anything to help get rid of the stupid *****PRIMO!***** in posts

Oh dear, One of my posts was used as an example of a troublesome, childish commenter. A comment that I thought was a fair observation. (Other than my typo, “Jad” that was meant to be Jag)
This leads me to my point: In regards to this new automated system of deleting comments. If others disagree with your comment it will be deleted even though it is not offensive or deliberately trying to cause an argument.

I am not saying that people who intend to be offensive and deliberately try to cause an argument, shouldn’t have their comments deleted. Because they should, because this ruins things for everyone else.

I am just saying, that this could be detrimental to the site. If you don’t agree with the consensus of the larger group, you post is thus deemed to be unacceptable and is deleted. The freedom to your own opinion is therefore taken away.

Bavarian Missile™ ^^^^ says “We need moderators on this site watching it constantly not a vote system,its a band-aide for a problem Ive been watching on this site for over 2 years.”

I agree, BM said what I was trying to say just much more eloquently.

The dynamic IP thing is definite drawback Knowing, however I think the positives far outweigh it. ^_^

I thought that the thumbs up/down was a way of agreeing or disagreeing with a comment NOT a way of reporting spam?

Just because i disagree with someones comment it doesnt mean that i want it deleted of the site..

Oh well, you’re the boss!

Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) is one of my favourite sites and seems to have the best comment/moderation system I have seen anywhere. Comments can be mod’ed by members as Insightful, Informative, Funny, Troll, etc. And for general viewing you typically see in full only the higher rated comments. Other comments are headers only, but can be expanded.
Any member can post a comment, but you only get mod points (and the ability to rate someone else’s comment) after you acquire mod-points. This comes by posting good comments of your own.

I’m a regular reader of CarAdvice (several times a day) but I seldom post as I can be frustrated by the sea of dumb comments and/or personal wars that follow some articles. And I have to admit, I’ve been both guilty and a victim of this.

On the other hand, even with its occasional flame wars or dumb comments CA is one of the best car sites anywhere and many of the comments following *are* insightful, informative and/or funny.

I think a voting/moderation system is a good idea but the current system hasn’t really helped.
I’ll look forward seeing how this progresses.

Cheers

Kudos to you guys for trying to raise the standard of comments, however there’s a fine line to be tread here. Who deems what is appropriate or inappropriate and measuring by what standards? The examples you gave above did not strike me as inappropriate at all; granted they’re not overly informative, but neither are they inflammatory or insulting. Perhaps you should clarify whether those are examples of what you are trying to stamp out.

“Currently only 0.018% of our readers ever comment! Most scared away by negative comments.”

Do you mean negative towards other posters or negative in general? If a comment merely needs to be “negative” in any way to be targeted by the censors, then your percentage of commenting readers will drop much lower than 0.018% as participants run from the thought police.

Better to teach with the carrot than with the stick. Maybe think of more ways to reward informative, insightful, or gracious posts than to punish undesirable ones.

My $0.02

I can’t help thinking that most of these problems could be stamped out by having “Registered users” and “Guests”.

C’mon CA where is the REGISTRATION option that we have been asking for for years??

Well, something needed to be done, and I think so far, so good. Agree that a lot of Thumbs Down ratings will be based on personalities rather than comments, but every system will have some down-side. Kudos for being innovative and let’s see if it works. I have already noticed a downturn in the silly slanging matches, which is cool.

I have often been caught up in silly slanging matches myself – admittedly, some of my own doing, but sometimes you can cop an absolute bollocking just for posting a personal opinion that someone doesn’t agree with. The biggest problem is when you dare to comment that you’re not a particular fan of a certain car, then someone who owns, or worse still, has just bought that car, sees your comment. Woo hoo, stand back and watch the fur fly – they take it so personally.

