Negative voting Discussion thread. Discuss your concerns, voice your opinions here

[Deactivated] on 30/08/2010 - 03:02
Last edited 30/08/2010 - 03:39

As this was being discussed by many members here

http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/30442

and points being raised about the validity of negative voting, here is the opportunity to give your points of view on this issue.

Please just give what your point is, and how it will help the site, read what others have said look at what they are saying and lets hope we can all help increase the understanding on how to make this controversial issue somewhat less so.

To help the discussion, please do some homework on the complex but current position here on Ozbargain on negative voting, as it does differ from other sites. This can be found here.

http://www.ozbargain.com.au/wiki/help:voting_guidelines

This really is important to read, otherwise much of the discussion will just repeat whats there.

AND you are welcome to comment etc on what is there, thats what this forum is about. Here is your chance to have things you dont like changed. But like all swords it will cut both ways so look at the big picture not just one incident.

One point many dont always see, is that mods moderate, we are not gods we are mods.

One tool that is not always used by everyone is the report function. No one but a mod sees these reports, we see the "complaints" about a post that are not always seen in the post as there are sent to us directly. We act upon those complaints. We make a call. If we dont get a complaint we dont always moderate a post. (if you read the guidelines you will see info on how to use the report function)

We dont read every post, we just dont have the time, as such this adds an element of apparent inconsistency.

The guidelines are what we act under. But they are guidelines and as we are mods not gods, we do see things as shades of grey. But it is our intention to try and keep a balance between different needs of our very diverse group of members. One persons bargain is another's spam.

All bargains are based on someone's need to sell us something, so with that bring it all on….

Site Discussion

Comments

  • ccrap on 30/08/2010 - 04:00
    +3

    ozpete, im not sure how we can make it less controversial? In specific reference to the bargain post you have linked, once you take away the crap (eg unsubstantiated allegations) and read between the lines, then from what I can see the guidelines are fine, people just dont like having their votes revoked and equate this to being bossed around when asked to follow the guidelines which govern this site. this cant be helped.

    So as of this moment, my view is the guidelines are fine as they are. This may be revised if some constructive feedback is provided in this thread.

    • tomsco on 30/08/2010 - 08:39

      Agreed. Those people argue that it is a community therefore there votes should stay in the view of community spirit. They fail to acknowledge that communities still need order and have refused to act by the guidelines.

      And when they guidelines do get a mention, they seem to ignore it and go on about the censorship. To me this seems like they have not taken the time to read the guidelines, have no interest in discussing the guidelines and would rather just push their own selfish ways by ignoring the guidelines.

      They refer to the issue as ignoring the liberties of democracy. Australia is a democratic nation, but still has laws that if breached result in punishment. While the laws serve a different purpose to the guidelines, they are both there to ensure order which helps maintain the community.

      To sum up, I think that if they refuse to follow the rules, they don't deserve to be here.

      /rant

  • [Deactivated] on 30/08/2010 - 07:43

    If it ain't broke…

  • Mikinoz on 30/08/2010 - 08:53

    This topic is kinda sounding like a brokem record, the problem being we are using a voting system.

    If we are using a voting system, then it shouldnt be that easy to remove /change votes.

    I think we should change to a like system and remove the power of the neg vote , that way it wont cause a problem.

    • tomsco on 30/08/2010 - 08:56

      That sounds good. We'll still have the report button to report any suspicious activity and the mods can handle it accordingly.

      • Mikinoz on 30/08/2010 - 09:08

        And people might use the button instead of negging and ranting, not that ranting isnt fun :)
        nice idea

      • anthony on 30/08/2010 - 12:30

        That sounds good. We’ll still have the report button to report any suspicious activity and the mods can handle it accordingly.

        A negative vote when made within the guidelines is an instant way to warn other users that a deal might not be legitimate.

        Reporting the deal takes time for it to be removed so means that some people may fall for the scam (if it was a scam deal that was posted)

        • JudasX on 30/08/2010 - 23:22

          I agree with Anthony.

