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Default sort order is counter-productive.
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Post by
Seegtease
Short story: I was writing a guide on how I tamed Ban'Thalos (posted on his page). I looked through the green posts, and saw no other stories using my method, so I figured I could provide something alternative or easier for people to try.
After writing it up, I saw my post was placed on page FOUR, for having a default rating of 1.
Meaning, the typical person who comes here will never see it. They will only see the old posts, in particular, posts that were made before the site changed to sort by rating by default.
Having this as the default system is counter productive, because posts that were made and rating high before the site change will forever be throned as the first ones seen, and any new ones will be buried pages back. Somebody could write the best guide known to man, but it would likely never even make it to the first page because so few people would even notice it.
Yes, I realize that the sort order can indeed be changed, but I don't believe very many people actually do this. So, we're stuck with this problem - sometimes things change, and new posts can be more helpful, so it's good to see new ones first, since we really should be looking at newest information first in many cases, but all of the new, possibly very relevant posts will forever be buried.
Not sure what measure should be taken, but to say the least, the default order should be chronological. I'm not sure if a rating-based order should even exist, because it discourages even looking at non-green posts. And you don't get to be a highly rated post without someone actually looking at your post.
So you're stuck in a trap - you need people to see your post to get ratings, but you need ratings for people to see your post.
Something really needs to change.
Post by
asakawa
If high rated information is outdated then click "out of date". If high rated information is not out of date then it's a very good thing that it's at the top.
People will keep reading down a page until their query is answered. If they find their answer in the green posts then you're right that they might not read any further but at that point the site has fulfilled its primary goal of delivering information to people quickly and efficiently. Making them go through a long series of less helpful posts to find strong comments works counter to that goal.
edit: Also, if there's a very strong reason why a certain comment with a low rating deserves or requires to be made more prominent then staff have the ability to 'sticky' comments so you could report such posts for moderator attention. This would require fairly exceptional circumstances though.(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##
Post by
Seegtease
Yeah, but look at my particular case for example. There's a page full of green posts that all just rephrase the same answer. People will look no further than the first page, figuring if it's not green, it's not good.
The problem is, new posts START with a low rating (whether they are good or terrible), so they get thrown to the fourth page (that is mostly filled with I KILL HIM AT THIS TIME) so people don't bother to check that far.
It's just discouraging to bother to provide a new (and I believe more effective) strategy than the known ones and know it will pretty much never been seen due to the way the system is set up.
People will keep reading down a page until their query is answered. If they find their answer in the green posts then you're right that they might not read any further but at that point the site has fulfilled its primary goal of delivering information to people quickly and efficiently.
This is valid if there's only one answer to something. Sometimes, there are many other pieces of information worth reading (and I'm not gonna lie, I love the funny comments too. Worth it.)
But really, the top information may have been good at one point, but somebody might just find a better way to say it. That's not to say the old one is out of date, just that somebody phrased it much better. But they will be forever buried.
Making them go through a long series of less helpful posts to find strong comments works counter to that goal.
Problem is, those posts aren't necessarily "less helpful". They're just "less old". Because good ratings come with three factors: Time, quality, and being outdated or not. I can post an up to date quality post, but because not enough time has passed (and due to it's placement, never will), my post will never been seen.
Possibly a good solution would be to make all posts made in the last X amount of time always show on top, unless they've been voted down to negatives, then they get put in their place. This way, it gives people a chance to see all new posts first, then you can see the highly rated ones. It would help new posts begin to be rated up or down right away.
Post by
asakawa
I understand it can be a little defeating to see your comment at +1 with many other comments much higher but the tools are there for people to filter by patch or sort chronologically if they wish (and actually I would recommend filtering rather than sorting). If they suspect there may be good info in newer posts then they can get to them quickly and easily.
You're right that time is a factor but things get uprated like that for being
consistently
useful to solving people's problems over a long period of time. Those comments earned their place.
Post by
hatman555
Possibly a good solution would be to make all posts made in the last X amount of time always show on top, unless they've been voted down to negatives, then they get put in their place. This way, it gives people a chance to see all new posts first, then you can see the highly rated ones. It would help new posts begin to be rated up or down right away.
I'd be interesting in playing around with some UI options for this. Possible a box at the top, where you could scroll at your own pace, and see the latest 5 comments. If they get -2 votes, they will no longer appear there.
Honestly its very hard to debat. Asakawa brings up good points:
If the answer is in green then you find it quick.
Doesn't mater if its not the only way, its the best way as voted by users.
If its not the best way because its outdated, people should vote it to be outdated.
Now, I'm going to say something that I might regret....but its something that should be added. Wowhead is a community site. Talk to your friends who play WoW, link them your comments, ask them to upvote it
if they find it helpful.
Just because your comment is on the 4th page, doesn't mean you don't have to not tell anyone about it.
