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Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 2:11 am
by Buz Groshong
mrchad9 wrote:That's not the issue Buz. Simply throw out the top and bottom votes you are are still left with all 10s.

We need a system so that 7-9 is positive, but not so positive as a 10. Getting a 7 would never bother anyone in that case, since it would be better than no vote at all.


With the current system that's true. If voting were anonymous, I think the votes would have a wider spread and throwing out the outliers would remove the votes that result from bad behavior. I don't know how nonvoting currently affects the score, but I have noticed that some of my photos that have all tens have different scores and have assumed that nonvoting is the difference, but maybe it's not, maybe it's total views or total votes that drives the difference - I haven't seen the formula that is used.

No voting system will solve all of the problems, though. For photos, mountains and lakes get better scores than canyons, and sunsets get better scores than informative photos. Human nature will screw up any system.

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 2:19 am
by Buz Groshong
Fletch wrote:
SoCalHiker wrote:Any voting system will not work ultimately. I would wager that many members who obsessively vote on everything do that largely to get a vote in return. If you want a vote in return, you don't vote anything less than 10, irrespective of quality.

SoCal, you're so negative these days. Cheer up man. :lol:

Can we just vote to be nice? Saying, hey, thanks for taking the time to contribute, cause if there were no contributions, there would be no SP?

I really love this site (sometimes more than others), and I don't want to see it go away because it becomes stale. If I can give a little encouragement through a "10," then im all for it. I once gave some duechebag a "4." Does that count for anything? :P


In the old system , 4 was the highest vote. :) We also used to have a rule for photos against "hero shots." I once downvoted a "hero shot" and it resulted in some bad feelings. I think talking about problems like that is better than trying to solve it with voting.

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 2:56 am
by MarkDidier
Fletch wrote:Can we just vote to be nice? Saying, hey, thanks for taking the time to contribute, cause if there were no contributions, there would be no SP?

I really love this site (sometimes more than others), and I don't want to see it go away because it becomes stale. If I can give a little encouragement through a "10," then im all for it.


+1 (googol) :D

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 3:37 pm
by SoCalHiker
Fletch wrote:SoCal, you're so negative these days. Cheer up man. :lol:

Can we just vote to be nice? Saying, hey, thanks for taking the time to contribute, cause if there were no contributions, there would be no SP?


Not negative at all, simply realistic

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:04 pm
by Marmaduke
[quote="SoCalHiker"}...

why do you want a voting system in the first place?[/quote]

The system is already in place, it's not a case of "wanting a voting system". Why not make it better and more reasonable instead of doing away with?

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:13 pm
by SoCalHiker
Marmaduke wrote:The system is already in place, it's not a case of "wanting a voting system". Why not make it better and more reasonable instead of doing away with?


Believe it or not, I am aware that a voting system is in place :wink:

And there are many people who would want to get rid of it altogether. That's why we are talking about it.

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:21 pm
by SoCalHiker
Fletch wrote:Can we just vote to be nice? Saying, hey, thanks for taking the time to contribute, cause if there were no contributions, there would be no SP?


Fletch, I would like to elaborate more on that.

In my eyes (and in the eyes of many btw), SP is and should be first and foremost a site where people get first quality information about an area, mountains, routes, etc. People who visit this site (most of which are not even members) want to find accurate, up-to-date, firsthand information in order to plan a trip, to narrow their choices of what to do on a trip, to get an idea about whether a trail or climbing route is within their comfort zone, and so on. If these people see a page with a high score they should be able to safely assume that the information is accurate and up-to-date. It is of no benefit if a page gets a high score because of popularity of the owner of because people want to be nice. If you want to be nice to people (nothing wrong with that at all) invite them to your facebook or such. SP is and should be about quality information.

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 7:17 pm
by hansw
Simple, just provide a radio button for hiding the votes for those who are having a problem with them.
:wink:

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 9:23 pm
by Marmaduke
SoCalHiker wrote:
Marmaduke wrote:The system is already in place, it's not a case of "wanting a voting system". Why not make it better and more reasonable instead of doing away with?


Believe it or not, I am aware that a voting system is in place :wink:

And there are many people who would want to get rid of it altogether. That's why we are talking about it.


I know you are aware of it but your wording indicates there isn't a system in place, why noy just make it better?

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 9:36 pm
by SoCalHiker
Fletch wrote:
SoCalHiker wrote:If you want to be nice to people (nothing wrong with that at all) invite them to your facebook or such. SP is and should be about quality information.