    • anthony on 30/08/2010 - 09:33

      I think we should change to a like system

      How is liking the deal any different to voting it positive?

      • Mikinoz on 30/08/2010 - 09:52

        It seems we need a system which portrays the users feel about a listing,

        Voting fails when the actual votes are changed / removed (necessary under current system)

        Like / Dislike is a better representation of a good deal or bad, more similar to what web users are used to and requires less policing

        Not sure its the difference more the outcome

        • anthony on 30/08/2010 - 11:04

          Voting like/dislike i think is worse the same as the voting we have now for the following reason

          Like or dislike allows you to show your own personal feeling about the deal.

          Voting positive still allows you to show your personal opinion that you like the deal.
          Not voting is almost like disliking the deal.
          Negative voting allows people to point out a flaw in the deal or product on offer (This would not be the case if negative voting was removed in favour of a 'dislike' vote)

          By having a like or dislike you lose the ability to point out a flaw with the deal with a single mouse click.
          Disliking the deal is different to the rules for giving a negative so when people see a deal with a few negative votes it is likely that the deal is of questionable quality.

          I dont think people should really care if other users dislike a deal as that is their own opinion and should not bother other people when they are looking to see if the deal is useful for that individual.

          Look at fluidtek.
          They offer many deals where shipping is not available. To anyone not in the Sydney area they can dislike the deal because there is no shipping so it is not useful to them. This would lead to a high amount of dislike votes making the deal look bad when it is really a good deal to the people who can go down to the store to buy the product.

          Or another example would be stores that dont take paypal.
          People here seem to have a love for using the service so a store who does not accept paypal (for good reason) would end up with a large number of dislike votes even if the deal is good for those who realise that not offering paypal is not a disadvantage.

          • Mikinoz on 30/08/2010 - 12:06

            @anthony: Sorry dont agree with your one sided negative logic

            "Like or dislike allows you to show your own personal feeling about the deal"

            Commenting points does that

            "Negative voting allows people to point out a flaw in the deal or product on offer (This would not be the case if negative voting was removed in favour of a ‘dislike’ vote)"

            Again commenting points this out

            For your 2 examples i think that is fine, why cant people dislike because of the lack of delivery? why cant people dislike because it doesnt do paypal?.

            Maybe the vendor will add it up the likes and dislikes and change the business appropriately

            • anthony on 30/08/2010 - 12:28

              @Mikinoz:

              Sorry dont agree with your one sided negative logic

              You think it is a good idea and i dont.
              Of course my views are going to look negative to your positive views.

              “Negative voting allows people to point out a flaw in the deal or product on offer (This would not be the case if negative voting was removed in favour of a ‘dislike’ vote)”

              Again commenting points this out

              But people are not going to read every single comment before they decide on the deal.

              why cant people dislike because of the lack of delivery? why cant people dislike because it doesnt do paypal?.

              They can but having a button for them to click to show they dont like the deal serves no purpose.

              The fluidtek example, only for people in Sydney. That would them mean a large number of the ozbargain users could dislike the deal and only a small number would like it as the deal is only relevant to those who live near the store. To users looking at the deal they would then see a very large number of dislike votes and think that the deal is bad when it is actually a good deal with only a few people who like it because the deal only applied to them.

              I think that every deal posted here it not relevant to the majority of the ozbargain users. Discounts and so on are only useful if you have a need for the product and it would be stupid to think that every deal posted is relevant to the majority of the users. Using that alone would mean that every deal could have more dislikes than likes making the deal looks bad when it is a good deal for the people it is relevant to.

              Just because i do not like a deal because it is not relevant to me does not mean i should be able to click a button which will make other people think the deal is bad when it may apply to them and be a good deal.

