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Start revealing names of those...
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Post by
Nooska
I am curious, and since I do my best to not offend intentionally (and I currently use the word huntard intentionally, in a satirical way), I would like to ask (and try not to derail the thread too much) if there is a particular reason that you feel this way about this word (or the use of the retard-derivatives, to steal asakawas formulation).
WTB Private Messaging on Wowhead -_- (Off-Topic -->
"Retard"....insult?
)
Thanks for sharing (and yes, wtb pm's on wowhead)
Post by
hatman555
Thanks for sharing (and yes, wtb pm's on wowhead)
Thanks for the edit =]
Cheers,
Dave
Post by
asakawa
I hadn't read that topic when it was current and I'm glad you linked it too. As a Brit I only come into contact with some words via the internet so it was good to get a proper perspective on it.
Post by
Wowpixel
This is exactly why we're never having names show in voting
Which encourages driveby downvotes.
Wikipedia did the same at the beginning until there was so many driveby edits they had to do something. It took some celebs to illustrate what a defacing of an article can do, and you can guarantee this will happen on Wowhead as long as anonymity is protected with downvotes.
It takes complaints to the administration to notice the problem. Yet if you do -- look at what this thread became.
Someone posted some definition of "chilling effect" (how about asking the commentator about their definition, instead of assuming what they meant, too?). Chilling effect is what happens when things are o-v-e-r moderated and clamped down; to having little accountability to where the inmates run the asylum.
Someone mentioned about political votes as a reason to justify anonymity -- in RL such voting can get folks killed. This doesn't compare. Wowhead is a commercial data site. No one here is using RL names, either.
Eight downvotes in one minute is indeed a wakeup call that the system is wonky and needs improvement. It's that type of stuff that will decline participation --
why waste your time on driveby voting?
It's the vote system that needs tweaking -- I'm not the first to notice this, nor will I be the last to comment on the problems. Problems exist, no denying that, and it's not the messenger to blame, it's the system that allows willy-nilly votes without
some
accountability.
Post by
asakawa
I'd like to return to a point I made
earlier
in the thread but one which you ignored and that is that you have no idea where votes are coming from and why. You're assuming there is abusive voting going on but to come to that conclusion you're assuming a lot.
In those cases you can report the possible issue and someone who
can
see the information required to tell if abusive votes have been made can make that judgement. We have a system in place and I encourage you to avail yourself of this system.
I think most of us can see that naming voters would create
far
more problems than it would solve and, in my personal view, I would go further to say that it would not solve any problems but would create some massive ones.
We have a system. Please use it. One instance of 8 votes in a minute does not an issue make. It isn't even conclusive proof of a single instance of abuse so I don't understand how you see it as indicative of such a wide, hyperbole-worthy problem with the entire site infrastructure.
Post by
benthalo
and it's not the messenger to blame, it's the system that allows willy-nilly votes without
some
accountability.
Here's what I don't get: please explain what sort of "accountability" you imagine would be achieved by publicizing the names of people who downvote? As you rightly noted, no one here is using RL names. So what, exactly, would knowing the imaginary handle of somebody who downvoted do to increase their accountability? Short of tit-for-tat downvoting or forum diatribes (both of which would be more destructive than helpful to the user community) what accountability would "driveby downvoters" have for their behavior?
A single questionable anecdote doesn't establish that there is a problem in the first place; However, allowing that there might be an "abusive downvoting problem," I can think of at least 2 changes that would address your perceived problems in a better way:
1) Throttle voting (i.e., "only allow X downvotes per 5 minutes") - if they want to be abusive, they have to spend some time doing it. This will discourage the "driveby downvoting" you think is happening, because it'd take some time to really downvote a bunch of posts. Of course, it may also discourage community members from downvoting content that is appropriate for downvoting, leading to a general reduction in the usefulness of the voting system in general.
2) Treat up & down votes differently in how they're allocated - make downvotes require more site rep than up-votes, or make constant downvoting degrade site rep, or only allow a certain % of votes to be downvotes - all of these would cause the voter to consider more carefully whether or not they wish to spend the points. But again, this runs the risk of penalizing legitimate users for downvoting comments that SHOULD be downvoted.
Post by
Adamsm
Because if you revealed the user name, you'd have constant vote wars between people downvoting everything on their profile in a rage.