I don't have a Facebook. You've really turned into a negative Nancy and based on this post, you're being a real ass. Just an FYI.


Using your own words " It's the internet. Take EVERYTHING for face value." You make an assumption about me and get personal without knowing me, while I not once attacked you.

Well, that says it all.

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 11:15 pm
by gabr1
i don't have sufficient knowledge to propose a voting system or to state the one i think is the best.
I think it is inevitable that no system will work perfectly, because everyone uses voting in a different way; some of us will vote the overall quality, some will vote for the beta, some will vote for the writing style. Some might simply want to encourage or thank, as Fletch said.
I gladly leave the choice of the system to who knows more than me, but i would like the chosen system to be clear, and this is the BIG defect of the current one.
Anyone who doesn't browse the forum extensively (and there are many), might never know the fact that 9 out of the ten possibilities given are actually negative votes. This makes no sense. People i know have often asked me why the heck all votes are always ten, and before discovering the reason, i was inclined to think it was just out of lazyness of voters. I actually gave out many of my early votes according to my personal opinions, so i probably downvoted many pages without actually meaning to (i would imagine 8 to be quite a good vote...).

Anyway, if things are to hard or complicated to change, just leave them as they are, but make it clear to everyone how things work...

Whatever the voting system is, i would not like it to be anonimous, if i think a page is crap i should be able to answer questions or comments by it's author not hide behind the monitor, and i am sure this would boost the quality of content and the awareness of what is posted, and it might be effective in containing "serial-voters" ...

:)

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 11:56 pm
by Alpinist
gabr1 wrote:Anyone who doesn't browse the forum extensively (and there are many), might never know the fact that 9 out of the ten possibilities given are actually negative votes. This makes no sense.

That is precisely the problem with the current system and exactly why it evolved into a binary system (10 or no vote). When an object has a Score of 86 and the score goes down when you vote 9, people will never vote 9. The weighted average scoring method that I outlined would correct that defect. No system will ever meet everyone's expectations but the weighted average method would satisfy most people. It makes much more sense than the current algorithm.

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 2:52 am
by chugach mtn boy
Alpinist wrote:Hooboy. Are we really opening this can of worms again? The voting system has been discussed ad nauseum in the past. I was a big proponent of changing it when SP2 was first launched but it may be too late now since all of the current votes are based on a binary scale (10 or nothing).

The formula that should have been implemented is based on a weighted average 10 point scale.

((V1*P1)+(V2*P2)+(V3*P3)) / (P1+P2+P3) = S

V1, V2, V3 = Votes from 3 different people
P1, P2, P3 = Power ranking of the 3 people
S = the object's Score

In this example, only 3 people voted. Simply extend the formula for any number of people.

This would yield the results that people are expecting to see. Scores would be based on a 10 point grading scale similar to the way schools grade. If an object had a score of 88 and you voted 9, the score would always increase slightly based on your Power Ranking. Similarly, if you voted 8 on that object, the Score would always decrease. There are no quirky exceptions. The calculation would always work as expected.

The weighted average method gives members with a higher Power Ranking a greater ability to influence the Score.

This is a nice starting point, but it would mean that most objects on SP would be rated 100. If one person voted 10/10 and nobody else voted, that object would go straight to 100, same as an item with 96 votes of 10, and ahead of an item with 95 10 votes and one 9 vote.

The one thing that is good about the current system, and that ought to be preserved when it is reformed, is the concept of a "par" score set well below 100. Right now, par is 85, and you need some 10 votes to progress above that; you need a lot of 10 votes to get into the 90s.

You could keep par at 85 and create a built-in gravity that pulls items toward par unless gravity is overcome by votes. Using Alpinist's example, it would work mathematically like this (the example also tweaks one other aspect of Alpinist's formula so as to produce scores on a scale of 100, which I believe was his intent):

((10*V1*P1)+(10*V2*P2)+(10*V3*P3)+85000) / (P1+P2+P3 + 1000) = S

V1, V2, V3 = Votes from 3 different people
P1, P2, P3 = Power ranking of the 3 people
S = the object's Score

With the above example, if 3 people with power of 100 each vote, respectively, 10, 9, and 10, you end up with a score of 87.69. If they all vote 10, the score is 88.46. If they vote 10,9, 10 but one of the "10" voters is Dow and has power of 1000, the score goes to 92.72 (even though one of the 3 votes was a "9").

