Ok, as far as most members are concerned, the stars system is pretty much anonymous, right? But then it occurred to me that it can't be completely anonymous, since nobody can star a post twice. That means there is a record somewhere of every post starred by every member. Even the flags aren't anonymous, as evidenced by the info in the member profiles.

So what is the site doing with all that data? Building a complete profile of each individual member ala DoubleClick? Only without extensively using cookies.

That's scary sneaky..

Well if your that worried, and you don't wan't people knowing that kind of info then all you have to do is refrain from flagging and starring.

[edit on 9/30/07 by AcesInTheHole]

Well, I flagged this thread but there's no option available to give any of these posts a star.

What's up with that??



Edit to add:

Oops! Now everyone knows I flagged this thread!

[edit on 30-9-2007 by goosdawg]

Originally posted by goosdawg
What's up with that??

You can't give posts in the Board Business & Questions, Freshman Forum, or Introduction forums stars.

I heard that SO was a shapeshifting reptile who was compiling all these stars so that they could target those who are most outspoken. It's not who gives the stars, it's the ones that get all those stars, and even worse, flags, that will be sent to a Lunar penal colony.

And the longest sentences will be given those that have gotten applause, because they are the ones being built up for the big crackdown by the New Galactic Overlord Council.

Why do you think he has "Overlord" in his screen name? It's like all those other NWO signs out there, it's because true evil can't help telling on itself.

I guess I'll bebanned for telling secrets.

[edit on 30-9-2007 by NGC2736]

You can rest assured we are NOT "gathering data" on what posts get starred or any other possible data set for that matter. We don't even keep server logs.

Seriously, with all that is so MUCH MORE important for us to do WHY would we bother with stuff like this?

We are OPPOSED to the gathering and sharing of member data at our core, all it takes is reading our privacy statement to understand that.

Springer...

[edit on 9-30-2007 by Springer]

Springer, I was having a bit of humor there to point out the absurdity of the very idea. Anyone who thinks about it would find it self defeating to sell a few hundred thousand "profiles" and destroy the site.

But I'm sticking by that part on SO.

Consider the man-hours involved in making use of star and flag data.

We'd have to read an interpret the meaning of every single post that was starred, and then look at the sum of a members starred posts to gleen information about his views etc.

And all that would really tell us is what you thought about subjects discussed on ATS, which you already tell the world when you post on ATS anyway.

There's just a simple mechanism (that I have to admit I don't understand the mechanics of) which stops you from starring a post more than once. It would be pretty much useless for any other purpose.


So remember to star the posts that you feel are best in the Debate Forum. You, the members, get to judge the debates this time.

Your Data Is Being Collected!

Everything you post -- every word, every sentence, every idea -- is carefully stored by the All-Seeing ATS Database.

Using this database, anyone can find out what your opinions are about every subject you've commented on, just by searching for it.

It's all part of a grand scheme to find out exactly what you think!

But yeah, like Springer said, the stars are pretty much anonymous, and you'd probably be shocked at how little member data is actually kept or made available to the staff.

Still, it's fun to conjecture, and I wouldn't want to discourage that...

Sort of off topic, but has ATS ever considered doing a system like YouTube has on its comments, the and , and it keeps a total depending on if you've gotten a thumbs up or down, and you can go into the negative?

I like that system for some reason.

The star system is good, but I think you should be able to give a negative star, or if you change it, a thumbs down, if someone makes a poor comment.

Yeah, that'll probably get abused by some members, and they'll just do a thumbs down or negative star simply because they don't agree, but the star system doesn't really change anything as far as content or opinions go.

Or another thing, rather than keeping a running total if you add a negative star/thumbs down option, such as, if someone has two stars, and they get a negative star, now they have one star...rather than doing that, you can show totals for both stars/thumbs up, and negative stars/thumbs down separately, such as:

Stars: 2
Deducted Stars: 1

Something like that.

I hope that made sense

It doesn't really make sense to me.

In my profile I can see the total amount of flags I have received, Is there any way to see how many stars I have?

The funny thing is that I can see the total of stars in other people's profile, but not in my own?

In others people's profile I can see the total right under the total amount of flags!

What's up with that? why can't I see my own stars - I'm just curious to know why!

Thanks in advance!