Either the rating system goes, or I will
I know exactly what you might think: why should we care if a random guy quits this forum?
Why should we remove the voting system because of that?
Well, of course you don't have to give a shit. But it if was my project, I would like to know if a member leaves and why.
I just can't stand this any longer. This shitty system just brings my piss to a boil. It mocks everything trisquel is supposed to stand for, it puts the hole project to shame. Maybe you think that I'm exaggerating, but that's how I feel.
So seriously, either this thing has to or I will.
Just for the record: in my hometown I'm known as a very vocal advocat for gnu and the free software philosophy. I told countless people about why software freedom matters, I helped them with their transitions and now that I learned programming, I even start to actively develop free software.
I think that i should be the type of person attracted to the trisquel projects. If I'm repelled to an extent that I want to quit - maybe you can say "just one guy" but I rather advise to think about it. I really think that it's NOT just me who has those feelings.
Somebody might say: "then just leave". Well, this thread is not meant to be some kind of show, I rather want to give feedback to the project in the hope that my leaving can somehow be avoided.
Why does it bother you so much?
I agree that the rating system is not really necessary and a little silly. There was also that thread a few months ago (which I won't link to because it should stay dead) in which someone intentionally abused the system with multiple down-votes from the same IP address to hide certain comments. If this happened frequently I would agree that the voting system should go, but I have only seen it happen once and a moderator addressed it promptly.
A post is only hidden if multiple people down-vote it, so apart from situations like the one I alluded to it is unlikely that a comment will be hidden without good reason. All of the comments I can remember being "hidden" (displaying them is optional with JS enabled, and they are always displayed with JS disable) have violated the community guidelines. Even if a post does get hidden without good cause, others can quickly cancel out the down-votes with up-votes.
The alternatives would be (1) have moderators delete the posts or (2) change the community guidelines. I think that indicating that a post is inappropriate without censoring it is a better solution.
The voting was initially for "spotting trolls" but many seem to abuse of that, ie down voting someone who express's his opinion or critisism, and in the case of Quantumgravity who has been part of the Trisquel Forum fo a while can feel upset by the recent "unjustified" down votes he had on previous posts.
Seeing there is no moderators, i would recommend a certain level of "retenue" , and prefer people debate their different opinion, rather than cklck on "i like" or "i don't like".
By the way i got downvoted for posting the Blag Kickstart files...so after all, in life one isn't suppose to be in everyones good books after all ;-) whatever mysterious reason or not.
click clik clckclc click...
There is more important things in life too.
Best is to laught about it !
name at domain wrote:
> I agree that the rating system is not really necessary and a little
> silly.
Any ratings system or means of hiding/highlighting posts that affect other
people's reading by default is censorship, which is far worse than a little
silly. It doesn't matter if the ratings come from users, admins, or via
some subset of users (elites).
The ratings ought to be objectionable on that ground alone. Leave it up to
individual users to pick a means of reading the posts that let them decide
how to score such that only they'll see the effect of those scores and only
they know what their scoring regime is. Then the rating system stops being
censorship and becomes user's preferences.
But that's never what single-point-of-censorship admins want. They want
control over the users and they want to spy on the filters used (which is
why they want to implement the filtering server-side). Hence admins set up
web forums, mailing lists, and other chokepoints instead of netnews groups
copied across many independent servers (currently the discussion technology
that most respects our freedom of speech).
I suggest looking into what it would take to either move the discussion
forum to a widely-carried Usenet group or establishing such a group.
You could always use one of the federated !groups for Trisquel on GNU Social instead. Hopefully by the end of the year all the fediverse apps will be federating with ActivityPub, and the !groups will work for users on all the apps, not just GS:
https://social.aqeeliz.com/group/52/id
But seriously dude, there's no conspiracy here. It's only censorship when a) the government is doing it and you can't go somewhere public and say what you want, and b) it's an elite of censors not a community consensus, and c) there's no easy way (like clicking a link) to access the censored speech. The Trisquel forum voting system meets none of those criteria.
Anyone who wants to browse the forum unmoderated can just use it with JS turned off and no comments are hidden. Try it for a few weeks, and you might find there are a lot of comments you actually prefer not to see, and turn it back on.
Ha, I was just going through the troll lounge and realized that your comment that got down-voted was in response to mine. My comment above probably seemed really passive-aggressive. I honestly hadn't seen your comment yet.
