Heh heh, fair enough. Had a quick read read through your responses and it appears some of them I need to explain better.

I didn't mean that it would be permanently disabled once you went inactive. Just that you couldn't use the post rating system until you have some recent non-rating activity. Think of it in the same vein as the "contribute before you criticise", but more "contribute regularly before you criticise". So say I had been gone for a month, I couldn't just come back and start rating posts, I'd have to do something (e.g. post, buy a game) first.

You could use this argument against any change as they would all require additional person-time on GOGs side to implement them. A system to flag up concerning forum activity for review can be made more accurate over time and raises awareness. The only time this argument is valid is when it is backed with "and it wouldn't be worth it". Besides, as I am demonstrating here, it doesn't have to be GOG that implements the system :)


We have already had downrating wars and it left us all in the dark who the attackers were so they could attack with impunity. Why should I not be accountable for my use of the rating system? However, the spirit of your objection is perfectly valid as downrating wars would become more likely to happen with more drama and some may consider it a privacy issue.

How about this instead? Making it so people can choose whether their downrates are public and only those reduce rep. So those who want to downrate anonymously can do so, but they can't cause any damage doing it. The power to influence rep negatively could come with some accountability.

This was more to tackle the possibility that some people just downrate all a users posts to hide them.

This would be fully automated. As a post got say, 10 ratings, it would check the ratio of up/down ratings and if it was less than something like 1.25, it would remove all ratings and disable further ratings on it (and maybe even mark it in the same manner as the "high/low-rated")

For example, a group of people would be presented with a bunch of random posts and their ratings (but missing things like who wrote the post and their rep) and they "rate the rating" by saying if they think a rating was fair or not. So a post that is low-rated but has its rating voted as unfair, would become neutral.

Participating in this system could be rewarded with rep. And again, it could highlight if someone was being targeted (their ratings are consistently undone via the meta-moderation).

I'm glad that at least some of the ideas stood up to initial examination :)

I like that idea. One still has the possibility to anonymously express the opinion that specific postings suck. But if you want to start a rep war against one person, you have to do so openly. That would really hamper the rep-trolls.


But one more thing about the 'flag the staff' solutions: yes, all options require work to implement them. But the 'flag the staff' options require work-time not only once for implementation, but each time a flag is set off. While that isn't necessary a bad thing, I just think that GOG hasn't got the manpower for that. So I think that the automatic solutions have a better chance of being implemented some time.

Perhaps I shouldn't have specified the GOG staff as the people who see the flags. It could be some selected community members are chosen to inspect the notifications and only pass them on if they (believe they) warrant GOG action.

That way, GOG would only be spending their time looking at them when they really needed to (if they pick good community filters!).

I definitely can't argue with the likelihood of these sorts of systems being implemented being low though :)

Am I logged too? =)

Yeah exactly, none, you made it up, nothing to explain.

I meant, what are you claiming is the precedent that I made up?

The only thing that's evidence of is that apparently you seem to believe that the world goes into stasis when you go to sleep, that the foruns come to a stand still when you close your browser, that people don't read posts, make posts, rate posts, write reviews, etc. when the light under your username reads "offline".
By saying if they think a rating was fair or not ?

I thought we all objected to illegitimate rep manipulation through the use of ALTS, it seems that what you'd be going for with this one would primarily be censoring the legitimate use of the post ratings system.

Why would the judgement of a bunch of people rating the rating superseed the judgement of the bunch of people that rated the post to begin with ? Wouldn't you need a third bunch of people to say if a rating overturn was 'unfair' ? In order to rate the ratings would we be using the Merriam-Webster definition of 'unfair' or the urban dictionary defintion of 'unfair' ?

That's not the answer xyem.

It doesn't?! :P
Seriously, good point. Fair play to Namur.

Well first of, I said that these ideas were "off the cuff" and thus I wasn't suggesting them as the answer, just enumerating possible answers for further discussion as I was requested to do. I'm not advocating any of them specifically, just throwing them out there!

The reason why the judgement of a bunch of people rating the rating could be superior is that it is removed from the context in which it took place. Their bias against specific people would have less effect as they wouldn't be able to easily see who posted it. It's more likely they they are not emotionally involved in any drama surrounding that post.

In other words, it could be better in the same way that double-blind tests are better.

And sure, we could have meta-meta-moderation too :)

I don't expect my rep count to have much fluctuation, but why not, it might still be interesting to look at the progression.

I get it xyem, we're just talking about stuff, it's just that that one sepcific possible answer has too many negative implications, imo. There are problems with the other possible answers you outlined, but i wouldn't summarily discard them as a starting point of a discussion. I would this one.