I still shake my head at the amount of time some people spend on here involved in silly, petty brand wars. I’ve seen some arguments go on all night, and into the next day, arguing the same stuff again and again. I just can’t believe that people would choose to sit behind a PC all day and night arguing over the merits of one make of car compared to another. Each to their own I guess, but what are they gaining? Most of the time they have never met, or are likely to meet the person they are arguing with, it just doesn’t make sense.

its a good step in the right direction to clean up the site from the flaming, language, holden/ford battles, toyota haters or differing opinions to writers……

Im sure CA is hoping it will present a cleaner faced site for prospective advertisers in their aim to commercialse the site, which is good in that we should get more conent

still a great site though

But I don’t see how giving a “registered user” tag to those that want it, so that they can protect a unique identity from being plagerised, would have any negative impact on the casual/once off poster.
There are sites out there that have registered and unregistered users.

WHAT! CarAdvice…forshame!
You have taken the fun out of the comments section… now it will be like a discussion with a bucket of paint.. WHITE paint.
Mr & Mrs Prude-Bland will be happy with this outcome however.

Articles should have the thumbs up and thumbs down feature. Then articles with an excessive number of thumbs downs can be hidden

i believe its a good system. power to the people.

“Currently only 0.018% of our readers ever comment!”.

Alborz, I’m curious to know how that figure was calculated.
There are some articles I will check back on several times as more comments are added. Does each page reload by me count as a view?
Also where I work has several thousand employees, so there is a potentially large, unknown number of people who access CA via the one IP address of the gateway here. Are you able to count them individually? Do other staff here commenting make it look like I’m posting under several different names?

Anyway, for what it’s worth, I think a registration system is a good idea, with registered users and anonymous users being able to post comments, but only registered users able to vote comments up or down.
A “Report” button would also be handy. That way a comment that is spam, offensive or really really dumb can be flagged so a site admin can delete it and/or remind the poster about the Code of Conduct.

ChineseDriver, I believe that the post was made in “good faith”. However it is clear that many votes are not. Thanks for confirming how YOU vote (for the person not the comment).

It was a test, Driver, to show that a name change makes a difference in votes.

In case you dont know what it was about ,I went on as Gudgeon Pin and so far have 9 thumbs up and 1 thumb down ,then I went on as Bavarian Missile to say just that and got the thumbs down .

The test showed we were right, in that people are voting people down not comments . Then again if your post is on topic and has substance and not offensive all the thumbs down in the world wont get it deleted.

The more I think about it, the less I like the idea of posts being hidden simply because people disagree or dislike the poster.
There have been plenty of opinions posted I disagree with, but they have generated follow up comments that I did agree with or found interesting.

CarAdvice would be a much less interesting website without passionate people defending what they believe.

I quite like the voting system but believe it is too open to corruption. The problem is that one could theoretically open an internet explorer window, a firefox window and a google chrome window, thereby tripling their positive/negative voting ability. Then it they have computers at both work and home, they can do it all again.

Democracy falls apart without the proper controls.

Quote ” Negative votes based on who made them is I guess thats what happens when people lose respect for someone based on their previous moronic posts”

Or it could be they are male and dont like being beaten on automotive knowledge by a female

Well I doubt its based on anyones gender, I know it makes no difference when I vote and to be honest I wouldn`t know who is a guy on here and who is a girl and I don`t care. My votes cast are based on whether I think its a worthwhile contribution to the topic.

Just out of interest Charles how would you rate this comment?

charles Says:
June 4th, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Gee imagine if they banned Chinese crap where will you Holden boys get your beloved Commodores from lo

I understand your thoughts now ,as you have just said

quote ”
Negative votes based on who made them is I guess thats what happens when people lose respect for someone based on their previous moronic posts.”

Couldnt agree more

Well where would they get the crap from? I think they are crap and thats my opinion.

I frankly you guys have to many staff and to much spare time at C/A…..

Get out and test more cars and products that will keep you busy, we will look after the joint while your gone!!

Rubbish posts should be deleted as per your C.O.C and any that are marked down should be modified and reposted, as long as it meets the C.O.C. it should stay, 9 neg votes is not a reason to remove it as long as its in the C.O.C mantra.

