I think that the up/down voting idea is not only a good one, it's essential. To my understanding, one of the reasons for a voting feature at all is to provide feedback to people about how their posts are doing. If I make a post that gets no flags or stars, I have essentially no feedback. It could mean that the post was lame, just barely OK, but nothing to star or flag. It could also mean it was the dumbest thing on here since the beginning. No one has a way to convey to me that the post was really bad.

Similarly, if my post does get a few flags and stars, all it means is that there were some folks who liked it. Those might be extremists who happened to agree with something. Everyone else might have thought it stank, but had no way of telling me this. Again, I might think I was very clever, even though my fellow ATS'ers thought I was a bonehead.

I am on another forum, completely unrelated to ATS, that has an up/down voting system. The way they do it is, they give you a certain number of votes each day. You can use them as you see fit, voting articles up or down. Once you've used up your daily allotment, you have to wait until the next day. You can't roll them over. Use them or lose them.

I like that system because it allows you to gives people feedback, yet the limited number of votes keeps you from artificially boosting values by repeatedly voting for someone. Although there can be some abuse, overall it works because the few guys who do abuse it are swamped by everyone else, who mostly will vote reasonably.

I made a thread a while back suggesting that flags be made public so that we knew who was flagging what, but that got little attention. Even if there was a clique of users flagging and giving stars to certain users' threads, there's not much we can do about it. In the case of adding negative flags and stars, the river flows both ways. It could be made as a way to balance it out, but it can also be abused by said clique.

If you don't like the thread, either ignore it completely or participate in it to make it better.

i didn't think the hot topics,were approved or not,i thought it meant they were the ones viewed most or more recently.

Yea, lets turn this into a total communism and silence the people. The day we're black-flagging threads, I'M LEAVING!

Originally posted by poet1b
I am tired of seeing all these nasty political propaganda pieces dominating ATS. I see ridiculous statement after ridiculous statement with large numbers of flags. Essentially, a small group is able to control the boards with this kind of meaningless garbage.

I think that is most of the people who visit ATS had the ability to take these types of vicious threads off of the hot and top list, they would. This organized propaganda is starting to make ATS look bad, IMO.

The owners built a great site here, sorry to see it taken over by a small group of what appears to be organized propagandists.

Totally agree....100 percent. It's like the disinfo ops have taken over of late.

I have made this very same suggestion before. I think having a thumbs up/down rating system is a good way to keep things in check.

Sure you can make the argument that you don't have to click the links to the posts that you don't want to see. BUT that's not the point of a rating system. Simply ignoring something doesn't make it stop. It only allows it to fester.

Currently the way things are you can show no opposition, only approval. This allows people to game the system. So a concerted effort could very easily be made to keep a post in the top of the queue and appearing on the front page.

This is sad and off putting. I see it happening constantly. All we need to counter these types of efforts is a rating system that gives ALL OF US the ability to like or dislike a post. If you dislike UFO/ghost/bigfoot posts you can rate them down too.

Simply ignoring a post doesn't help it get "dug down"/buried.

Sure there may be a ton of support for a thread, but as it is now we only get to see votes in favor and no votes in opposition.

That is not democratic. It's an easily abused mechanic.

Please ATS. Make this happen. For the good of the site.

EDITED: spelling/grammar

[edit on 4-10-2009 by sinesolis]

agreed

there are a lot of threads made by people with low processing power that really hurt my eyes ...

Wait. Was this thread just killed? It no longer appears anywhere on the front page and I can no longer star any comments.

Is this just something weird on my end?

I seriously hope this thread wasn't mod killed. That would be a shame.

[edit on 4/10/09 by neformore]

Very very very bad idea. This is one of the early failings of Digg before that site was completely co-opted and sold out.

TBTB will just assign bury brigades to ats and they will kill every story.
It would be a disaster.

Terrible idea ts

Originally posted by abecedarian
@ "the siren": I think "flagging" a thread just so you can find it later is not responsible use of the system. How about maybe open a new window or tab in your browser on the thread then go to it, refresh the page and read all the posts when you have time? I mean, where did you have to go in such a hurry that you had time to scroll back up and hit "flag", but didn't have time to open the page in a new window, open a duplicate tab or just lock the computer or shut the lid / hibernate it so no one putzes with it while you're away? You may find your opinion of the thread changes by the time you're done with it, or maybe even it was a hoax, and if you flagged it, you can't take it back. And isn't there a "favorite" link you can click on meant pretty much for this reason?

On most threads, I only have an 'UN-FAV' option. I suspect this is because I have the whole sub forum 'favourited' so that it appears in My ATS.

Originally posted by Koka
Siren, just to let you know and to avoid flagging threads just so you can find them easily, you can always use the "Subscribe" link just below the "flag" link, this will place it in to your "My ATS" page, you can unsuscribe in the same manner (by clicking on the "UN-SUB" link located where the subscribe link was), or just delete it from your "My ATS" page.

Thanks for the solution!

There's a really good way of giving a thread a "thumbs down"

Don't reply to it, don't contribute to it, and if people are using it as a vehicle to further an agenda, leave them to it and eventually they will get found out.

It's not up to the rest of us what others can agree or disagree with, and this thumb up/down idea has been floated and denied so many times it just ain't true, and always comes back to the same thing - it's a form of cencorship to allow this to happen, as the same people would just go around giving negative flags to whatever they happen to disagree with, thereby reaching their goal of only having their version of "whatever" at the top of the boards.

If you don't like a thread, don't post, flag or star the op.

If it's offensive hit the alert button, and let the mods do their thing.

And remember, just because someone doesn't like a thread, doesn't mean it has nothing to offer.

I'm not really sure how this works, but do you really need the majority to flag/star a thread to jump to the TOP or HOT list?

If you, for example, go to a movie site and you the first 3 movies listed get rated as follows:

4 out of 5 stars, 1507 votes
5 out of 5 stars, 7 votes
2 out of 5 stars, 50 votes.

You would think, hmm, Movie 1 has lots of support so I think I'll watch it, but #2 and 3 I'll check back later to see if the rating changes.

On this site it looks like if say 50 out the majority support a thread it goes on the lists. If I don't support a thread there's nothing I can do to affect the rating of that thread, i.e. HOT or TOP threads do not necessarily reflect the majority of ATS. Make sense?

Based on that I would say negative starring or flagging makes sense. Or maybe another way to reflect the views of the majority.

I. Don't like the flag system (or rather the "importance" ATS places on the flag system) but I don't think there is a hostile take over of ATS by flaggers.

Sure, some topics are bound to get you flags... and you don't even need to add content to get a flag (people flag subjects) but again, I don't see it as a collaberative effort by some political group. (Ps I agree with the up/down star thing)

(copy from Hx3_1963)
Oh yeah...

The old thumbs up/down rating system...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


stars on top row.

bars (thumbs down) on the low row

and no reply would need to be exhaustively laid out, just a simple star or bar click so the total approval/disapprovals show up.

but disapprovals would not result in censoring or removal of thread,
just a ongoing poll of the community reaction to the material

[edit on 4-10-2009 by St Udio]