Post by
Unlocky
I'm an avid user of wowhead and I like to contribute here and there, but mostly I'm searching for info on items, quests, zones, areas etc.
Lately I've become very irritated by the numerous "spam" posts, specifically posts about:
Getting xx item in xx time (I can't believe how many there are)
Subjectiv opions, f.ex. gear being ugly/flame against Blizzard
Questions that clearly belong to the forums
Posts I can hardly read and understand because of bad lingo
Redundant info. 99% of the time the exact same info is found in the tabs + in prior posts (lots and lots of these posts aswell)
These kinds of posts clutter the really usefull ones and can sometimes make it hard to find the info I want. I know you can choose the highest rated to show first, but they are still eye sores.
Wowhead specifically states here:
comment ratings
that they don't want these kinds of comments.
Now, the past couple of days I've spend some time to clear some of them up by putting them up for deletion whenever I looked something up and saw these kinds of posts.
And look what happend hours/days after when I came back to wowhead. Its clearly a butthurt person.
Tell me again why I want to spend time helping wowhead, when people are allowed to "retaliate" in this manner. I haven't done anything wrong.
Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 31 min ago
Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 31 min ago
Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 31 min ago
Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 31 min ago
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Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 31 min ago
Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 31 min ago
Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 31 min ago
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Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 32 min ago
Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 32 min ago
Your comment was downvoted -2 1 hr 32 min ago
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Your comment was downvoted -2 4 days ago
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Your comment was downvoted -2 4 days ago
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Post by
lankybrit
Unlocky - the exact reason I went and deleted all my comments. I feel for you.
Cheers.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##Ashelia##DELIM##You've been told time and time again to stop promoting such negative attitudes...like deleting all comments. Your particular solution to get over your obsession with comment downvotes worked for you, but it's not a positive attitude. Please stop encouraging users to destroy the DB due to a downvote.
Post by
dslg604t
Ahaha. Completely off topic but I just saw a comment up for deletion mentioning something along the lines of the Tol'vir having curved swords. Curved. Swords.
Ahahaha, I love that quote.
Edit: As a side note, does anyone know what Abstaining actually does? How is it different from ignoring the vote (I assume that it removes the voting option). Not pressing anything lets you at least come back and change your mind.
Post by
Ashelia
I'm an avid user of wowhead and I like to contribute here and there, but mostly I'm searching for info on items, quests, zones, areas etc.
Lately I've become very irritated by the numerous "spam" posts, specifically posts about:
Getting xx item in xx time (I can't believe how many there are)
Subjectiv opions, f.ex. gear being ugly/flame against Blizzard
Questions that clearly belong to the forums
Posts I can hardly read and understand because of bad lingo
Redundant info. 99% of the time the exact same info is found in the tabs + in prior posts (lots and lots of these posts aswell)
These kinds of posts clutter the really usefull ones and can sometimes make it hard to find the info I want. I know you can choose the highest rated to show first, but they are still eye sores.
Wowhead specifically states here:
comment ratings
that they don't want these kinds of comments.
Now, the past couple of days I've spend some time to clear some of them up by putting them up for deletion whenever I looked something up and saw these kinds of posts.
And look what happend hours/days after when I came back to wowhead. Its clearly a butthurt person.
Tell me again why I want to spend time helping wowhead, when people are allowed to "retaliate" in this manner. I haven't done anything wrong.
People are unable to vote based on knowing you downvoted, so it's not possible it's a "butthurt person." In fact, this whole thread is someone ASKING for names to be revealed, so people can go on such sprees--which we as admins have said no to, and people have argued for.
As for downvotes, our detector will see them weekly--or you can always email . I'll clear them up and look into it now.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##Ashelia##DELIM##
Post by
hatman555
Now, the past couple of days I've spend some time to clear some of them up by putting them up for deletion whenever I looked something up and saw these kinds of posts.
I saw you go to town on Mr. Pinchy the other day. I voted yes on 99% of those because I agree with your above mentioned reasons. There was one comment which did get deleted which I voted no on. I thought the comment was funny, so I found it, and put it up for "undelete" I'm not sure if it went through or not, but I'll check again later and vote to "undelete" it again if I need too.
And look what happend hours/days after when I came back to wowhead. Its clearly a butthurt person.