Your comment was constructive and should not have been down-voted. I still support that particular thread getting moved to the troll lounge because it contributed nothing valuable and the OP was fraudulently posing as a Trisquel developer, but there have been other "where is Trisquel 8" threads that have resulted in some meaningful discussion and I agree that they should not be censored. I now understand why you are angry.
EDIT: Yeah, rereading that comment you were respectfully disagreeing with me and I think you were right on most points. I hope you don't leave the community over this.
You're right that my reply to you got downvoted, and it's also true that this stirred up my emotions a little.
However, this system is bothering me for long.
Heck, even this topic got downvoted after somebody upvoted it again.
I don't share your experience with this system: from what I've seen over the last months, abuse of it was the standard, not the exception.
The thread you are referring to (I also don't want to ressurrect it...) was only the worst of them all.
You're also correct that this has nothing to do with "freedom of speech" in the very sense of the word (stating opinions without gouvernmental prosecution) but in a broader sense, it has.
Shouldn't this community be the most tolerant and freedom-loving of them all?
One downvote already shows disrespect for no good reason, three downvotes (only three...) are sufficient to hide posts. This is terrible.
What's wrong with a moderator taking action when things get out of hand?
They even do, every now and then.
And if somebody doesnt like an opinion, then he can _reply_. That's right, not pressing a button, not hiding the post or marking it red, just replying with a valid reason and some constructive points.
Wouldn't that be a way better alternative to the current system, which is so vulnerable for abuse?
Wouldn't that be suitable for an open minded community?
> I don't share your experience with this system
It's likely that my experience is incomplete. I only recently realized that it only takes a couple of downvotes to hide comments. In fact, for a while I was confused when people talked about comments being hidden because I've never had javascript enabled while using the site. So I haven't been paying attention to the issue for as long as you have.
Maybe something like this would be better than up/down-votes.
(1) Replace the +/- with "flag as inappropriate"
(2) If you click "flag as inappropriate" the community guidelines are displayed and you are asked to mark which ones have been broken.
(3) If you mark at least one and press submit, the comment will become hidden by default but optionally displayable.
(4) "flag as inappropriate" is then replaced with "not inappropriate" or something similar.
(5) If you click "not inappropriate" you are shown whichever community guidelines were allegedly broken and asked to confirm that they were not broken.
(6)If a certain number of people (2-3?) who aren't the author of the comment do this, then the comment will be fully displayed again and no-one can re-flag it.
(7) If someone's flags are reversed a certain number of times, they are suspended from being able to flag comments. They should be warned about this before pressing submit.
I agree that this would be way better. Hopefully it becomes reality.
This. Or removing the system. Both seem to be good ideas.
I am a translator!
Duuuuude.. I mean, duddddddddde.. why leaving because of this crap, it's crap but that does not excuse you, you are not excused, so you can't leave.
Sorry but I can't stand this hypocracy any longer. On top of the lacking communication from the project developers, the whole distro becomes less and less attractive to me.
I mean heck, most of the users of this forum don't even use trisquel but some other distro.
And then even the forum as a place for free and open discussions gets ruined by this shitty feature.
You can understand that, right? I mean, you hate the voting system too?
> the forum as a place for free and open discussions gets ruined by this shitty feature
I'd hardly say "ruined." No one's speech is censored by down-votes. Everyone's posts can still be read with one click or zero depending on whether or not JavaScript is enabled. All that down-voting does is express disapproval, which should also be allowed in a free and open forum. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from disapproval of your speech.
I agree that down-voting is a silly way to express disapproval. Down-voting a comment just because you disagree is passive aggressive and immature. Discourse would be improved if the feature were only for flagging violations of community guidelines. However, level of discourse is not an issue of freedom.
The voting system is stupid and should be replaced. I understand why you are frustrated with people who down-vote posts without presenting a counterargument. You have every right to be angry at whoever down-voted that comment of yours on that other thread, as you were not violating any community guidelines. However, I think that your justified anger is clouding your judgement, as your attempt to frame this as a moral issue to condemn the entire community is flawed, and from what I have seen you are an otherwise logical person.
Even if the voting system doesn't get fixed any time soon, there are plenty of people here who do respond to posts with which they disagree with an argument. Numbers, red bars, and extra clicks are irrelevant to those arguments. I recommend disabling JavaScript on the site. It is unnecessary, and without it I do not even have to click on down-voted posts in order to read them.
Maybe you're right about my anger clouding my judgement and about me projecting flaws of individual users to the whole community.
