Enable did you find this post useful for first post of thread also

Originally Posted by unSpawn And since it's untraceable

And that is the crux of the matter, if it was traceable everyone would see who the people are who are abusing it and something positive could be done about it i.e. a stern warning or other measures as determined satisfactory by Jeremy and/or the mod team. However doing this could then cause further "issues" so my gut feeling is turf the thing altogether.

Originally Posted by unSpawn If you read that as a vote for disabling marking posts as unhelpful, it is.

I did see your point well before this little admission, lol.

Let common sense, well mine at least , prevail.

Originally Posted by k3lt01 And that is the crux of the matter, if it was traceable everyone would see who the people are who are abusing it and something positive could be done about it i.e. a stern warning or other measures as determined satisfactory by Jeremy and/or the mod team. However doing this could then cause further "issues" so my gut feeling is turf the thing altogether.

I'm beginning to feel more persuaded to this way of thinking. As far as I can tell, clicking yes adds reputation just like using the scales icon, but provides a default description of the reputation, helpful answer positive rating. But there is no way to subtract reputation using the scales icon. This lack of parity between two interfaces to the same system is, in my opinion, very counter-intuitive.

I can't think of any meaningful reason why users should be allowed to subtract reputation from other users. It just seems to invite the misunderstandings and ill will.

To me it's pretty clear how the system should work, I would also like to say that I agree completely with k3lt01 on this. In my opinion it should simply be like this:

Did you find this post helpful? Yes

If you don't find the post helpful, move along and find another post you do find helpful.

If you actually find the post unhelpful, then actually tell the poster why it's unhelpful. Post a correction or an alternative, in fact do anything but just click on a link that no one will notice or care about.

When the poster is actually trolling/flaming or whatever, he should be picked up on it and reported.

Hi, I find that there is absolutely no reason for a down voting system. In my view, it should be removed. If a post isn't helpful it can be resolved through further discussion. If a post is helpful, adding the vote is a nice way to keep a permanent record of a useful contribution.

Using the downvotes to show how much a person has been helpful (percentage) is just a bit unfair to people who choose to volunteer their time and effort to this community.

(I am posting this after seeing a few more examples of unfair downvoting)

Originally Posted by GazL I guess it depends on what the 'find post helpful' stuff is actually for.

It seems we may not have articulated the exact goals of the system as well as we could have.

Originally Posted by GazL Some folk use it to signal their approval/disapproval of a post (either because they agree/disagree with an opinion expressed or to flag a good/bad answer as such)

The former is very much *not* what the system was intended for.

Originally Posted by GazL Some folk (quite often new to the board) seem to view it as a "This answer solved my problem" button and will click 'no' on perfectly good and valuable replies simply because it wasn't a silver-bullet for their issue: which tends to annoy the people who tried to help them who may tend to view them as ungrateful.

Based on feedback, we have removed the No option until we can ensure it's being used properly.

Originally Posted by GazL The use of the "find post helpful" mechanism is a bit of a mess all round, and at this point I wonder if it is actually serving any purpose at all.

I think it is. If used as intended it is a way to easily surface the best answers. When someone finds a thread via a web search and the best answer is in post #42 of a four page thread, being able to immediately and objectively identify the single post that is most likely to help them is a large increase in the utility that LQ can offer the Open Source community at large.

--jeremy

Originally Posted by vharishankar It does serve a purpose. But maybe the negative answer could be removed, just like there is no option for negative reps.

See http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-later-918407/ for more information on this.

--jeremy

Originally Posted by rknichols My reputation points come almost exclusively from people clicking on that "Find helpful" link. It wasn't until I'd been around here for a while that I even noticed a strange looking icon that displayed "Add to reputation" on a mouse-over. How many newcomers are likely to click on that?

By design new members can't even use the reputation system, so I'd actually view this as a net positive. Being part of and understanding the LQ culture is something that almost certainly results in a better use of the rep system. The Helpful system is much simpler and straight forward, and can be used after having a single post.

--jeremy

Originally Posted by Anisha Kaul On the "first" post, the helpful rating can be used for giving kudos "publicly" to the OP for a nicely formed question.

While well intended, that falls pretty far outside the overall goals of the system.

--jeremy

Originally Posted by caravel I've made my views known on this before - I don't think it serves any useful purpose. I certainly think the "no" option should go at the very least. Yes, I've seen the arguments about flagging up "dangerous" or misleading posts, but the best way to deal with such posts is to hit the report button and/or challenge them and post a correction. The inescapable problem with the "no" option in it's current form is that it's misused - so if I'm a newbie and I'm supposed to infer that an "unhelpful" post is misleading or dangerous, I'm potentially discounting a lot of helpful posts which were marked as unhelpful by some troll or an OP that wanted the "silver bullet" solution.

While "No" has been disabled for now (see this thread), I think the original argument is still valid for a couple reasons. While you can and should "challenge them and post a correction" when you see a dangerous or misleading post, what happens when that post falls on page three and the dangerous post is on page two? Many members and probably the vast majority of people finding the post via a search will miss it.

To address the last issue, if a single member marks a post as "unhelpful" it seems unlikely that many people will discount what's in the post too heavily. However, if 32 members mark a post as unhelpful it's almost certainly a bad post. Taking things a step further, a system which detects when dozens of members who don't normally vote in unison vote "unhelpful" on many posts by a single (especially new) member, then you have a very good system for bringing to the mods attention a member who probably needs to be monitored.

--jeremy

Originally Posted by vharishankar I think that the "No" option can be removed from the post rating thing. After all if a person doesn't find it useful, it can simply be left un-rated. Far less offensive and impersonal.

Also far less empirically useful though.

--jeremy

new stuff for me that i've never used, along with the report feature, haven't paid any attention to it other than noticing its there