I bet this guy "insideinfo" voted mostly "-" than "+".
Negative Votes!
POWERevolution on 25/10/2007 - 00:54
Comments
people who misuse, abuse or carelessly apply negative votes should be warned followed by an action taken to revoke their rights to vote negative. I have seen a lot of these lately
I don't want to go down the path of the "Big Brothers" where community can vote to evict house mates, but…
The assumption is — there are always individuals who go against the norm, but the decisions from the majority will offset what they have done. For example if everyone votes on a good deal, and make it 50 + votes against 1 or 2 - votes — they become insignificant. The key is to assume that there are always anomaly, even on the Internet!
What could be done is to limit the negative votes — maybe at most 7 every 7 days, and more for the moderators?
PS. I am moving this thread to Announcement/Feedback forum as it is hardly off-topic.
PPS. insideinfo — if you are reading this, the email address you have registered here is incorrect and kept on bouncing emails!
It is happening again this evening. From the live feed:
I thought our previous attempt will help the negative voters to think before they vote. Apparently it does nothing to someone who is determined to vote against random deals…
Scotty, you're in a pickle.
Thinking off the top of my head, maybe you can limited the amount of negative votes depending on the amount of positive votes, like, for every 1 positive vote, you can have 2 negative votes or something like that.
Scott, maybe you can reverse/delete the negative votes that you think are not genuine. if the reason they gave does not make sense, just delete it if you can (and no offense to anyone, but I liked the one saying "ending soon" or something like this…i still have to figure it out why is a bad deal if it's ending soon…and this is just an example, and i can list more like: someone saying the deal is only valid in a certain state, while it wasn't the case; or if it was the case, it was mentioned in the title; someone voting negative for a deal that expired although the expiring date was mentioned, etc.)…
I say we ignore that guy and only worry about it when there's more than one person doing it. It's just too much of a hassle over some maniac and his mouse clicking.
Make people justify why they are voting negative before allowing it to be processed. People should have a reason for voting against a deal anyway… then if their reasons seem suss, delete the negative vote or kick the user after maybe three strikes?
maybe he just doesnt understand what a negative vote means, like, perhaps he thinks a negative vote means i wouldnt use this deal,
I think T Man hit the nail on the head.
Could it be possible that the user is trying to bury articles to help his own favourite a la Digg?
What are negative and positive votes used for? I'm new here and it certainly isn't obvious to me how they work. I can definitely see why someone might just vote neg on things they aren't interested in.
In fact I've just had a quick browse of the "Home" page and I can't see any kind of links or graphics with info/instructions. I think the admin need to review this before they go banning people for "incorrectly" using a system when it isn't clear what the correct way is.
Anyway, just an opinion from a n00bs perspective.
yamumma
Positive votes lift the visibility of the deal, higher votes the higher the listing. Negative votes drop it down the lisiting. Also each week a prize is given to the most popular deal based on the past 14 days of voting.
You are right there is NO correct way. But by putting a comment with your vote which is possible when you vote, at least you indicate why you think its not right.
The way I look at it, is that
by voting positive, I indicate that the deal is worth promoting so that others will see the opportunity more.
If its something I am not interested in I just skip voting.
If there is something wrong with the deal, then if I think it needs to be highlighted I vote negative and give a reason. There are some canned reasons, or mostly I try to write my own.
What makes me vote negative is.
Overpromotion, or SPAM eg someone self promoting a service many times . Like the recent - "Back by popular demand" mousepads, where the last expired offer wasnt that popular.
Something fundamentally wrong with the promo, like get a free widget, but only after you sell your first born 3 times over.
Being a male I'm not interested in free pantyliners, voting negative because its of no interest, would to me, be unfair as it reduces the visibility of the item to those who maybe interested in it. A female who knows that this brand falls apart etc might vote negative.
Guess I am saying that negative votes based on purely personal preferences is in my opinion, not the way to go.
Each of us will have separate triggers on what's wrong. So there is no exact way to advise you.
Hope that helps
Great explanation!
So basically,
- Vote + — promote the deal.
- Vote - — demote the deal.
and do nothing if you are indifferent.
Deals need to meet a certain amount of votes before it will appear on the front page, and if a deal gets too many negative votes, it will cease to be indexable by the search engine and will disappear even from the "recent deals" list.
Personally I'd like to see greater transparency in voting. If we are mandating a comment for a negative vote then we should also mandate a comment for a positive vote. Adding all these restrictions to negative voting does not improve the quality of the bargains.
Also the incentive for having the greatest positive votes is causing some of the posters to "talk up" their bargain. For example the "buy two get one free" USB key deal ( http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/3307 ) the author has calculated the cost after the discount but has neglected postage information.
@WaywardOne
I guess the reason for justification of negative votes is, people treat positive votes and negative votes differently, and people take being voted positive and negative differently. All the issues surrounded negative votes at the moment is that people don't really like getting a negative vote.
It's like eBay feedback system. No one cares whether you have 100 or 1,000 good feedbacks, but 1 or 2 negative feedbacks can make you scream.
