Special User Sections > What's the Best?

Voting & Ranking Programs in the Best Of section

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mouser:
i am very wary of numerical votes for rating programs - i think they invite abuse and manipulation by authors registering in order to inflate their votes.  i think its much preferable that instead of having polls people just post their thoughts about which program is best on that thread and why.

LuckMan212:
mouser, I see your point but aside from ranking the programs, how could we really determine which were the top apps?  To have detailed reviews of every single program in every single category would be a monumental task (there are already 53 categories, each would contain 4-8 programs so we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of programs).  Certain measures could be put in place to minimize fraud such as:

* require XX number of posts before being allowed to vote
* ban users who register multiple accounts from the same IP
* require the user to post at least a few words about why they are voting that way (something more substantial than "it's great!")
In the end, the "worst case scenario" is that someone downloads and tries a program here based on its rating, and decides that they don't like it after all.  They can uninstall the program and come back here and post their reasons for doing so, which would benefit everyone.

edit: I was thinking of making a new sticky called "Guidlines for Posting in this Section" which would outline the basic format that we are looking for. Something like:
Guidlines for Posting in the "What's the Best" Section

Here's how to make a new suggestion for a program or vote for your favorite) ... blah blah blah ... this is only an example, any and all comments are welcome so please don't hesitate to post your opinions!

JoeUser:
 My favorite Clock Program is ZanyClock 1.1!
 ZanyClock is great because it shows you the time in up to 4 time zones, only uses 1.5k of memory, and runs on Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, and XP!
 I think it's better than BoringClock 4.0 because BoringClock takes up your whole screen and crashed on me when I tried setting the time.
 The ZanyClock website is:  http://www.zanyclock.com
 The program is FREEWARE.
 Here's a screenshot:
 Voting & Ranking Programs in the Best Of section

--- End quote ---

P.S.-I think further discussion of the voting should be moved to its own thread as it is not really specific to this AntiVirus thread.

mouser:
mouser, I see your point but aside from ranking the programs, how could we really determine which were the top apps?
--- End quote ---

i think you answered this question yourself sort of.

i see the job of this section not as choosing the best app.
the job of this section is to let people express themselves as to what app is best at a certain task and why, and debate it.
with the first post in the thread summarizing the collective views, with relevant pointers
(pointers to other posts on dc, and pointers to things like betanews comments as brotherS suggestsion, or maybe other reviews of such programs).

so in summary, there is no need to decide which programs are best - just let people express themselves in posts to the thread, and every once and a while when something relevant is said that is worth adding to the top post (a url or an important observation, or a new program that multiple people like), then the mod adds it to the top.

what do you think?

[ps. jgpaiva and luckman you now should have the mod powers to split and merge posts and rename them, etc.]

LuckMan212:
with the first post in the thread summarizing the collective views-mouser (February 27, 2006, 04:19 PM)
--- End quote ---
ok but if 3 people love a program and 3 people hate it, then what is the "collective view" - is it positive or negative?  I also am not sure I see the merit in having a best-of section that lists programs rated poorly in general by just about everyone (e.g. Norton).  I am fine with everyone just posting their mini-reviews and opinions in fact that is fantastic, but if we just blindly list every single app in a category, then all we have done is to really recreate sites such as Download.com or SnapFiles, etc.  I guess I had a slightly different idea that this would be a place for people to come and quickly separate the wheat from the chaff and be presented only 2 or 3 apps for their purpose, then maybe they could download all of them and reach their own conclusion, without having to for example download 10 sticky note programs only to find out that 7 of them are rubbish.

mouser:
luckman your points are valid..
and i think you are right to a large extent; the point should not be to collect every program ever made.

what about this:
people should post their choice of favorite tool on the thread, whatever that is. ie people can say what they think is best and why.

the first post, continually updated by the mods, is to serve as some guidance; if there are a couple that are clearly favored by most people, it would probably list those.  if there are discussions about the topic or programs on other threads on dc, it should link to those.

but it's in the mods discretion to decide what goes in that first summary post.  the intention being that everyone can join in the discussion and when the mods see a point or a trend or url worth highlighting they would add it in first post.

so basically the first post is the must-read post.

other follow ups are like commentary people can read for dissenting views or elaborations, and also those posts are suggestions to the mods for stuff to add.  but it's the first post that is the important one that will save people time when they are looking for the best.

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