Anti-Stars

reply to post by michael1983l


if you think stars are only awarded to well written , logical and coherent posts - then to be rude - you are delusional

they are the staple of the ` i want to believe ` crowd , and partisan ` yes men `

disagree ? ;

then visit the hoax bin

and explain why such utter twaddle gets heaps of stars / flags

I got to thinking about this a bit and have a thought to add as someone on here with a rather large number of stars to my own name.

Stars are over-rated. Very much over-rated. If people let it go to their head that they have thousands....it reflects on them ..and not in any good way. The reason I say that is real basic and it's a truth any of the high contributors here have likely realized long ago as well.

At some point, the # of decent threads I've created become self sustaining. Not great threads/posts. I think I've had a few of those..but literally, only a few in my mind..among the thousands the numbers indicate. Most are chit chat and general debate. No, decent ones are enough at a certain number. It's like a savings account with compounding interest after that. There are threads I wrote a year ago I still go back and find a new star on occasionally.....multiplied by hundreds/thousands.

So, the star system on the very active contributors really is self-feeding and self-sustaining even if someone like me took a month or two off (and I have), the numbers still build.

I really wanted to come back and say this because it seemed important the more I considered how much those numbers meant to me when I first came here ....and then over time, how much I've come to realize ..they aren't more than activity indicators and very general approval indicators ... but ^^^^ as noted? With enough past threads to keep compounding the numbers ... even that isn't a sure thing to current content being good from someone. (now someone out there is sure to hate me for saying that..lol)

In reality what should happen is the obvious troll threads should be deleted and have the user banned. But more often than not the troll threads are the ones with 30 pages of replies. This is ATS today.

reply to post by michael1983l


- a star for you ! cheers


really the mods already abuse this as it is, do you want some drunk re re handing out negs all day?

reply to post by michael1983l

I'm sure it will have been suggested before but I would like to put it forward again. Please can we be given the ability to negative star posts, primarily so that Trolls can be clearly identified. Sometimes an ignorant post makes me so mad that I want to rage on the person and I think I would find it far more gratifying if I could just give them a negative star instead, so that all future posters know to ignore the village idiot rather than get annoyed by them.

It'll just give the trolls another way to troll. And it makes it thoroughly tempting to punish variance in opinion by giving negative stars. I don't think displaying negativity is really the best way to get a point across. If being negative is the only way to express yourself, then you need a break from ATS.

It's very simple. By choosing not to star a post, you have given it a negative star. Adding stars to allow users to go the extra step in being negative is less productive than ATS would like, I think. The next step would be handing out fake money to give to organizations you don't like.

I think the current system suits its purpose well enough. When I come back to a reply I made in a since-advanced thread and see that it got no stars, I think, 'uh oh...'
Hehe. Objectively, I know stars mean nothing. I just wish I could get that through my head.
But I get how you feel. There are abrasive comments that got stars and I have no idea why. For pity's sake? I don't know. Oh, the number of times I've scrolled by and thought, "If only I could cut that thing down just a bit..."

I'd personally be against this. ATS shouldn't be Youtube or any other site. As for "trolls", they're either clearly trolls or questionably trolls. Oftentimes people throw words like "troll" and "bully" around meaninglessly. We need to be careful. I was called a bully by a woman simply for taking an opposing viewpoint from her during a political discussion while I was working.