SummitPost.org

Before deciding HOW to change the system, it first makes sense to determine IF it should be changed (and to determine if there is community and programming support for such a change).

Well?

100% in favor of changing the voting system. Looks like the people have spoken.

My assumption here is that most people who vote aren't in the forums, and vice versa.

Maybe a weekday bump onto the SP front page...

Time for change should be now.



But take Albert's warning into consideration.

I just like voting, lets get another poll up in here!

What kind of poll would you suggest?

How about a poll to decide?

According to this poll, seems like the majority want it improved.

What's the point of having a 10 point scale anyways?
1 The Worst. Ever.
2 Horrible
3 Pretty Bad
4 Below Average
5 Average
6 Above Average
7 Pretty Good
8 Excellent
9 Wow! Amazing
10 The Best. Ever.

Vote anything else than a 10 and people start crying and think you're pissing on them.
Get rid of the votes or have a like and/or make them anonymous.

The flaw is in the calculation, not those voting.

The current algorithm SP uses is the one below. Vote less than a ten and you are pissing on them.

1 The Worst. Ever.
2 The Worst. Ever.
3 The Worst. Ever.
4 The Worst. Ever.
5 The Worst. Ever.
6 The Worst. Ever.
7 The Worst. Ever.
8 The Worst. Ever.
9 The Worst. Ever.
10 Above Average to The Best. Ever.

I would be happy to vote a 9/10 when deserved here, but as Mr. Chad stated, the vote weight makes it totally lower.

We have a de facto "approval" system. Not a bad thing. (Google "approval voting" if you care.)

You could add a negative option, like Amazon. That tends to lead to trouble.

Josh's latest post provides an interesting idea. Essentially one button says, "Thanks." That would validate the poster -- somebody cares! -- and recognize the contribution publicly. The score goes up, with all the REI discounts.

Another, higher button would imply praise. (Praise for what? Technical photography? Information? Humor?) I have a hunch the system would migrate to 100% praise, but I could be wrong.

Approval voting provides the validation. If you want praise for your photographic skills, I'd move to Flickr. I think you also have a better shot at publication over there -- only one of my SP photos has been bought, but several of the Flickr ones have been, and in a much shorter period of time.

The problem isn't the voting system; it's the voters! The scoring method would probably work quite well if everyone didn't consider anything less than a 10 to be a negative vote. It gives me a relative idea of what people think of my work and that's good enough for me.

Buz Groshong wrote:The problem isn't the voting system; it's the voters! The scoring method would probably work quite well if everyone didn't consider anything less than a 10 to be a negative vote. It gives me a relative idea of what people think of my work and that's good enough for me.

But what makes many of us unhappy is that less than 10 lowers the score when many of us feel that something like 7 should leave the score unchanged, with 8, 9, and 10 making increases. I think many of us feel this way because it's what we got used to with grading systems in school-- 7 is a C (average), 8 a B, etc.

What makes it worse is that something less than 10 can sink a score way below what you would expect it to for that, and the effect is larger the higher your power is. For example, I just gave a test vote of 7 on a new image. The score was 50.34%. According to the guidelines, 7 is "Pretty Good," but it produces a score that would be a failing grade on a test. (I canceled the vote, by the way.)

Earlier this summer, someone pointed out a page that had three 7 votes. The score was in the 20's. I just can't think that's how the system was meant to work, or can't imagine that anyone would really expect people to like such a system if that indeed was the intent.

I agree with the idea of giving bigger contributors more weight, so I don't favor a Like option. Like some others, I'd prefer to see some tweaking with how 7, 8, and 9 are registered.

Bob Sihler wrote:

Buz Groshong wrote:The problem isn't the voting system; it's the voters! The scoring method would probably work quite well if everyone didn't consider anything less than a 10 to be a negative vote. It gives me a relative idea of what people think of my work and that's good enough for me.

But what makes many of us unhappy is that less than 10 lowers the score when many of us feel that something like 7 should leave the score unchanged, with 8, 9, and 10 making increases. I think many of us feel this way because it's what we got used to with grading systems in school-- 7 is a C (average), 8 a B, etc.

What makes it worse is that something less than 10 can sink a score way below what you would expect it to for that, and the effect is larger the higher your power is. For example, I just gave a test vote of 7 on a new image. The score was 50.34%. According to the guidelines, 7 is "Pretty Good," but it produces a score that would be a failing grade on a test. (I canceled the vote, by the way.)

Earlier this summer, someone pointed out a page that had three 7 votes. The score was in the 20's. I just can't think that's how the system was meant to work, or can't imagine that anyone would really expect people to like such a system if that indeed was the intent.

I agree with the idea of giving bigger contributors more weight, so I don't favor a Like option. Like some others, I'd prefer to see some tweaking with how 7, 8, and 9 are registered.

I haven't seen results that dramatic, but I do see your point. I've had at least one photo get a 7, which was probably what it deserved; the effect was to drag it down below others of mine that got all 10s that they probably didn't deserve. Despite of that sort of thing, the voting does give me a relative idea of how people see my photos - I like to see how my photos score relative to each other but try to ignore how they compare with other people's photos. The scoring really gets unfair though when it involves pages rather than photos. From what I can tell from looking at scores, the systems rewards objects for the amount of traffic they get as well as the number of votes they get and that doesn't seem right. It would seem that with everyone voting 10 that maybe the score should reflect the vote/view ratio since for some viewers not voting is basically withholding a 10 vote. I do agree with the idea that a 7 vote should not radically drag down the total score of an object.