If this was anything but a matter concerned with Linux, i'd have scoffed the *eck out of what would seem like an obsession with reputation, and the narcissism that goes with it. But in this case i won't, you beautiful, wonderful eggheads, you are the people who get the wheels turning, i rely on you all the time to sort out my mess, without you i'd be rudderless..reputation does matter here, you're darn right, philistines (myself included) without a prescribed level of proficiency should not be allowed to use the "unhelpful" button, whatever that is.

FWIW, if we do decide on the "re-enable NO, but with a mandatory reason popup" option, I will start a new thread soliciting feedback on what those options should be.

--jeremy

2 members found this post helpful.

anomie, alan_ri: Cool down, please. I -- and I suspect a lot of members here -- agree with both of you. Partially.

1. The reputation system is a big part of why I'm here.
   Not because I need "points", but because I want to feel useful. The reputation bar, and especially the respective comments in the UserCP are a simple indicator of that. Whenever I get an encouraging comment, I feel my efforts in being useful are not wasted.
2. Two of my posts have been marked "unhelpful", and I don't know why. It irks me.
   While I would like to be able to object to certain posts, I'm beginning to see that it should be disconnected from the reputation system altogether. As a member, I do not need the capability to "punish" or even slight another member: if there is a problem, let the moderators handle it.
3. When trying to get a qualitative picture of the posts made by a certain member, to help me evaluate my attitude towards said member, I do not rely on the reputation points.
   Doing that would be like popularity games in highschool. Social games, I hate them.
   Anomie, am I right in assuming that playing popularity games is a large part of your objection to the reputation system?

Considering all the points made by other members, and concerns raised by Jeremy, I would like to rescind my earlier suggestions in this thread. I don't think any of them work. Positive reputation works (for me, of course), and should stay as it is right now. Neutral and negative reputation seems to just lead to misuse, accidental or otherwise.

What we need is a way to object to certain posts, as opposed to affecting the posters reputation. It would be like interrupting a discussion, and therefore considered extremely rude to do so. (Note that all readers participate in the thread in a way; these interruptions are mostly for the benefit of readers, not the original discussers.) Misuse should be strictly dealt with by moderators; at least infractions, perhaps even bans.

I wondered if an objection could work like a reply, but with a link from the original message to the post. That would not work well, because attention-seekers will use it, no matter what the consequences, to highlight and point to their own posts. So linking is out.

One possibility would be to make the objections very easy to miss, as unoffensive as possible, unless you know what to look at the post. For example, each objection could show up as a simple ! at the lower left corner of the post, with the tooltip naming both the user, and the reason (selected from a predefined list). This would not be related to the reputation system, and misuse should be strictly dealt with by the moderators.

One could only make an objection when replying to the post. The selected reason would be shown e.g. in the post title also. Objecting should require extra effort, adding at least a couple of more clicks to replying to a post. We do not want this used a lot.

Do we need this kind of mechanism at all? If we do, why? Well, in my experience, it is better in some cases to interrupt the discussion than to allow known bad advice to spread. It is, and should be, socially awkward, so that there is a high threshold; interrupting a discussion for a minor point should not be considered acceptable.

When such an interruption is beneficial to the discussion, none of the participants feel slighted. (That is the bar at where the importance of the new information is set: it must be important enough to override the social cost of the interruption. "That's just silly!" is not useful enough to warrant an interruption, but "Excuse me, but that would set your pants on fire" is. In my opinion.)

It should not be useful as "a punishment". Consider, for example, listening to a conversation, but suddenly laughing aloud. It does not contribute to the discussion. Therefore, the mechanism, if ever implemented, must be polite, and perceived as polite interruption, not as a personal slight.

1 members found this post helpful.

You have, out of your innate politeness, conscientiously ignored me (i did interrupt and chuckle a bit, i admit), but you missed the pragmatic suggestion that i made..users without a prescribed level of helpfulness could not be allowed to comment on the same.

You as a member do nat have the possibility to punish other members, only moderators and Jeremy can do that. If a member posts something that deserves a click on "No" he already has punished himself with posting something like that.
While obvious trolls won't care if you downvote their posts, it might help to make at least some members more careful about what they post. That alone is one reason why I consider downvoting to be helpful and would like to see it enabled again.

The question that remains for me unanswered now is: How can we make sure that the system is not abused?
Things that come to my mind are enabling downvoting only for senior members (150 posts limit) and displaying a popup that explains what the intention of the system is and how it should not be used when the member downvotes a post for the first time, may be with a "I agree" checkbox.
This will of course not prevent abuse at whole, but may help to reduce it and gives the moderators a better stand when they recognize abuse of the system.
I also would appreciate an "Are you sure you want to mark this post unhelpful?" popup to prevent accidental downvotes.