              • Mikinoz on 30/08/2010 - 12:56

                @anthony: And this my friend we can agree on, to disagree :)

                Perhaps you are on to something, this being a national market / website ie fluidtek is not meeting the needs of the viewers ie the community then no wonder it gets dislikes

                ps fluidtek is an example only

  • SydGuy on 30/08/2010 - 14:13
    +2

    I agree that a lot of -ve votes are for stupid reasons which dont fall into the guidlines, and I think that when the mods try to do something about them it is very inconsitant - they seem to pick on post and remove all the stupid -ve votes and leave other posts alone. Yes it is unfair and inconsitant, but I like to think I am smart enough to look at the -ve votes and the reson behind them to see if they are valid and if it is still a good deal for me. It would be a 24/7 job to look at all comments/votes on this site and remove accordingly. At the end of the day, this is a free site for us all (I think people take for granted the info they are getting from this great FREE site!!), and for this minor downfall of inconsistant monitoring of -ve votes, I can think of 1,000 great reasons - please dont ask me to list them :) - to visit this site daily

    • [Deactivated] on 30/08/2010 - 16:06
      +1

      List 100 please

      • ranma on 30/08/2010 - 16:19

        Lol trollers gonna troll. Haha, made me lol though.

    • [Deactivated] on 30/08/2010 - 16:25

      Add to that, is if we dont catch the inappropriate votes early, the impact of negating the votes goes away. So what may seem to be inconsistency is masked by the fact its impact is gone if not caught early, so we dont bother. The horse has bolted

      Most negative votes are made without people understanding how to use it. Unfortunately it takes a mod intervention then some hot words then someone reads the guidelines and Doh gets the point. Education one member at a time is very time consuming.

      However the point of this post is to see if people can think of a better system. Just because its the way we do it. might not be the way of the future. Hell there are 212 MEMBERS on at the time I write this and its only afternoon time… (1336 guests)

      Oh and thanks to everyone for their thoughts so far on this

      • anthony on 30/08/2010 - 17:11
        +2

        Most negative votes are made without people understanding how to use it.

        How about before a user can make a negative vote they need to go to the guidelines page, without doing this they cannot vote negative.
        They would have to do it for the first 5 negative votes they give and after that they can vote negative without the need to go to the guidelines page.
        Every 6-12 months the cycle repeats for that user.

        Or when they click the negative button a message comes up asking if they have read the guidelines where they can click yes or no.

        • ccrap on 30/08/2010 - 20:18

          good points, but i think just a dialog asking to click yes/no if they read the guidelines may not be that effective. the whole idea of requiring members to comment before allowing them to vote negative was to force them to provide reasons before they did so. however instead of valid ones, some users just write things like, i don't like, that looks expensive, what a pointless product etc etc.

          i prefer the forced display of guidelines approach (somewhere between 1-5 times). in terms of implementation, instead of redirect to guidelines, you can also have when a user clicks negative you have one of those floating windows come up where the screen goes grey and a window comes into focus containing all the guidelines. user reads/scrolls, confirms they do actually still want to vote neg, window dissappears and his/her ozbargaining experience continues - hope this makes sense, i'm running away to finish off making dinner.

  • JudasX on 30/08/2010 - 23:29

    What about a positive;negative;dislike system - the latter option having a thumbs-down button?

    or, good deal/bad deal/dislike?

    It might, at the least, help prevent some of the cases of silly use of the negative vote.

    • anthony on 30/08/2010 - 23:48

      But oz bargain is about promoting good deals.

      If the deal is good then you vote it positive.

      If you do not like the deal then you do not vote it positive or negative. Voting to say that you do not like the deal does not help the community.

      If the deal is bad then vote it negative so others know that there are better deals than the one posted.

      As i explained here and above http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/30474#comment-264971

      • JudasX on 31/08/2010 - 02:10

        I think it comes down to how you interpret the best way to pursue the stated goal of: "bringing the best deals and bargains in Australia to consumers." Obviously, if you have a lot of people disliking something, that has informational content - and it may in fact be in the interests of others who are viewing this site, to know about it and be alerted to it. That is, even if the bargain is reasonable and/or not a scam.

        Personally, I'm happy with the current system. But if the mods are having difficulty coping with the amount of silly usage of negative votes, we need to consider some changes..