Maybe we should just do away with negative votes (or call it something else) and then find some other ways to moderate the content. I guess it will be a separate discussion.
As of that ShoppingSquare deal. Well, danilochan is the owner of ShoppingSquare/Apus and I guess it is his best interest to "talk up" the deal. If you are here long enough, you'll also learn that ShoppingSquare is sometimes famous for its expensive postage… As of incentive, I think one of the biggest incentives is the weekly competition (20 bucks for top deal). Maybe we should get rid of that as well? That would be for yet another discussion.
WaywardOne
I think the concept of negative and positive also has to be taken with that of the no vote at all.
This is a site to share deals and we would like to encourage as many as we can find so that we can all choose the deal which suits us.
That said my deal might not be a deal for someone else.
Maybe you have highlighted something about the voting system which is wrong - I'll suggest something on this later down the post.
Up to now my opinion on this - was in essence a positive vote is a vote of thanks, whereas a negative vote is to say this deal has something wrong with it.
So really someone missing out on a deal because its sold out doesn't warrant a negative vote just because the person missed the deal. Now this hits a grey area, like - if the deal points out that say the website has an error in pricing, well then it's likely to disappear, if the website owner becomes aware of the error. in that case if someone misses out - they just don't vote
However if the website say had only one or two items, and say was designed to bait and switch then a negative vote would be very appropriate.
Likewise I don't think Pink booties are nice, refraining from a vote is more appropriate than voting negative because I prefer blue.
So what should we do - subject to Scotty being able to code this. Based on your comments which are very valid, maybe a Thank you button, for people to express what they feel. this way the poster is rewarded for their sharing. Again you don't like or are not interested dont pass on thanks.
Then the negative vote turns into - a 'warning" button - where people can indicate that there maybe some catch or problem to be aware of. Here it can be highlighted - eg No more available - Deal requires third son to be placed in hock, not available in Australia, or it's spam etc.
There is still the comments section for people to express opinions like HD DVD disks are going the way of Dinosaurs, so that the really savvy bargain hunter will overtime, read more than just the first post and make their judgments accordingly.
As for the "prize" maybe now the sites so much more popular, its not as big a deal anymore. Scotty might like to canvas others on this. I know for me it's not the incentive to share, but then I have won one or two in the past.
Over to others……
@[Deactivated]: Thanks for the replies ozpete and scotty. I think there is a lot of food for thought there; for one I really agree that the ratings may benefit from being called warnings/thanks rather than positive/negative.
In response to a pricing error — well that might be considered by some to be unethical (especially those that seek to profit by reselling on eBay). Personally I do not know why companies honour obviously incorrect pricing - I guess it is because so much of the ordering is automated etc. I do think these deals should be marked "No longer available" in the event that they are no longer available.
@WaywardOne: Waywardone I understand the ethics issue, but I guess thats up to the company. If OzBers dont take advantage of the deal/mistake, others will. Really the only way it can be "fixed" if for the companies to have a policy. Agreed that buying and reselling is not really kosher, but again thats my own personal point of view.
thanks for the other opinion, it helps to get further views
ozpete: great explination, thanks for that.
But back to my second point. All of what pete said needs to be made clear to new users somewhere obvious.
A banner or graphic or even a text link something along the lines of "What do votes mean?" so that we don't have problems with people misusing the system when they honestly didn't know any better.
I noticed the other threads on this topic and it looks like admin are trying to create a system so that people are forced to give a reason when they negative vote, which is great. But I still say a bit of education/instruction will go a long way.
Just a bit of constructive criticism.
@yamumma — definitely. I think good documentation outlining all the policies will be a great asset for the OzBargain community.
Good one - thanks to yamumma for helping bring this up to all
It's still happening - the same member voting negative on a group of deals all with the same reason.
Yeah I just checked @ live link, he/she voted 6 "-".
Scotty !! its happening again and again and again … am getting tired of this … voting negative is alright … but for all expired deals thats way too much
I've deleted the unjustified negative votes.
its good u have taken up an initiative … sorry had to alarm a bit .. jus was getting out a hand .. cheers
guys,
great explanation (re: positive and negative votes).
If a deal is not in a certain state because they dont have a store there does that warrant a negative vote?
Of course not.
But then again people voted -1 for various reasons (as has already been discussed in this thread) so probably don't worry about it. We don't have a system to retract the votes yet although I doubt it will be implemented — it just makes whole voting thing too complicated.
These are in my opinion lousy doughnuts - but I think the comment was just as lousy - hey we dont post a bargain because someone somewhere can't take advantage of it, just like when a great deal like the 2TB drives comes along, and then it gets canceled because its TOO good, then it gets a negative vote. Next it can get a negative vote because it is available on an off pension week - sheesh … We are voting on the deal and if it is/was genuine at the time.
Think about it, if you get up late and miss the bus, is it the buses fault, the driver or the timetable - nope its yours.
I voted positive for the lousy doughnuts to offset the lousy negative vote.
I noticed on the rushfaster deal, someone voted down the negative responses…
http://www.jonksbargains.com