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stackoverflow-like site for DC. Would it work? Now free

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JavaJones:
It's still a Slashdot-esque model though. Slashdot's system is more sophisticated in that you can set moderation viewing thresholds, but otherwise it seems basically the same. Betanews now has a system like this too.

- Oshyan

40hz:
@Perry Mowbray -

It's just my personal take on the beast. There's nothing to say I'm right by any stretch. But again, the personal choice to use a piece of technology to screen something you don't want to see is what I consider a dangerous habit to get into. To my way of thinking, it encourages a certain mental laziness.

And once it starts screening things for you (sight unseen) based on votes cast by others you believe you can trust, it starts crossing into the realm of being a tool for groupthink. And it has the capability do just that. In fact, it's listed as a feature:

Posts voted below a given number are hidden. ("Bad posts")

- and -

Members choose to either hide Bad posts, or grey them out, or none and display them normally.


I mean seriously, what's to stop you from just blowing past the comments from people your experience has taught you don't rate more than a skim? The simple fact that GP/BP has a feature to mask them seems to indicate there is a desire on the part of some (many?) people to be spared even that much effort.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. But I don't really think so.  :)

Another problem I see revolves around the effect the "respect" scores can have on new or infrequent contributors. Such a system has a bias which favors established frequent posters. You can't build up your level of "respect" until somebody votes for you. But the people who have the screening feature enabled can't vote for you because they may never see your post to begin with. All it would take is a few trolls self nominated gatekeepers who make a habit of slagging new arrivals or have an axe to grind about a certain viewpoint.

So it has the potential to become a vicious circle that eventually places all the "opinion power" in the hands of a relatively small clique.  Sorta like Orwell's Animal Farm where "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." And that's a big problem.

As JavaJones pointed out, it's basically the Slashdot model.

 8)

Perry Mowbray:
OK point taken, and maybe it's better not to offer it because it'll encourage people not to look, read and think?

Personally though, if I opened a thread of many pages and I didn't have the time to look at each one, I'd like the ability to filter based on what other people thought was the most helpful (and I think it's anyone, the vote doesn't count more because you've been voted for previously). If I wanted to I can always turn the filter off...

But the people who have the screening feature enabled can't vote for you because they may never see your post to begin with.
-40hz (April 19, 2010, 11:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

Actually, my understanding of:
Posts voted below a given number are hidden. ("Bad posts")
--- End quote ---

was that you could specify a bad post as say lower than -5, which means that the sum of voting = -5 ( + 2 - 7). I think it should also read "may be hidden" as it depends on the user.

So if you set a number greater than 0 no posts would display in filtered format!! I'm pretty sure that means that that's not the way it's meant to work... it's only meant to filter posts with a sum of less than a negative number (which means the majority of users voted it down).

I honestly thought this type of mod was aimed at making the long threads easier to read quickly  :-\ But I have never bumped into heavy censorship (except on a national level  ;) )

mouser:
what i think would be a nice compromise would be to not mess with visibility of stuff on the forum when browsing the forum.. but perhaps enhance the search system to use tags and votes and q&a lists to provide a better search facility.

Perry Mowbray:
That would certainly help so that no one could blunder into not seeing posts.

And if it was all able to be searched and/or re-mashed onto other pages: all the better!! In fact: perfect!

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