  • andy19363 on 01/09/2010 - 00:00

    just perusing the voting guidelines…and

    Negative Votes are reserved for listing violations such as duplicate, SPAM, and sockpuppeting.

    I wonder if this should better be recommended as reserved for reporting….
    Duplicates are clearly fairly obvious….however, if a poster gets heavily negged, particularly a first timer, then yes a temporary ban is a good lesson…..but it might also mean a reluctance to post ever again.

    Spam and sockpuppeting are more of a grey area I suspect…..more open to opinion, accusation and subjective voting…..hence reporting might be more effective, then a reasoned decision might be made, rather than 'angry mob' decisions

    my 2c

  • scotty on 01/09/2010 - 22:21
    +2

    Thanks for the comments so far. Yes negative votes for reporting spams/duplicates is no longer applicable as Report would be more appropriate. There are a few other uses of negative votes currently that's built into OzBargain system:

    • Too many negative votes will get a deal delisted. The deal is still accessible, but will not appear in the New Deals list.
    • Too many negative votes will also delist the deal from being indexed by Google, and removed from OzBargain's sitemap.
    • Too many negative votes will temporarily ban the OP and the domain. It's a kind of throttling mechanism, although the effectiveness is questionable.

    Do note that when OzBargain was originally designed, there wasn't moderators so negative votes were used for community self-moderation (all 3 points above are crowd-sourced ways to penalise bad deals and stop spams). Less relevant when we have a great team of moderators now.

    One problem for "Like" system is there will might be more reports that moderators need to respond. I would rather have them enjoying the bargains here than spending time dealing with the issues.

    If there are better options I am happy to look into developing them (when I have time :) So keep the ideas coming.

    • [Deactivated] on 02/09/2010 - 04:19

      Just thinking aloud, can we implement something like - if a member negatively votes down too many deals, that they get a prompt to check the guidelines, and a message that reminds them of the effects of negative voting like your summary above.

      At least then they MAY understand what might be more appropriate

      eg only after 5 negative votes by a member the prompt appears, then every 5 after that….

      As well an increase in the number of negative votes before going off the radar might help given the increase in members here. Likewise maybe a higher number of positive votes needed elevate a deal.

    • pauly on 03/09/2010 - 00:07
      +1

      From my observation, a lot of users are not really familiar with the concept of negative voting used on OzBargain and many users just assume that negative=dislike/too expensive for them, and positive=like/good deal. Like a few others have mentioned, some users do not take the time to read the guidelines and just treat the voting system like those used on most user-driven sites without knowing the consequences it has on the deal/OP/community.

      Just a thought, why not remove the negative voting 'term' and replacing it with something that better describes its purpose, which is essentially to warn others (defective product, non-confirming standard, very bad experience with the store, etc) about the deal? For example, replacing the negative vote with a button that reads 'warn'. The functionalities, requirements, and effects of 'warning' remains the same as negative voting.

      Psychologically, I assume this would reduce the misuse of 'negative' votes. It will also be easier for users to understand the reasoning on why proper justifications are important when they issue a 'warning'. And I also think that the acceptance of 'warnings' being reviewed and removed would be better than revoking negative votes. With negative votes, those that get their votes revoked may take personal offence and see it as their opinions not being respected.

      • andy19363 on 03/09/2010 - 00:31

        great idea…..

      • stumo on 15/09/2010 - 19:21

        Yes, I "like" this.

        We need to ditch +ve and -ve votes, and go with "like", "dislike", and "warn". Where "warn" has exactly the same effect as the current -ve vote.

  • robs12 on 02/09/2010 - 21:54

    Hi OzPete,

    My thoughts…

    Why remove or 'hide' a post because it has a large number of negative votes?
    Agree that reporting spam/dupes/pron etc should be a different option to a positive/negative vote.
    I'm not sure to what extent you have problems with spam, but I would think that the 'report' method is more effective than just delisting posts with lots of negs.
    Not sure that I agree with the idea of banning an OP just because the post gets lots of negs. Maybe only if it is a serial offender?

