A Suggestion for ATSNN

I haven't been around ATS for very long, but I've come to really enjoy the ATSNN news portal - I find a lot of stories there that I don't see on the networks (or their affiliated web pages), in newspapers, Drudge, etc. Plus, the commentary is often insightful.

As a poster, however, I am becoming increasingly disgusted and frustrated by the use of the "NO - BIAS" vote on submissions. I know that others share my frustration. A review of other threads that address this issue clearly show that there are many who have little concept of what 'bias' means, much less how to recognize it. Worse, I think some consider ATSNN a joke and use the BIAS vote just to be an irritant. For example, I submitted a story earlier this week. A received a few helpful comments and a single BIAS vote. I posted a response relating the changes and my bewilderment with the BIAS vote. Within minutes I had 2 more BIAS votes, which I interpreted as a lame attempt at humor. How can a 1 - 2 sentence intro that simply states the facts be interpreted as bias? This is just one example, I'm sure others have similar stories.

There appear to be more than a few good stories in the ATSNN queue that have been there for a while. I would venture to guess that they are that way because of too many NO - BIAS votes.

My suggestion is this: If someone wants to vote "NO - BIAS", force them to write a sentence or two explaining why and post it anonymously along with the other normal responses. They can remain anonymous until the story is either upgraded or moved to the regular forum. If the intro (or story) is demonstrably biased, then the poster can fix it using the specific feedback from the offended party. If the point of having voting is to improve the quality of ATSNN submissions, the least the reviewer can do is give some specific information on what they consider biased? Perhaps we are somewhat blind to our own biases and need them specifically pointed out to us.

Furthermore, this will prevent folks from being able to hide their ignorance behind the anonymity of a NO BIAS vote because at some point everyone will see how they voted. Those that repeatedly abuse this will be identified.

I think people pick that as a reason when nothing else fits why they want to say no -- One of the reasons I started my thread about having a plain NO vote -- I don't mind having a submission downgraded but when you are getting No Story, or No Bias it is just irritating when you know those reasons aren't real and that people just tried to pick what they figured would fit as a No vote.

As I said in my thread
No vote thread
I really think that this is one reason we have so many submissions that haven't been voted up or down because people don't want to vote using one of the No's that are available.

This is an issue that has been brought up a lot. Here is a search function resultthat I just made, took me about 20 seconds to perform using the key words "ATSNN," "No," and "Bias." Check out some of those threads, justme's is the most recent. You'll find a lot of similar sentiments.

For the record, you shouldn't post on ATSNN about the BIAS results. Keep that to the news.



Closed.