*Warning*
- Asking your friends to upvote your comments just because they are your friends is not cool. We have given people warnings, taken away voting rights, and even banned users who abused the voting system by getting people to come visit the site only to vote on their comments.
TRUST ME! WE WILL FIND OUT! ¬_¬
Ask people to come use Wowhead, and if they like your stuff, it will go up!
Why do I feel like I'm going to regret posting this.....
Cheers,
Hat(##RESPBREAK##)136##DELIM##hatman555##DELIM##
Post by
baradiel
I upvoted your comment because read it and i see that is useful, one day i found a comment on Magria NPC that helped me tame it with my hunter, i hope players find your comment useful, i have a hunter BS and i like farming rares so, if i see Ban'Thalos, i'm going to follow your suggestion. Hat, if you think i upvoted the comment just for fun, tell me and i remove the vote. Good Nights!
Edit: he never asked for upvoting.
Post by
Seegtease
If the answer is in green then you find it quick.
I'm all for green answers, they're handy, but when you've lost the ability for new posts to become green, we have a problem.
Doesn't mater if its not the only way, its the best way as voted by users.
But it's only voted by users because they saw it sooner. It's not necessarily voted up because it's the best, it could just be because it was the first made, or was the first seen by many. That's the problem - due to the way its set up, good things don't even get a CHANCE to be voted on. I realize the point of the voting system, but it makes it hard for new posts to have a chance.
If its not the best way because its outdated, people should vote it to be outdated.
It's not necessarily outdated... just not as good as it could be. We should have fast comment finding, but also be able to find the best ones too. I wouldn't rate any of those comments about Ban'Thalos as being out of date. But I would say some are repetitive (like there's one post that tells you all you need to know, the rest are copies). Then there's mine (which may not be the only one like it, but there are no green ones with my strategy) that doesn't obsolete the other ones, but it should fit right in with them. THAT'S the problem, not outdatedness, which you already have a fix for.
I'd be interesting in playing around with some UI options for this. Possible a box at the top, where you could scroll at your own pace, and see the latest 5 comments. If they get -2 votes, they will no longer appear there.
Anyone who made a system like this, I would love forever. No joke. Or better yet, a mandatory rating system. You let a post remain at the top until it's received X amount of votes (10 perhaps). Once it has received 10 votes, it get shuffled to it's spot. Let's say the 5 posts with the least amount of votes remain at the top (sorted by time). So people finish the 10 entry votes on those, and they get shuffled in, and the next ones pop up.
This would solve all the problems. It would allow bad new posts to be obliterated off the board, and good new posts to have a fighting chance against the oldies. It would be awesome and all parties would win. The user would also only have to skip the first 5 posts to get to the greens, if they are in a hurry. No big hassle.
I upvoted your comment because read it and i see that is useful, one day i found a comment on Magria NPC that helped me tame it with my hunter, i hope players find your comment useful, i have a hunter BS and i like farming rares so, if i see Ban'Thalos, i'm going to follow your suggestion. Hat, if you think i upvoted the comment just for fun, tell me and i remove the vote. Good Nights!
Edit: he never asked for upvoting.
Well, let me say thanks, and I hope you get your rare without much pain!
Post by
Seegtease
You're right that time is a factor but things get uprated like that for being
consistently
useful to solving people's problems over a long period of time. Those comments earned their place.
I get that. But the older WoW gets, the longer pages are going to get. And the longer they get, the less likely it will be that your comment will even get seen.
I could make a comment that could very well consistently be useful to other players. But it will have a low rating not because it's a bad comment, but because people will not see it. They will not sift through the masses of garbage useless posts to get that far. That's the problem. The pile of posts is overwhelming, so we could be (and I'm not just speaking of my own post obviously) missing out on a lot of insightful posts that just don't see the light of day.
They can be good, they just don't have the chance to be. Sounds like some motivational speech, I know, but I want to make my point clear that there IS a problem and this system CAN use refinement. And I'm not sure the refinement would even require an over-complicated solution, but the results would be exemplary.
Don't support the way it is just because you're on staff - look at it objectively and tell me that there's not a problem here; you won't get fired for it ;-)
Post by
Ashelia
You're right that time is a factor but things get uprated like that for being
consistently
useful to solving people's problems over a long period of time. Those comments earned their place.
I get that. But the older WoW gets, the longer pages are going to get. And the longer they get, the less likely it will be that your comment will even get seen.
I could make a comment that could very well consistently be useful to other players. But it will have a low rating not because it's a bad comment, but because people will not see it. They will not sift through the masses of garbage useless posts to get that far. That's the problem. The pile of posts is overwhelming, so we could be (and I'm not just speaking of my own post obviously) missing out on a lot of insightful posts that just don't see the light of day.