    I would hope that there are enough 'grown ups' here such that:

    • if people agree that a post is a bargain they vote positive.
    • if people think that a post is not a bargain (for whatever reason, though obviously a comment explaining why should be forthcoming with the neg vote) then they should vote negative.
    • if people think there is a problem with the post (dupe, spam, pron, whatever) then they report it. This means monitoring & action by the moderator (& of course assumes that there is a moderator around & they can take action!). I guess this is 'self moderation' by & on behalf of the users and probably needs more thinking about than the above - how to avoid abuse/spamming of the report function?

    Should it be any more complicated? I have no experience of running a website, so truly interested to hear of other issues that need to be considered.

    My thinking would be that even if the negative vote has been/is being abused, then it will draw traffic to the thread & people can form their own opinion based on what they read. Excessive negs mean the mods should take a look to check out that all is above board.

    Exactly the same applies to 'excessive' positive votes - it is just as easy for someone to manipulate the positives as the negatives, and probably more to gain financially if that is what it is about?

    p.s. My experience yesterday/today would suggest that the guidelines are not clear enough, so it's good to see this thread! (in the short term, how about a prompt about the possible/allowed reasons for a neg vote?).

    Robs

  • em on 04/09/2010 - 22:54

    Have a like/dislike and then maybe a "bad deal" button? People use the negative button for other uses than those listed in the guidelines. Maybe if they felt they could still neg the deal even without the valid reason they wouldn't mind as much?

  • ozf1 on 09/09/2010 - 18:45

    I agree with Rob12, I meant to post pretty much the same thing but havent had the time to.
    Leave the negs without removing the post, then people weigh up what other people think of the deal.
    For example, how many +ive votes does a fast food voucher deserve! … my point is, again -people's opininion (in my opinion unhealthy food outlet vouchers should not be further promoted by giving them 100's of +ive votes, but obviously going by previous posts, a great "majority" of Ozbargainers as such, disagree with me, but the +ive votes remain unquestioned.

    • [Deactivated] on 10/09/2010 - 08:23

      ozf1 and Rob12

      All good points, but the intent with negative votes wasnt to reflect a deals popularity, that is the positive vote total. No vote is meant to reflect your disinterest.

      A few months back there was a game being played to see what deal got the highest negative votes. Cute but very counterproductive.

      We also kill spam etc ourselves so many deals that people could vote negative on are gone. Only the mods see the deals killed, so it sometimes appears that this site just allows all positives and no negatives. (at time of posting this 11 deals had been killed in 24 hours)

      Negative votes were designed to be a way we could kill spam and really bad deals quickly before the mods could get to it. (we are volunteers and cant be here all the time, and sometimes we are all here at the same time). There is the report button which has been introduced.

      Now some just neg a deal as its something they dont like eg iphone ps3 xbox etc. Or they see too many deals of the same ilk. Its not a bad deal its just not for that person. eg orf1 comment to unhealthy meals, which I personally agree with.

      With the reports we get, many others complain about negative votes incorrectly given, again others here dont see the other side where complaints are made about deals being "deleted" from view because of incorrect voting.

      Likewise reports give us clues as to spam and sockpuppeting. Many of you can see when reading comments etc that something doesnt seem kosher. Eg one I just killed today (BTW with votes from many long time users), was a chinese based spam with an undeclared rep based on a report from a member)

      With the increasing success of ozbargain, check how many deals are in top google ranking even without votes, this probably means we need to allow people filter what they see. In my personal case - especially the bought coupon type deals.

      All that said, we do need to change as we grow. Some of the suggestions above will take a lot of recoding of the site. Scotty will be doing this when he can get some time, so the points you and others make will be considered and hopefully some will be included, it would make the mods happier than having to always police these negative votes to ensure that deals arent disappearing from those who may like them.

      Not all suggestions will work, but we need to points to be made, so please dont take the explanations above as saying NO, the contibutions, and our responses will help us all get better ideas.

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