Instead of a bunch of people that spontaneously cared enoguth about some piece of content to rate it, positively or negatively, you'd have a bunch of people with a task placed before them. That's a court, hardly the best place to go when looking for superior judgement :)

They wouldn't be able to easily see who posted it ? You'd take google offline on 'rate the ratings' day then ? ;)

Expressing bias against specific people through post ratings may not be up to sepc in terms of moral high horsery but the thing is, no single user can shift, up or down, the rep of any other single user through the legitimate rating of posts. If enough people share an outlook in regards to someone to the point their posts get negatively rated on a regular basis, is it still bias or a commonly shared opinion ? How many people saying "asshole" "useless" or "troll" does it take to justify the adjectivation ? 100 ? 500 ? the 10 folks sitting on the meta-modding 'rate the ratings' benches ?

The focus is entirely on " i sometimes don't agree with the ratings some posts get as legitimaltely rated by gog's community" and not on "i want to stop the cheaters who illegitimaley skew people's rep" .

Ah sorry. I interpreted "This isn't the answer Xyem" rather wrongly! Thanks for clarifying.

The thing is.. I actually agree with you here. If people just voted on the content, it would be fine. The issue is that some people don't limit it to the content (for whatever reason) and begin rating people. Rather than rep being an emergent value where it might actually have some value in judging someone's contribution, it can be at the behest of a small group of people. I believe the very reason why you get rep just for posting is because it is massively easier to get downrated than uprated..

The meta-moderation would certainly not provide a superior judgement every time, but I think it has a possibility to smooth things out and thus shouldn't be dismissed offhand.

Okay.. perhaps the wrong wording. "The system wouldn't make it immediately obvious who posted it" :)

According to Google, this topic has only gotten to post 5 which was posted 2 days ago so sufficiently new posts wouldn't show up on Google anyway.

It may simply come down to a difference in opinion on what the post rating system is for. Some believe they can use it to just say "I don't agree with this opinion" whereas others believe it should be used for things like people who post obscene content, attacks on other members.. stuff like that.

The reason why I argue against the "I don't agree with this opinion" usage is precisely because of what I mentioned earlier.. it is far easier to post something a bunch of people don't agree with than it is to make a post people see worthy as upvoting. Having a strong emotional reaction to a posts content elicts more action than just agreeing with it.

I think a primary issue here is our definition of "legitimately rated". I don't have a problem with people downrating things that they take offense to, even if I don't see it as offensive. That is a legitimate use. I do not regard downrating a post just because you don't agree with it or because it was posted by a specific user but contains completely neutral content as legitimate uses.

And I would just like to come back to this part:
You joined in 2008 and have a significant amount of rep. I'm going to hazard a guess that you have made a fair amount of posts on the forums. I'd like to put my finger in the air, do some back-of-a-napkin calculations based on a few guesses and see what I can come up with. Warning: Possibly wildly inaccurate presumptions, guesses and maths ahead.

Days since joining: 2029
Average posts per day: 2
Total posts: 4058
Downrates required for -1 rep: 5
Total rep reduced by downrating all posts: 811
Rep reduction: 20%

That's a significant amount of power for one person acting alone to have on someone's rep, even if I'm only in the ballpark..

I suppose the question is if I suddenly decided I didn't like you and started scouring your post history (bearing in mind that I can find all of your posts..), downrating anything I didn't like (using only my account, no cheeky alts).. would you have a problem with that?

If so, I think we may be on the same team :)
If not, please give me permission to do so as I would really like to know how accurate the above calculations are :)

I have joined gog 1728 days back and there are many days where i don't post at all. Hell, thanks to the monkeys in power here that decided that it was a good idea to start a political crisis on top of everything else we're dealing with i've been almost completely off the boards for the psat 2 weeks in order to do some...investments adjustments ;)

There are also days where i make alot more than 2 posts.

The bulk of my rep comes form the specific forums, from answered question topics.

Wih all of that in mind i really wouldn't know how to go about calculating the average posts per day.

Why would i have a problem? I don't operate under the assumption that everybody in the world loves me or under the assumption that everybody in the world has to love me or under the assumption that we live in a lunatic free world ;)

It is however my understanding that it should take 5 (i'm not sure about if it's 5, but lets' go with it) downvotes/upvotes from five different users on the same post to rate that post, up or down, and accordingly apply the -1 or +1 rep fluctuation to the user in question, that's what i meant by "no single user can shift, up or down, the rep of any other single user through the legitimate rating of posts". That's the reason people need ALTS in order to cheat, no ? Because doing whatever the hell they feel like doing from a single account has no impact on post ratings or rep. Revisit everything i said and please understand that this was my working basis.

If it's not working like that then i don't know, it's possibly a bug, or bad design, in which case finding out how the system IS actually working is a good first step to maybe sort this out, so as of now you have my permission to do what you proposed to do, to go around with your flag account donwrating my posts to see what kind of effect it brings about.

Go crazy with it ;)

You tell me.

When you replied to me about someone making 100 accounts to downrep people you said:

"It is a request for you to explain how it would be a conspiracy theory when we have seen the exact same thing happen before. "

So did you make this precedent up or what?

We've had a couple of people in the past make multiple accounts to increase their influence over the rep system..

Is that what you mean?