Bob Burd wrote:Regarding comments about an "abstain" option.
I figured not voting at all would be the same (score-wise, it would), but I can see that there is some additional feedback provided to the submitter - it shows that someone has looked on it with at least some criticality (page hits would give you an idea as well, but doesn't mean that someone actually spent any time looking at it). Maybe instead of "dislike", it's just a "needs work" vote which has zero score effect instead of negative. I don't think having dislike negative scores will change the over rankings much anyway - something with no likes is in the same boat as a page with a few dislikes.
So, maybe "like/needs work" as the two options.
I disagree. I think that there needs to be some mechanism for a negative vote to be registered. Pages that are just bad need to just get bad votes. If the 'initial construction period' passes and the page is still bad, it needs to get dinged.
Secondly, it might be good if the "needs work" votes sort of dissolved over time, maybe 6-12 months. That way, no one has to go begging for old votes to be removed/changed. It wouldn't change the rankings much since pages still need lots of "like" votes to score high. I imagine some folks might like a "please revisit" button that can be used to ping "needs work" voters to reconsider if work has been done to improve it. I could see this being abused, but it might be worth a try.
In my model with the 'abstain' choice, those that have pressed this button ought, once having done so, receive a reminder to revisit the page after a certain amount of time has elapsed. I think we have the something similar in mind here.
Thirdly, things garner more votes when sitting in the "What's New" page, so it becomes important to some, *very* important to others. I think votes that come later after some one has stumbled upon a page or picture and taken the time to vote are more valuable as they're not just reacting to the newness factor. The voter's not just piling on when a page first gets submitted. I think there might be more weighting given to votes that come at a later time. Maybe cut it off at some point, like a year or two to keep the very oldest pages from having an advantage with this.
I think this is a really good idea. Could this be installed retroactively, i.e for votes cast in 2011 on pages created in 2007?