http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=91025


in reply to I dont need your politics any more. (discussion)

Um, brother dep...I do understand the frustration--I know others do, too. I would only ask is that you give the rest of community time to respond before you make a final decision. I just checked and both nodes are 15 and 19 respectively, which means that more people liked your thoughts better than the game-players.

Please don't judge the rest of the community based on the responses of an anti-social few. I believe that, over time, the rest of the community is able to balance out the misdeeds of the wicked.

Yes, you *do* contribute and I, for one, am a better monk for it. Remember: there is more than one way to get respect.

Personally, I've received a lot of good feedback from the regulars, however, the one I appreciate most was a simple "good node" /msg from someone whose post to XP ratio is mind-boggling. IOW, focus on the people that also contribute and not on the actions of the simple or the automated. You know who the good monks are. Listen to them for support and ignore the initial downvotes as the flailings of the clueless/talentless. Who cares if you're downvoted by trolls?

I know, I know: "it limits the potential of the node." Yes...that's true...but the information has still been communicated and will, I believe, touch those who need it. The real measure of success isn't the number of XP's you've got or the average reputation of your nodes. The real measure is the difference you've made in other people's lives.

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

--f

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Re (2): I dont need your politics any more. (discussion)
by deprecated (Priest) on Jun 24, 2001 at 17:35 UTC
    I agree with you completely. They are both at a relatively high reputation. What irritates me is being reminded continually that this is going on. Perhaps I should turn off my XP Nodelet so that when I come back to the monastery after a couple days I am not reminded that useless votes have been cast against me so some child can gain XP. I would still see nodes with negative rep when browsing my own nodes.

    That part bothers me. Not that I lose XP, because frankly, when I post I rarely see a node get below a rep of 10 or 15. What bothers me is the continual reminder that people are doing that. It reminds me just how much a portion of (theyre not just the minor few, they make up a percentage of the active monks in the monastery) us I really dislike. It makes me feel unwelcome, and not want to be here.

    I'll take it a step further. I'll bet that this is what most of us who complain about "personality" or "automaton" downvoting dislike. The people who are complaining -- yourself, tilly, me, merlyn (im sure I am forgetting others), are people with a lot of posts and a lot of XP. It would be near impossible for somebody to even take me down a level with downvoting. It would literally require dozens of accounts. Same for the rest of us. What the downvoting constitutes for us, however, is a fairly constant reminder that somebody in our midst sucks.

    Which is why I asked to be removed from the situation entirely. I dont much vote on nodes anymore. I dont have a lot of time to go over the monastery, so when I vote, it's usually on replies to nodes of my own. While I like the reputation as an indicator of the worth of a node, I am confident that enough monks are going to continue voting.

    Furthermore, the fact that the root node of this thread gained as much rep as it did indicates to me that quite a few people would take this course of action as well. It also has the added benefit of being the simplest solution to the problem that I have seen yet. Not a whole lot of code involved. Drastic, yet localized, results.

    That having been said, I have gotten a few (thank you) replies to that node indicating they voted -- because it was "angry" or "low quality." While I am still angry, please consider this node an explanation for the first.

    I'm gonna go turn off my XP nodelet now.

    brother dep.

    update: you cannot turn off your XP nodelet.

    --
    Laziness, Impatience, Hubris, and Generosity.

      As I don't post that much, nor do I downvote much, I'll add one idea to perhaps stem this problem. You may or may not like it, as it would be adding an element of big-brother to the monastery -- something which we don't need now, but probably will need as it grows, unfortunately.

      How about having an Everything procedure that suspends the ability to vote for users that attain a ratio of lopsiding downvoting? I don't know whether or not Everything stores information in a DB about how you vote, but if it does it could suspend voting privs for a time period (say a week) if people do votebot downvoting.

      I'd initially thought of this with a ratio per level, that decreases, but I don't think this is a good idea, because as the votebots accumulate levels, their ratios will decrease. Honestly, in the monastery at this time, how many of you spend more than 10% on downvotes? I think most people where it matters have the ability to consider a node rather than downvote it, if it is purely a troll node. And we already have procedures in place to stem consideration abuse.

      The one thing I don't like about this approach is we'll have the opposite problem. Bad nodes will get upvoted a bit. I know I'm guilty of this myself periodically when I don't have much time in a day to visit, so I come here an use all my votes quickly.

      -marius

      update: and naturally, within a few seconds of posting, it goes -1. Irony, or disagreement? Ah well, at least I can hope for irony and laugh about it. =]
        I think most people where it matters have the ability to consider a node rather than downvote it

        This is not entirely the case; a node must have a negative reputation to be reaped.

        Downvotes have a place in the current consideration system and as such I feel that limiting them would break the technical aspect of troll-control without removing the social problem of vote-attacks, which, after all, can be carried out even more effectively with multiple logins anyway.

        I'm not voting you up or down, I'm replying you, so I guess I'm in the safe way :-)

        Anyway, I just want to make the point that nobody should be punished by just downvoting. Sometimes you're interested in an article (or you think it is a good contribution, or that the tone is ok), others you're not. Therefore, sometimes you upvote, others you downvote. I wouldn't dare to say which level of downvoting is ok for each person, as this may vary depending on the user experience, knowledge or personality. Thus, I would be against establishing any kind of limitiation to how many downvotes a user may cast.

        On the other side, I may agree with you about avoiding the use of votebots, but I feel they should be addressed separately: they're bad, weather they are used for downvoting or upvoting.