You can increase the "par gravity" by increasing the automatic add-on to the numerator and denominator. The system would probably work best with somewhat stronger gravity than in the above example--maybe I'd go with +850,000 in the numerator and +10,000 in the denominator. But 9 would still be a positive vote in such a system.

If you want 8's and 7's to be (marginally) positive votes, par needs to be lowered to less than 70. This is easily done. For example, the automatic add-on in the numerator could be 600,000 and the automatic add-on in the denominator 10,000, and, mission accomplished: 7-10 would be positive votes to varying degrees, at least initially; 6 would be neutral; and 1-5 would be negative. Note, however, that a 7 vote on an item that had already progressed to a high score (such as 90) would have a marginally downward effect, although much less than it currently has.
[Edited for clarity]

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 6:05 am
by gabr1
sounds reasonable to me...

Re: Yes? No? When?

PostPosted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 1:14 pm
by Alpinist
chugach mtn boy wrote:
Alpinist wrote:Hooboy. Are we really opening this can of worms again? The voting system has been discussed ad nauseum in the past. I was a big proponent of changing it when SP2 was first launched but it may be too late now since all of the current votes are based on a binary scale (10 or nothing).

The formula that should have been implemented is based on a weighted average 10 point scale.

((V1*P1)+(V2*P2)+(V3*P3)) / (P1+P2+P3) = S

V1, V2, V3 = Votes from 3 different people
P1, P2, P3 = Power ranking of the 3 people
S = the object's Score

In this example, only 3 people voted. Simply extend the formula for any number of people.

This would yield the results that people are expecting to see. Scores would be based on a 10 point grading scale similar to the way schools grade. If an object had a score of 88 and you voted 9, the score would always increase slightly based on your Power Ranking. Similarly, if you voted 8 on that object, the Score would always decrease. There are no quirky exceptions. The calculation would always work as expected.

The weighted average method gives members with a higher Power Ranking a greater ability to influence the Score.

This is a nice starting point, but it would mean that most objects on SP would be rated 100. If one person voted 10/10 and nobody else voted, that object would go straight to 100, same as an item with 96 votes of 10, and ahead of an item with 95 10 votes and one 9 vote.

The one thing that is good about the current system, and that ought to be preserved when it is reformed, is the concept of a "par" score set well below 100. Right now, par is 85, and you need some 10 votes to progress above that; you need a lot of 10 votes to get into the 90s.

You could keep par at 85 and create a built-in gravity that pulls items toward par unless gravity is overcome by votes. Using Alpinist's example, it would work mathematically like this (the example also tweaks one other aspect of Alpinist's formula so as to produce scores on a scale of 100, which I believe was his intent):

((10*V1*P1)+(10*V2*P2)+(10*V3*P3)+85000) / (P1+P2+P3 + 1000) = S

V1, V2, V3 = Votes from 3 different people
P1, P2, P3 = Power ranking of the 3 people
S = the object's Score

With the above example, if 3 people with power of 100 each vote, respectively, 10, 9, and 10, you end up with a score of 87.69. If they all vote 10, the score is 88.46. If they vote 10,9, 10 but one of the "10" voters is Dow and has power of 1000, the score goes to 92.72 (even though one of the 3 votes was a "9").

You can increase the "par gravity" by increasing the automatic add-on to the numerator and denominator. The system would probably work best with somewhat stronger gravity than in the above example--maybe I'd go with +850,000 in the numerator and +10,000 in the denominator. But 9 would still be a positive vote in such a system.

If you want 8's and 7's to be (marginally) positive votes, par needs to be lowered to less than 70. This is easily done. For example, the automatic add-on in the numerator could be 600,000 and the automatic add-on in the denominator 10,000, and, mission accomplished: 7-10 would be positive votes to varying degrees, at least initially; 6 would be neutral; and 1-5 would be negative. Note, however, that a 7 vote on an item that had already progressed to a high score (such as 90) would have a marginally downward effect, although much less than it currently has.
[Edited for clarity]

I understand what you are trying to do but that specific formula yields some unexpected results. I plugged your formula into a spreadsheet and this is what I got.

Scenario 1: 4 people / each person has a power rank of 100 / each person voted "4": Score = 75.71
Expected result: I would expect the Score to be much lower in this scenario (closer to 40).

Scenario 2: Change the Power Ranking of the people above and the Score changes.
Expected result: If everyone voted the same way, I would not expect the Score to change just because someone's Power Rank is different.