But that's one of the biggest flaws of the rating system: three people (or maybe even one person with three accounts...) dislikes your comment, it gets marked with a red bar and is hidden with this shameful "rating too low" label. As a result, you feel as if the whole community is just shouting "shut up!" right into your face, while actually three votes are not representative at all.
I will just wait a few days until I can be more calm about the whole issue and decide then. Besides, from what I've seen there is no real way to delete an account anyway.
> As a result, you feel as if the whole community is just shouting "shut up!" right into your face, while actually three votes are not representative at all.
Exactly. It's because the voting system is stupid that it isn't worth taking personally. I find this community to be a generally positive, and you're a part of that. It would be a shame if you left over this.
I am a translator!
Yes, I do dislike the voting system very much and I have openly expressed my discontent in the past and several times so, but as much as it annoys me I still enjoy this place a lot. Trisquellinho baptized me in the church of the free gahnuu after all.. it will always be special for me.
Stay and just ignore it, senor quantii.
SuperTramp83 or supertramposo
after all, the cloak of invisibility is not flawless but completely a mental twist of words to others...
I could see a colloquial Metamorphism leader "LOL", i JUST MADE THIS ONE... lol
By the way, how can I actually leave? I can't find any "delete account" button?
I am no fan of the voting system either. I have no idea of what it takes to remove or change it (technically or practically). I fully acknowledge and respect your dislike of it. I also fully accept your opinion about the lack of communication from developers and the pace of development.
I don't know the numbers behind your statistic conclusion, but I do believe that this forum is one of the best places for dedicated free software users and advocates - despite its flaws.
I hope you will consider to stay - your farewell would leave the forum weaker than it is now.
I am a translator!
>By the way, how can I actually leave? I can't find any "delete account" button?
See? You can not leave! It's doom. :P
quantumgravity said
by the way, how can I actually leave? I can't find any "delete account" button?
use your imagination on this one.
quantumgravity said
By the way, how can I actually leave? I can't find any "delete account" button?
no one is stopping you, just leave
First of all, the Trisquel forum is not a public place. Like an association, it is entitled to its own rules (https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trisquel-community-guidelines) and it can even ban members. That happened once, as far as I know. Anyone wanting to express views that go against the Trisquel guidelines should always be allowed to so. On her own forum, or website, or in the street, etc. *That* is freedom of speech.
Having unenforced guidelines is like not having guidelines. Enforcement is needed, unfortunately. A few trolls can destroy a community. At least, it makes the community unwelcoming.
A few users can enforce the guidelines (like david, who often moves threads to "the troll lounge") and/or the task can be collectively handled (like the +1/-1 system). I like the collective moderation. In my humble opinion, its main advantages are:
- it is more responsive (moderators have a life): once inflammatory (or otherwise guideline-disrespecting) posts are hidden, users tend to stop replying, which is precisely what is needed to not have the thread turn into a trollish shit storms;
- it is robust (notice that whoever considers the negatively-rated post does *not* disrespect the guidelines should click the +1 button);
- you do not have a few moderators who receive all the crap (accusations of being censors or worse; the banned user I know of was writing death threats).
The system can be improved though:
- for more responsiveness, -1 could be considered enough to hide the post of a user with a negative average rating (a new user who only registered to troll or somebody who spends most of her posts trolling);
- for more robustness, the -1/+1 buttons could be only available to the users with a strictly positive average ratings.
- for a better understanding of how to use the -1/+1 buttons, it should be written somewhere visible (a confirmation box after clicking -1?) that -1 should never express a disagreement but a violation of the guidelines, that +1 should be used on negatively-rated posts that do violate the community guidelines, even when disagreeing with the content of the post (reply to explain why you disagree).
"it is robust (notice that whoever considers the negatively-rated post does *not* disrespect the guidelines should click the +1 button);"
What are you talking about? If three people downvote, it doesn't matter how many people upvote the post. It's hidden and it will stay hidden (to confirm this, I upvoted the post of pyraman in this thread just for the purpose of an experiment:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/trisquel-8-release-countdown-clock
The counter was on "-3", then I voted one up, so now it's on "-2", and still it's hidden.
So in conclusion you think that three people should be enough to decide what is trolling and what is not trolling.
And you obviously also like to ignore the repeated cases of abuse that happened in the past.
People will never just press the -1 button for the sake of protecting the community guidelines, and they didn't so far.
They will read something they don't like, they don't want to bother replying, they just want the unpleasant post to go away, so they push "-1".
https://trisquel.info/forum/trisquel-8-release-countdown-clock#comment-123079 is not hidden anymore. Thanks to the +1 votes. So, no, we are not talking about three people and really talking about the whole community moderating.