They can be good, they just don't have the chance to be. Sounds like some motivational speech, I know, but I want to make my point clear that there IS a problem and this system CAN use refinement. And I'm not sure the refinement would even require an over-complicated solution, but the results would be exemplary.
Don't support the way it is just because you're on staff - look at it objectively and tell me that there's not a problem here; you won't get fired for it ;-)
He's not on staff, he's a volunteer. He can't "get fired." There's also no reason to tell him he isn't looking at it objectively--just because he disagrees with you doesn't mean he's not trying to see both sides and formulating his own opinion. =)
You have a point and I get you're trying to make it, but insulting him or egging him into how he's wrong is not the best way to incite a change.
I like the way it's sorted because it's usually useful for comments that are helpful to be at top. If you dislike it, you can sort by date posted; it's an easy to select option. I, however, loathe by date posted--it's easily the least informative, as most people leave comments like "I got a dragon" or "On my 200th kill I got this" en masse and it makes the DB less useful for me. Most of the time I want to scan entries and find out what I want from that, rather than search 50 for stories. That's why it is the way it currently is. There are flaws, like you said, really old entries may not have a new comment that gets recognition--but that, to me, is a flaw I can live with if it means burying a lot of the noise like "I got this mount todday" etc.
I'm always willing to listen to other ideas...I just really dislike when they are presented as the Right Way and the way it currently is the Wrong Way.(##RESPBREAK##)2##DELIM##Ashelia##DELIM##
Post by
Seegtease
He's not on staff, he's a volunteer. He can't "get fired." There's also no reason to tell him he isn't looking at it objectively--just because he disagrees with you doesn't mean he's not trying to see both sides and formulating his own opinion. =)
I was just being playful, hence the smilie. Just wanted to make sure he was open to the idea. (playing on the trend of staff at various sites being unwilling to admit the site they participate at could possibly have any faults)
I like the way it's sorted because it's usually useful for comments that are helpful to be at top.
It's all great and all that we can see the useful ones first, but it makes it very difficult for any new ones to end up as useful ones, since they get very few views, and thus few votes, no matter how good they are. Most of the high rated ones were the first ones made that stayed relevant. First made, not most useful made. Many people don't switch the sorting option and who can blame them? You're right, they do have to filter out a lot of awful posts.
That's why I proposed an idea of a few of the newer posts being at the top, and requiring X amount of votes before they are filtered out into the sort by rating section. This way, they all have a fighting chance, and it only takes up a little space.
Doing this would ensure that the best posts constantly, regardless of when they were made, find their way up or down the rating scale as needed. It would greatly increase the quality of the posts we see on the first page. I'm not trying to say everything about the current way is awful, just one improvement that would, as I see it, make a huge difference in quality control (and not filtering out ones that ARE indeed quality).
If you have some solid objections to that suggested method, I'd like to hear them (seriously, not just being facetious).
Post by
Nooska
I must say, I don't see the problem to be honest.
As of this reply, your comment has a rating of 4, placing it halfway down the first page (and I have not changed anything about my viewing style from defaults).
I feel you are overstating the problem to get your point across, but when you say "There's a page full of green posts that all just rephrase the same answer" it is simply not true.
To compuound this, at the bottom of the first page is (as of this reply) 3 replies with a rating of 1 - so anything thats gotten even a single upvote will be on the first page.
Post by
Neutronimity
While it doesn't directly pertain to "new comments don't receive immediate attention for rating", I'd like to chip in on the matter of green text, which has a significant effect as I'd like to think.
Around the time we had the revamped comment system implemented, comments weren't distinguished by color according to rating (green for 10 and higher). Due to vocal demand, it was added back in which I found
very silly
. It's helpful for chronological sorting. It's not helpful for sorting by rating.
And I think this thread made me think: how many people read the green comments and don't read any further? How many people read beyond the green comments? Admittedly, when I am looking for information, I read the green comments, and feel uncomfortable crossing the line between green and gray comments. It makes me want to give up on reading.
I think, putting it down to color makes green comments a "stuff I want to read"-category, and gray comments a "stuff I don't feel like bothering with".(##RESPBREAK##)2700##DELIM##Neutronimity##DELIM##
Post by
scr00chy
I'd like to chip in on the matter of green text, which has a significant effect as I'd like to think It's helpful for chronological sorting. It's not helpful for sorting by rating.
Agreed. Green text seems unnecessary in the current comment system.
Post by
lankybrit
OP - You're entirely wrong. I set my sort order to newest first all the time. I'm sure others do that too, so we would always see the latest comment first.
Cheers.
Post by
Seegtease
And I think this thread made me think: how many people read the green comments and don't read any further? How many people read beyond the green comments? Admittedly, when I am looking for information, I read the green comments, and feel uncomfortable crossing the line between green and gray comments. It makes me want to give up on reading.
I'll admit, I'm part of the problem that I speak of. I don't usually go further.