BUT like all the others, i believe the mark down is because of WHO is posting it and not actually WHAT is being said.

I am so GLAD all you guys love me!

I still want a test between Falcon and Commodore gloveboxs!

Cheers

F-0

Philip:

Try it, it won’t work.

The rating system only allows one rating per user, per IP address.

It doesn’t matter how many windows you open, you can only rate the comment once.

Alborz – why not have the “karma” system, but make the results hidden to everyone but the moderation team, thus eliminating those who just go instant thumbs down to anyone who says something positive about Holden or Ford for example… that way the system might be more effective without having people getting offended by their comments being given thumbs down for no good reason.

I’m a little confused, I see someones comment near the top of an article, then lower down(Frugal-one), one has up/down thumbs and the other doesn’t! Then I see another comment(Bav Miss) that doensn’t have any thumbs at all. Have I missed something here?
This system obviously still needs some bugs take care of, but I think I’m slowly getting the hang of it.
It has been a while since I last commented simply because of the same reasons listed above – too many antagonists – and while I sometimes poked fun in someone’s direction, it was only in jest and the sane ones here knew how to take it, other’s though…….well, enough said!

Maybe BM and wheelnut should start using another alias, Patrick?

One comment per person would fix all the problems.

Lets all vote Bavarian Missile’s comments down so they get removed straight away!

Nothing against you BM, I just think it would be a laugh. It seems to upset you.

Call me cruel

(I don’t expect this post to last long!)

Doug is another that hasnt read or understood the new system.

Your theory will fail as long as BM continues to post comment on topic non abusive and not inciting arguments the post remains.

Perhaps CA should IQ test people on this site before they can post. Nothing against you Doug

No wrong Doug !

As I said read !

Quote ” alborz Says:
July 1st, 2009 at 12:44 pm

You can use the Thumbs up and Down to agree or disagree with comments based on what they say (not because they break the conduct) – however by simple law of logic, if a comment is informative, the agreement disagreement will even out, and no more than 10 people will disagree compared to those who have agreed. ”

You will see some of BMs posts remain without the voting system ,now you know why!

Perhaps you need to read the COC, inciting an argument is in there!

Sorry PC but I still don’t think you understand the meaning of my original post:

I stated “Lets ALL vote Bavarian Missile’s comments down so they get removed straight away!”
Hypothesize with me:
If all readers did vote an individual’s comments/posts down, wouldn’t this mean that the posts would automatically be hidden as soon as there were more than nine ‘Thumbs Downs’?
This is how I interpret the sentence “If enough negative votes are collected (9 more than positive votes), the poster’s comment will automatically be buried”

The quote you posted indicates that over time most post should have an even number of negative and positive votes.
This is true, I already understand that posts will remain if feedback is more or less even. I hadn’t stated otherwise – However this is not the case in the scenario that I suggested – where all voters give negative votes.

‘Inciting an argument’ is a strong phrase in this case. I’d call this a discussion – but I guess that’s up to the moderators. I’m simply clarifying the new ‘vote’ system – does this not add to the discussion?

There must be something in the code of conduct against insulting poster’s intelligence, or discriminating against people with low IQs. Everyone should have an opportunity to post.
Unless of course your comments are also tounge-in-cheek!
And no I still haven’t read the code of conduct. I’m at work and will check it later if I’m still interested.

I think you need to rename the “Vote” prompt for this functionality. I believe people are using it as an “Agree/Disagree” system, not realising it is actually a vetting tool.

The prompt for casting a vote should be more relevant.
- Okay?
- Relevant?
- On topic?

At present I think people are using the tool, incorrectly, to rate whether they like the content or not. Disagreeing with someone’s opinion is different from voting them off the island… Clarify the interface folks.

Two weeks in and it’s now gone altogether. Is this permanent or temporary for tweaking?

Personally, I haven’t found much difference in the quality of posts – too much abusive off-topic garbage gets left on.