Code of conduct: Down voting

asked 2014-01-08 22:52:10 +0200

This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.

updated 2014-01-09 17:08:07 +0200

eric

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https://twitter.com/erkki...

Meanwhile I observed it several times, that newbies (based on their karma) have been down voted. Yes, their questions may have been such that "they are questionable". But I think, down voting newbies is not a good idea: You discourage these people from participating. Down-voting is the strongest penalty we have here in the forum -- you would not use the strongest penalty if your child (or youngest brother/sister) makes some mistake due to lack of experience. Instead of down voting, in most cases it would be much better to comment suitably, so that they are encouraged to do it better next time.

(When you are down voted right from the beginning, it takes long for your karma to recover from this.)

(Community wiki, so that everyone can edit it.)

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1

Agree. It would be great if all these codes and guidelines were in a single post/resource for everyone - old and new - to read. At least I would have been happy if I had had a guide for correct behaviour as I am still not sure about it...

lk ( 2014-01-08 23:07:52 +0200 )edit

Totally agree with this! Although I understand the need for some rules in a collaborative project, I also suggest we will not be too strict about it. Pointing out the rules all the time just distracts from what we are all here to do: provide Jolla with useful suggestions for developing, Q&A etc.

bilgy_no1 ( 2014-01-08 23:14:33 +0200 )edit

1

This is very good point. I also think that when down voting is used, generally some sort of explanation should be added. Otherwise it might be hard for some people figure what they are doing wrong.

JPS ( 2014-01-08 23:41:50 +0200 )edit

There was already ideas on code of conduct: https://together.jolla.com/question/4731/code-of-conduct/ We could split by topics and keep the code-of-conduct tag to track and eventually promote as a featured one... Excellent way to go and also agreed we should remain flexible :)

eric ( 2014-01-09 17:10:52 +0200 )edit

4

Why not junk down-voting completely? It only opens the road to negativity, flame wars, "read-my-post-again", "why-did-you-downvote?" discussions, and possibly the lust for revenge. The down-voter may be plain wrong or just a bully. I think upvoting is enough for the good content to float to the top

FlyingSheep ( 2014-01-11 16:10:26 +0200 )edit

5

answered 2014-01-13 16:47:21 +0200

foss4ever
13056 ●97 ●134 ●141

updated 2014-01-14 12:51:45 +0200

About voting and karma; you don't down/vote because of karma but because of advancing a topic to be solved or not. At least, I don't. I also don't ask questions to get karma, but to find out if anyone could help or to get an issue resolved.. And I don't answer to get karma but to provide a fix or help or solution or suggestion regarding the topic. My notion why the karma thing exists; t's just a sign of activity in here + giving some rights to do things here, but after 200+ all have the exact same rights. ;)

Update: as it is, the down/vote thing is good content scoring, balancing and guiding mechanism here, but it should be used wisely and with best of intentions ;)

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Also, you should check "minor edit", when doing minor edits, to not fill peoples in-boxes with notices. :)

Mohjive ( 2014-01-13 18:54:31 +0200 )edit

1

I do use it, but editing an Answer in Jolla browser the 'minor edit' check-box is not visible.

foss4ever ( 2014-01-13 18:58:03 +0200 )edit

Yeah, the downside of karma is that it makes voting ad hominem. Anyhow I think it sufficient to just not pile up and downvote an entry that already has a negative score, that way nobody gets too snowed under for posting something unpopular. (Maybe askbot could limit to -5 or something)

sp3000 ( 2014-01-13 21:56:42 +0200 )edit

1

I'd like to add that in any case of abuse, admins can re-ajust karma if required, whether positively or negatively.

eric ( 2014-01-14 10:58:53 +0200 )edit

2

answered 2014-01-13 22:03:14 +0200

foss4ever
13056 ●97 ●134 ●141

updated 2014-01-14 08:31:07 +0200

If the main issue in this question is that new users might feel that they are personally penalizd (which no-one should) when their answers/quesions are down-vioted, a simple solution to this could be that below some karma-limit (e.g. 500) downvotes don't reduce the karma of the poster, but only the question/answer score is affected.

If this was implemented then the only way for newbies would be up in the Together ladders, and not down at all (until enough karma had been collected for the down-votes to not matter anymore).

How does this sound like?

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@jjaone: Let's keep it simple ;) New users must get acquainted with both content and system before they can contribute properly (no dups, follow the rules). If they don't, they're receiving direct feedback from other users. I think changing this mechanism would be harmful in the long run...

eric ( 2014-01-14 09:54:50 +0200 )edit

1

Well, for similar requests concerning newbies and voting, I've given few simpler answers (along the line that down-vote is not ad-hominem but just an expression of not-liking the content of question / answer), but those have not received much positive feedback, so I thought that maybe a small newbie safety-zone would make everyone happy.. without the need to change the reasons for why we downvote..

foss4ever ( 2014-01-14 10:25:23 +0200 )edit

@eric: yep, better not change the scoring system either.. just down-vote this to keep things as they are.. :)

foss4ever ( 2014-01-14 10:28:44 +0200 )edit

@eric: but seriously, are you then suggesting that down-vote is just bad, and should not be allowed at all? (I think it is a good balancing and guiding mechanism, either as anon or public)

foss4ever ( 2014-01-14 10:36:20 +0200 )edit

@jjaone: imho, the voting system logic should remain as it is. If you're new and you just post a dup which is downvoted then you learn the hard way and this is the first step to keep decent quality levels for the overall content. If downvote is abused, we could increase the karma point loss...

eric ( 2014-01-14 10:44:11 +0200 )edit

Code of conduct: Down voting

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