Tell me again why I want to spend time helping wowhead, when people are allowed to "retaliate" in this manner. I haven't done anything wrong.
Report that through wowhead feedback, and you can get all those votes restored, and the reputation back. You are clearly being targeted there.
I hope you keep putting up stuff for deletion. There is so much junk out there, and every little bit helps.
Unlocky - the exact reason I went and deleted all my comments.You've been told time and time again to stop promoting such negative attitudes...like deleting all comments. Your particular solution to get over your obsession with comment downvotes worked for you, but it's not a positive attitude. Please stop encouraging users to destroy the DB due to a downvote.
I feel bad for you Lanky, deleting comments is not the way to go about solving this problem.
Cheers,
Hat
Post by
Unlocky
I'm an avid user of wowhead and I like to contribute here and there, but mostly I'm searching for info on items, quests, zones, areas etc.
Lately I've become very irritated by the numerous "spam" posts, specifically posts about:
Getting xx item in xx time (I can't believe how many there are)
Subjectiv opions, f.ex. gear being ugly/flame against Blizzard
Questions that clearly belong to the forums
Posts I can hardly read and understand because of bad lingo
Redundant info. 99% of the time the exact same info is found in the tabs + in prior posts (lots and lots of these posts aswell)
These kinds of posts clutter the really usefull ones and can sometimes make it hard to find the info I want. I know you can choose the highest rated to show first, but they are still eye sores.
Wowhead specifically states here:
comment ratings
that they don't want these kinds of comments.
Now, the past couple of days I've spend some time to clear some of them up by putting them up for deletion whenever I looked something up and saw these kinds of posts.
And look what happend hours/days after when I came back to wowhead. Its clearly a butthurt person.
Tell me again why I want to spend time helping wowhead, when people are allowed to "retaliate" in this manner. I haven't done anything wrong.
People are unable to vote based on knowing you downvoted, so it's not possible it's a "butthurt person." In fact, this whole thread is someone ASKING for names to be revealed, so people can go on such sprees--which we as admins have said no to, and people have argued for.
I didn't write anything about downvoting, I said I recommended irrelevant posts to be deleted.
I used the
Out of date
option and explained why they should be removed.
And you can see who put the post up for vote:
Deleted by Unlocky yesterday at 10:01 PM (Patch 4.3.0)
I don't know if it's only members with atleast 3.000 reputation that are allowed to see that, but alas, how can it not be obvious that it's a person that directly raged at me, 3000 reputation or not.
Look at the time stamps. They are exactly the same and the amount corresponds exactly to the amount of comments I've made.
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that he clicked on one of my posts, got to my profile and downrated my comments one by one.
The planets would have to align while aliens offered peace with earth to beat the odds that the person found my comments randomly and downrated all of them within 2 minutes.
If something like this keep happening because I wan't to help your staff and the community, I'd rather just read and not contribute at all.
Post by
Ashelia
Ok Unlocky, so I looked at what was downvoted...
Yes, a single user did do them.
However, here's the problem: the comments he downvoted deserved it. They talk about +hit leggings and farming from a level 80 perspective. They are useless now, and are exactly the type of comments YOU are downvoting.
So I don't think this is a retaliation (the person who downvoted was not downvtoed by you), I think it's just someone finding that you had a lot of old comments.
So in this situation, I genuinely ask the community: do I delete these downvotes when they are merited? Should I warn a user who is actually cleaning the DB? Whose "side" do you take here?
I personally was against reputation from the start, and this is a situation that is a perfect example of why. These posts are out of date and by all means should be downvoted/removed according to policy. At the same time, users shouldn't target another user. So it's sort of a hard decision; I do not feel like the user deserves to have their downvotes removed, because every single downvote was on a comment that is hugely out of date now, even if it was great in its prime. At the same time, a user was only targeted because someone found their username and checked their comments--that's really a horrible practice and should be punished.
I would like some community input here, I'm just curious what you guys think a good solution would be.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##Ashelia##DELIM##
Post by
Unlocky
Ashelia, thanks for looking into it, really appreciate it.
And Hatman, thanks for a heads up. I'll definately agree that memes and irl situation references are more than welcome if they are fun, witty and totally nails it :-)
Post by
dslg604t
Leave the downvotes.