I must say, I don't see the problem to be honest.
As of this reply, your comment has a rating of 4, placing it halfway down the first page (and I have not changed anything about my viewing style from defaults).
I feel you are overstating the problem to get your point across, but when you say "There's a page full of green posts that all just rephrase the same answer" it is simply not true.
To compuound this, at the bottom of the first page is (as of this reply) 3 replies with a rating of 1 - so anything thats gotten even a single upvote will be on the first page.
Well, I'm willing to bet that 1) my comment was only up-voted due to getting attention from curious readers of this thread (well, at least they liked it, even though I wasn't fishing for up-votes), and 2) Just because it only takes one vote to get to the front page doesn't mean many will make it there. Many posts get no votes at all, probably only ones that are recommended to friends. Who wants to sift through dozens of posts of "I kill him at this time, yay!" just to find a good post?
And even so, my post isn't green, meaning it probably still won't be read (as was said above). I still think a system to help enforce voting would be helpful (5 newest posts with under 10 votes remain at top). This way, bad ones get buried, and good ones get shown. And we don't have masses of votes at their default setting.
Ultimately, the problem is that all posts need to be evaluated, good and bad, but it isn't happening many times. Anything to encourage post evaluation would be a good thing.
OP - You're entirely wrong. I set my sort order to newest first all the time. I'm sure others do that too, so we would always see the latest comment first.
Cheers.
Considering I said "not very many people", your testimony does nothing to debunk my theory. Certainly a far cry from "entirely wrong".
Post by
rahael
if people go out and downvote the comments that are being deemed as useless in this thread (ie tame/kill brags) then they fall out of view. your post may not get recognized in the short term but over time, as more users rate things on the page, it should get pushed up. it seems overly complex to make an entirely new system for dealing with an issue that only impacts a tiny number of comments for a small period of time.
Post by
Seegtease
if people go out and downvote the comments that are being deemed as useless in this thread (ie tame/kill brags) then they fall out of view. your post may not get recognized in the short term but over time, as more users rate things on the page, it should get pushed up. it seems overly complex to make an entirely new system for dealing with an issue that only impacts a tiny number of comments for a small period of time.
If they do, yes, it would help. But it's the
same problem
: people aren't even LOOKING at those posts. It is obvious that if you're taking the time to downrate posts that are just "I KILL HIM AT X TIME" then you're also taking time to uprate those that are useful.
Problem is, that isn't happening as often as it should. Again, the solution I proposed would help that.
The main goal is to get people voting on all posts, not just feeding the posts that are
already
green.
Post by
asakawa
The main goal is to get people voting on all posts, not just feeding the posts that are
already
green.
The main goal of who (or what)?
I understand that's your goal but does that help the site and its users? That's got to be the primary concern.
I would be strongly opposed to adding a group of new comments at the top. I think that is very counter-productive to getting people good info quickly and undermines the whole comment rating system.
Post by
scr00chy
If people don't find what they were looking for among the top comments, they'll scroll down to find it. If your comment then helps them, they'll upvote and eventually it will be among the top comments as well. I don't see the issue. Good comments will always find their way up. Unless they're not as good as their authors think...
Post by
Seegtease
The main goal of who (or what)?
I understand that's your goal but does that help the site and its users? That's got to be the primary concern.
I would be strongly opposed to adding a group of new comments at the top. I think that is very counter-productive to getting people good info quickly and undermines the whole comment rating system.
The main goal of getting the best and most well-written posts to the top as quickly as possible.
It doesn't undermine the comment rating system at ALL. It enhances it by encouraging voting on things that people usually don't bother to even read.
The problem is that posts that were made in the first amount of time after a new ID entry is available for commenting have a HUGE advantage is getting up-votes. Anything later, even if better, is less likely to make it up there simply due to the date of which it was posted. That shouldn't be the prime factor. Date should be irrelevant, only whether or not the comment is well written, easy to understand, and still valid. Posts made right away shouldn't have an advantage, but they do.
Are you saying it would really bother you to have to look at 5 posts before getting to the mass of green posts? That you could quickly skip down over if you wanted? Or, you could just vote on them and actually be a part of the solution. Eventually, when all posts have received X votes or more, that top part would be empty.
The whole point is simply to ensure that new posts get put into a proper place, rather than a default 1. This is a
good
thing.
If people don't find what they were looking for among the top comments, they'll scroll down to find it. If your comment then helps them, they'll upvote and eventually it will be among the top comments as well. I don't see the issue. Good comments will always find their way up. Unless they're not as good as their authors think...
They can find mostly what they're looking for, but that's not to say something lower could explain it better, but most people don't make it that far. Three people can say the same thing, one says it okay, one good, and one great. But since the okay one was posted first, they will be the highly rated one, and people will never see the great one. That's what my suggestion is aiming to fix.
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