If I Report a post with obviously malicious or destructive content, then I hope a moderator will step in and moderate. Mods are free to ignore/warn/ban me if they disagree, but understand that I don't use that button without some consideration.

I meant comments which would, theoretically, be required to accompany a no/unhelpful/down vote and be made publicly viewable. By "public" I mean viewable by anyone other than the voter himself and LQ staff. As to whether the aforementioned system could be bad ... well ... predicting human behavior is a science I've never mastered. I don't think arguing these semantics is very productive though, because it appears that Jeremy and/or the LQ staff isn't/aren't interested in making the votes and/or comments public.

I'll be watching for it. If that's what we end up with, then let's try to make it work as well as possible.

It isn't why I'm here, but I have to admit that it is very gratifying to have that positive reinforcement when I've actally managed to be helpful.

It really is irksome. I am not without downvotes.

Undeniably.

Do we need ability to vote down posts which we find unhelpful? I don't think I need it. I'd rather rebut them in-thread and be judged by the merit of my argument. I've been wrong/misguided/lazy in my responses to help requests in the past, and would prefer to be corrected one way or another. Learning from more experienced members is really why I'm here.

If you are just wrong or misguided I see no point in downvoting, I would always come in and state that you are wrong (and why) if I recognize that you actually are. I also expect that behavior from other members if I am wrong.
But that counts not to the lazy part. If you are to lazy to give a reasonable answer, why answer at all? And how should anyone correct your laziness?

I remember something like this in a thread:
- OP: I installed application XXX on Ubuntu 10.04, but when I try to start it I get error message YYY. How can I fix that?

- Answer: Use Fedora.

That is (for me) a perfect candidate for a downvote, it is neither helpful, nor do I see a reason to explain why I downvoted a such obvious unhelpful answer. A newbie coming from a websearch will see the unhelpful marking and (I hope so) don't think that he really has to change the distribution. That is different if the answer would have been : "You have to install that on Fedora, it is not compatible with Ubuntu" but still wrong. If I know better I will step in and explain that it is wrong and why, because the member tried to be helpful with his answer.

I do feel the current voting system equates to a "popularity system". Others disagree. I submit a long line of green dots by one's moniker (i.e. a badge of honor?), along with member signatures encouraging upvotes, as evidence.

Simply put, I am here to try to help out folks in areas that I have expertise (or at least a competent level of experience). Receiving a downvote, rather than a reasonable counter-argument, creates a real disincentive to do that -- at least in my mind.

To each his/her own. I've rambled enough.

I can see I need to define another word to communicate my meaning clearly. By "lazy" I meant that I have, skimmed a help request and provided an answer which missed the target, or failed to do enough research to provide a complete answer. If your response is, "Why answer at all?", then I'd have to say, "Well, duh!"

Oh, and by, "Well, duh!", I mean that there have been instances where it probably would have been better had I not even tried to help.

You make a strong case, but were it me I'd still feel inclined to respond in-thread.

I think that would be a reasonable solution. I'd even go further and enable it only for 1000+ posts members. I'd think that a person who has spent enough time here on LQ (1000 posts) would be sensible in downvoting posts.

In the past my college Instructors and Professors aided me with resources to get answers-
I've said that because students can find other ways besides coming to our Linux Questions and asking us to help them with their HW....I'll help anyone once but if it continues I can see where it can/could become an issue to our group/forum.
Wishing Everyone a Safe and Happy Holiday!

I agree. (In my case, the positive feedback I've received has just been worth the downsides.)

I would gladly exchange all my reputation points, if I could just find out exactly why my two posts (this and this) were marked unhelpful (the only two out of 385). I don't need to know who, just why. I'm not interested in hindsight, impartial analysis, guesses, or opinions: only in the original reasoning behind the choice.

(Although, if I'm honest, if I were to find out the reasons, and I'd find them lacking, I would be very likely to either disable the reputation system, or move to some other discussion board altogether. As they stand now, there is still a possibility there is a logical reason I just haven't thought of. If it were to turn out that the flags are themselves not fair according to the forum rules, they would be too offensive to me for me to let them stand.)

I will say this, as seems germane to some of the comments some persons have made.

When I get a reputation point, it makes me feel good that I was able to help someone. It helps motivate me to keep coming back and keep trying to help.

I think that, all and all, even in its current manifestation with all the faults being aired in this thread, the system is more positive than no system at all.

1 members found this post helpful.

That may happen many times. It is possible for me to think that you were talking nonsense (because I couldn't understand what you were talking about) and thus downvote your post, but later on if/when the matters get clarified I should be able to remove my downvote (If I wish to).

I am not referring to the accidental downvotes here, but the intentional ones.

Some months ago, I made a thread to ask for this feature. It's here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...e-made-886921/