squishy wrote:While on a long approach my partner and I were talking about the silly voting system on SP and I had to explain how it worked. I had a good idea...check this out...

Everyone knows how we vote (except for the select few rebels) and normally people will vote 10 or not at all, the ratings seem to work out and good content flows to the top effectively. To avoid long explanations and the few posts a year asking why it's this way, why not just turn it into a "like or dislike" button? then the vote counts as 10 or not at all...or better yet, change the voting so if a vote is under 5 it's nothing and if it's over 5 then it's ten. I doubt people would even notice...

This is known as approval voting, and I agree that it would work well in the SP environment. We don't really care whether I like the Rainier page more than the Whitney page, we just want to know how many people find each page helpful.

It would be good to have a mechanism for finding lousy pages that need adoption or deletion, but the forums seem to do that pretty well. The official system based on votes is silly.

There are only 2 different voting systems: present & anonymous. Everything else is just rescaling the problem.

I agree, the voting system should change. I should be able to vote 8 or 9 with out lowering the score.

I hate voting on stuff. A vote has become the equivalent of a friendly glance, or "have a nice day". So many on-line entities now have "like-unlike" buttons-- just another chance to offend or give a meaningless pat on the back.

Most of the stuff that comes up for a vote, I know little about; I mainly vote on the grammar and how pretty the page might be, or if there is an edifying story. Some times I see truly useful info. I particularly feel it is meaningless for me to vote on rock climbing routes, since I can't judge if the information is correct or not.

If you post info for a remote, little-known area, where the information might actually be useful to someone trying to reproduce the trip, then the chances are the info will be relevant only to a few people, so there will be few votes.

squishy wrote:I don't think you understand why it's a necessary part of the SP workings...according to this post, no voting would be better right? Imagine SP without voting...

No, I don't; Yes, I can. No anger here; mainly passivity.

It's worth asking why we need the votes.

If you're looking for info on a mountain or a route, votes are irrelevant because of SP's no-duplicates rule. There's one Aconcagua page, like it or not.

For articles, TRs, photos and other content, then votes help recreational browsers - - people looking for interesting articles, pretty photos, and so forth. The voting system serves that purpose pretty well, except for photos (where the voting has been manipulated).

I, along with most of the staff, agree that the voting system does not work.

We won't be seeing a fix anytime soon, though.

squishy wrote:Without voting there would be no way to find worthy content, well other than finding it yourself through hours of browsing (I don't have that kind of time). In fact SP wouldn't be SP if it were not for voting or some way to sort the good from the "why was that uploaded?" While the content may be subjective to different people, it's pretty easy to understand this is a community maintained mountaineering website. I'm sure we can all recognize what good mountaineering content is. Things get noticed, they go to the top of the lists, they get featured on the front page, if there was no voting, how would this be done?

I don't ignore any information available on the web. Photos with routes drawn on them are among the most useful items that I find at SP, and they typically have low votes.

Here's another example. When I was considering Shasta this June, I went to the Shasta page on SP. I then read the description of every route, and ignored the votes. I did look at the comments, to see if others had suggested meaningful changes. Some routes seem to have few votes because they are unpopular, or have few pretty pictures, but the descriptions have enough information to get you there. I then checked the SP discussions of Shasta to get a feeling for who knew the odder routes. I then asked one such person, and got more clarifying info. If I get extra days this summer (doubtful), that low-vote route will be the one I take.

Excuse um, but I can never finger out why some folks vote 8/10 or 9/10, and they leave

ZERO comment on how you can approve the page, or bring it up to par excellence.



Seems like some of these quiet, obscure folks should be communicating more ???

I love to get comments, both good and bad. BRING IT !!!!!!

lcarreau wrote:Excuse um, but I can never finger out why some folks vote 8/10 or 9/10, and they leave

ZERO comment on how you can approve the page, or bring it up to par excellence.



Seems like some of these quiet, obscure folks should be communicating more ???

I love to get comments, both good and bad. BRING IT !!!!!!

8/10 and a 9/10 shouldn't be considered a bad vote. But if someone give a vote of 3 or lower then I think a little explanation is in order.

squishy wrote:

JasonH wrote:

lcarreau wrote:Excuse um, but I can never finger out why some folks vote 8/10 or 9/10, and they leave

ZERO comment on how you can approve the page, or bring it up to par excellence.



Seems like some of these quiet, obscure folks should be communicating more ???

I love to get comments, both good and bad. BRING IT !!!!!!

8/10 and a 9/10 shouldn't be considered a bad vote. But if someone give a vote of 3 or lower then I think a little explanation is in order.

But it is a bad vote, such votes bring the photo's rating down...

And that is why I give everything a 10 unless the page is really bad. But that might be part of the problem

Borut Kantušer wrote:

squishy wrote:To avoid long explanations and the few posts a year asking why it's this way, why not just turn it into a "like or dislike" button?

I press the "like" button for this proposition.

Yes, Facebook and many other apps are getting "like" buttons. This stuff seems more appropriate to a 17th-century French Court.

Everyone knows how we vote (except for the select few rebels) and normally people will vote 10 or not at all

Sometimes even all 10's and all 1's.

http://www.summitpost.org/object_discus ... _id=582280

It is confusing the way it is. When I started SP, I would glance through photos, and vote on how cool it looked, or if it was pretty. I would give it like an 8/10 or 7/10. I now only do 10/10 or nothing. (unfortunately I don't have time to look at many photos anymore)

I forget who's I gave 7/10 and stuff, so sorry to those that I did...

How would everyone vote if their name was not attached to the vote?