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Okay guys I will try to introduce another wonderful (hehe) idea of mine ...

We already discussed this topic in the other thread, but it would be cool tu have your opinion ...

Didou came home yesterday and we talked about the fact that there were too much lame posts of people who don't bother reading all the thread before replying, who are always replying the same things, who talk about things they know nothing about, etc.

So I had the idea to have both a post count per user (which usefullness was already discussed) and a user rating...

My idea is very simple.
For the forums concerning real problems & stuff (not the meeting spot, for example), it could be the possibility to rate each post as Helpful / Not Helpful, so everybody could see which users can be trusted because of their rating and not because of their spam

What do you all think about it ?

It could also be kinda funny to be able to filter the forum to remove too lame posts based on user lameness

hehe

Cya around !

I like the idea in principal, but I think there are too many drawbacks...
Like what is to stop someone for creating x^n accounts and give themselves a good rating?
Or what if you disagree about the users choice of hardware vendor (ATI vs Nvidia, Intel vs AMD etc)?

ratings will be given on a per post or per thread basis, so no one could just give credits to another ...

I think the choices like mac vs pc, ati vs nvidia, straight vs gay cannot really be rated being helpful or not helpful

If someone asks a question or has a problem, arguing and answering "No, %brandA% is crap, you should throw it away and buy %brandB%" is defenitely not helpful at all

How about if only the person that started the thread gets to vote on the most useful response.

Also, since having few votes does not make a contribution worthless (e.g. if someone is new to the forum their votes will be low), it would also make sense if the thread starter gets to also vote for the least helpful response.

This way you'll be able to track those that consistently post misleading advice.

Two ratings it is then.

So some genius posts a thread saying "NVIDIA &%"!&%¤#!#/!!!" and gives negative ratings to everyone who disagrees? And then replies and gives himself a positive rating?

I think limiting the ability to vote is not a good idea. Mass of forum users voting in a thread should saturate any attempts to cheat a higher rating. Also, moderators' votes might have a bigger weight so authorities could suppress general stupidity a little bit.

And a reply being helpful shouldn't be the only measure. Sometimes the real solution is found over many posts by different people. And sometimes a whole lot of good advice is posted that doesn't solve the particular problem in question. The rating should be at least partly based on the quality of the post.

PS
I suppose you figured out I'm in favor of the idea..

I suppose that its not really possible to have a foolproof system, and any system is open to abuse.

Nodsu, my suggestion was to allow only two votes to the original poster only - one vote for most helpful response, and another for least helpful response (and maybe even one for no comment if they decide not to vote at all). They should obviously not be allowed to vote for themselves.

I think that at least would be a good step towards meaningful voting, though if I had a choice I would probably not change the current system at all, as people might be reluctant to help others out for fear of receiving poor votes. Really, any input is more useful than no input, as forums are all about having interesting debates and assisting others with their problems.

PS: DigitAlex - now look what you've started. Maybe I'll get voted off.

I believe next version of vBulletin that is a couple of months away will carry such feature probably with security (less cheating) on mind.

I guess if more users post their comments here, then a good idea of the overall feelings of users can be accounted for. Hopefully vBulletin will be flexible enough to allow the majority of users to have a system that they feel comforable with.

PS: I think what would be useful as a first step would be to identify the requirments that users want/don't want from the system, so that suggestions can be evaluated/combined with these in mind. Then it'll be a simple matter to meet most users needs.

Cool guys i'm really pleased my idea makes you think and move

Sounds like a good idea...

And that I said in the first thread we had about this also ;-)

Would be really good to have this integrated in the news section also, so we news hounds know what you readers like reading ;-)