Gives incentive to people to clean the DB themselves by deleting outdated comments.
Post by
Unlocky
I was targeted, no doubt about it. It's up to you if you want to infract the person or not.
I might not have deleted his posts, but something tells me that he got offended, saw me as a wise-ass for putting up so many posts to be deleted and gunned them all down, twice apparently. Thats personal.
My posts are old, but many of them are still valid. The loot ones, yes, some of them could be deleted and if people find them they can vote to get them deleted, thats fair.
You can also delete them if you think they are clogging your DB.
And I read some time ago, like you just told Lankybrit, that wowhead do not wish to encourage users to destroy the DB due to downvotes right of the bat so I didn't eventhough some of them are outdated.
Post by
hatman555
So in this situation, I genuinely ask the community: do I delete these downvotes when they are merited? Should I warn a user who is actually cleaning the DB? Whose "side" do you take here?
Since you are asking, this is what I would do.
Restore Unlocky's votes and reputation.
Email the downvoter saying that instead of downvoting out of date comments, they should be voting them to be deleted.
Inform Unlocky that his comments are out of date and that he should either change the content, or add a new comment with updated content and/or delete his old ones.
I personally was against reputation from the start, and this is a situation that is a perfect example of why.
I understand that it can be frustrating. I like reputation when it works, I also see that it does cause problems. Before reputation existed, I would often look at peoples profile pages and see what their "average comment vote" was. Take the number of comments they have, over the sum of comment ratings received and you get a pretty good idea of whether summon is adding good content, or bad content.
From a positive standpoint, I think reputation motivates people to add content. Screenshots, uploads, and comments. I don't know if it could be graphed, but i bet there was a huge spike, and then a higher level of submitted content after reputation was released.
Anyways, I like the conversation about this. Ideas are sure to come up. Keep it going.
Cheers,
Hat
Post by
asakawa
I was targeted, no doubt about it. It's up to you if you want to infract the person or not.
I might not have deleted his posts, but something tells me that he got offended, saw me as a wise-ass for putting up so many posts to be deleted and gunned them all down, twice apparently. Thats personal.
The downvotes you received were from two separate users. I don't think it was at all personal.
I think what happens is someone sees a comment they think ought to be downvoted and then clicks the name of the person that made that comment. They then click each comment and downvote the ones they think deserve it.
I do something similar if we get a report of someone that is circumventing the language filter (or similar rule-breaking), I'll check all that users comments to make sure there aren't more examples still live on the database.
The question is, if the person reads each comment and downvotes based on the content of
that
comment, then is this abusive voting or not? Personally my view is that it's not.
Post by
Ashelia
I was targeted, no doubt about it. It's up to you if you want to infract the person or not.
I might not have deleted his posts, but something tells me that he got offended, saw me as a wise-ass for putting up so many posts to be deleted and gunned them all down, twice apparently. Thats personal.
My posts are old, but many of them are still valid. The loot ones, yes, some of them could be deleted and if people find them they can vote to get them deleted, thats fair.
You can also delete them if you think they are clogging your DB.
And I read some time ago, like you just told Lankybrit, that wowhead do not wish to encourage users to destroy the DB due to downvotes right of the bat so I didn't eventhough some of them are outdated.
I really do not think this user targeted you out of malice or against you--the reason is they didn't downvote all your comments. I think more than likely they saw your username through that delete, read some comments, and deleted them. I really encourage you not to assume the worst; this user's behavior has been to downvote several comments per user, indicating they go through their comment tab.
And as for saying it's up to me, the point of me opening the floor is to hear compelling arguments about how to deal with conflicts of this nature and how the community hears. I will ultimately make my own decision, but I am taking your suggestions and thinking about it! Because frankly, these are wasting a lot of time--I have to reply to users, I have to look at reputation, and this all takes away from other major jobs I could be doing. So in short, this IS NOT working and IS FAR from optimal.
At the same time, banning people or warning people for downvoting things that are invalid is also less than ideal. So I'd like to find a middle ground that's acceptable =)
And regarding Lanky, he deleted *all* his comments--many of which were awesome!--as sort of a reaction to someone downvoting him. It was emotional and wholly different than this. That's different from some self-maintenance of removing comments you know are old or are not ideal anymore.
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