get flagged by the system).
A negative rating ALWAYS deserves an explanation, so instead of slapping a single star, don't place a rating but take your time and explain why you think that an answer is incorrect, or even give a better answer at the same time. Nobody can improve unless they know what they did wrong.
This forums is quite international and often there is a language barrier that can lead to misunderstandings.
No user should be able to hand out punitive ratings! We are not the police! If a post does not belong in the forum (spam, offtopic, offensive, personal attacks, revealing secrets that are under NDA, etc.) the policemoderators need to handle it.
As Ben mentioned, this is partly the problem with the forum mechanics, because in order to post in the main LabVIEW board you need to first fill out a search box, which will yield a list of matching topics and a button to "post this question".
So I can see if somebody unfamiliar with the forum will end up with posts like that. For some people, the internet in general is very hard to use, especially if the site is in an unfamiliar language.
So, who here thinks that the solution to this would be that everybody would gang up on this poor guy and pepper his posts with low ratings? Hey, we could even add a flashing red warning text, when people are trying to post, reminding the user of the dire consequences that they better fully understand the way the forum works before trying to use it ... NOT!!! This is backwards! It is the responsibility of Lithium and NI to improve the forum instead! The boards need to be a friendy and inviting place where everybody feels welcome and can expect to be taken seriously.
With respect to duplicate posts, users often also don't know that the LabVIEW forum is acutally mirrored to/from newsgroups. Somebody desperate for a quick answer might post the same question here in the LabVIEW forum, via google groups (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.labview/topics) and via their newsreader and will be surprised when all end up in the same place.
All those who saw the keynote at NI-week will be aware that some LabVIEW user could be a 10 year old kid. Do we really want to spook them and start lecturing about forum etiquette or should we instead try to answer the question to the best of our abilities. We can always add some friendly advice about posting guidelines in a footnote.