I hope you are wrong about people not willing to use the system for what it is made for. I think it is more of a lack of pedagogy (my last point above). I personally think the forum has been much more welcoming since the moderation system was implemented. Shorter troll threads.
It was still hidden after my vote: the counter showed "-2" but still it was hidden.
I don't know why it's not hidden anymore. Maybe 0 is the threshold...
And again, I'm not against a self-moderating approach in general. "mark as spam" would be less likely to be abused, and if the threshold would be, let's say five... that would be appropriate.
Hello, quantumgravity and all, sorry for the delayed answer.
I read this thread way too late last monday and I apologize for that, this last week has been a bit complicated for me although I understand that's not an excuse for leaving a reasonable request unattended and much less for not having worked before on the voting system which I agree has long-standing issues that deserve our attention.
First of all, I'd like you to understand that we don't ignore these issues, we set up the voting system a long time ago to prevent some specific behaviours and the community and its needs have evolved since then. As other aspects of the current site, it's not that easy to change this system into an ideal solution but it can be improved to some extent.
Since I got up-to-date with the forum threads, I've been working on improving the behaviour of this function and hopefully will soon have some changes ready to address your concerns.
@quantumgravity, I tried to reach you by email but it didn't work and then I realized your statement regarding this email address at your profile page. Can you please contact me again providing some new address so I can write you back?
Hello David, thanks for your response.
Here is my new email adress:
name at domain
There's a rating system?
name at domain wrote:
> There's a rating sytem?
Not on the trisquel-users mailing list, but on the Trisquel users web forum
there is. The forum and mailing list mirror each other -- posts to one are
copied to the other.
Well, I am so used to getting rejections and being dorky and uncool that I stopped giving a flying duck about ratings ages ago. Maybe the fellow just had a bad Reddit or Slashdot experience. But thanks.
Lester Bangs — "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."
My beef with the rating system is that after clicking plus or minus, it zooms me back to the top of the page. I don't want that. Why would anyone?
It's not using Javascript so there is no way you can update the voting counter without reloading the page.
Reloading the page means going to the top.
Now, they could attach the anchor of the comment to the voting link. That way, the page would still reload, you would still go up to the top of the page but go down again right afterwards.
Maybe you wouldn't even notice the difference.
> It's not using Javascript
It is using JS to hide comments (as others have mentioned above), so in theory, the voting counter could be updated without reloading the entire page. But I'm gussing this would require some non-trivial dev by someone reasonably fluent in JS, and testing to make sure it doesn't break anything else. Your suggestion about using an anchor link could also be a solution, but I suspect this would also involve a non-trivial modification of the forum software used here.
I'm in two minds about the voting system. In a previous life I was a newswire clerk on an Indymedia site, one of the volunteers who moderated articles and comments posted on the site. Some clerks copped lots of abuse for doing their job, particularly the female ones I noticed. We often debated replacing that system with a user-moderation system like the ones used here, for the sorts of reasons given by MagicBanana, but we never did because of concerns about implicit bias etc.
I've definitely seen the voting system here badly abused. On one potentially libellous thread about Technoethical, a number of perfectly reasonable responses by the operator of Technoethical, explaining the circumstances that let to the complaints in the OP, were downvoted until hidden. On the other hand, I've also opened up some hidden comments out of curiosity, and found nonsense and abuse that I am really glad isn't shown to new users who come to the forums (with JS on) for support and fellowship.
I've suggested in other threads that the mods consider moving the forums to Discourse, which has a number of baked-in mechanisms for discouraging unhelpful posting in forums. If we stay with the current system, I would suggest two fairly trivial changes that might help improve the use of the voting system:
* change the number of votes required to hide a post to 5. If a posting really is inappropriate, there are enough responsible regulars for it to attract 5 downvotes, but posts are less likely to be hidden for trivial or inappropriate reasons
* put a string of text to the left of the voting buttons saying something like 'violates community guidelines' (linked to them), and a string of text to the right of the voting buttons saying something like 'abides by community guidelines' (linked to them). I think a number of users are mistaking appropriate / inappropriate buttons for agree / disagree buttons.
BTW At the top of the community guidelines there needs to be a short paragraph explaining how the user-driven moderation works, maybe linked to another page with a fuller explanation.
I think the voting serves its purpose and very well. Only rarely it will be used for minor trolling. If this annoys, it does only to a lesser quantile of users.