you cannot know the reputation of a node so long as you haven't voted for or against it .... This makes it, IMHO, much less useful than if you could see upfront that this particular node that you are visiting has been very much up- or down- voted by other monks.
I agree, but I understand the reasoning. Namely the very human habit of going with the crowd. There is no simple solution to resolve that habit whilst allowing people to chose to pass-over low rep nodes.
But maybe there is. If the suggestion above that once a node has demonstrated a sufficient downward trend to allow (automated) judgement to be passed, then the node is replaced by an official warning and further voting on it gets suspended.
Of course, where you set the break points and how you account for the possibility that initial flurry's of downvotes can sometimes be later countered by more reasoned upvotes -- a trend I've witnessed on more than a few of my own posts which have initially been misunderstood or misinterpreted -- would require very careful thought. I won't even make a suggestion for such a formula.
With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
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My experience on Stack Overflow is quite different.
I do frequently find that if I start on Google and pick a Stack Overflow item from it, I often find an answer or a cluebat -- and about half the time, they're heavily downvoted and closed due to being "off topic".
Asking the question on Stack Overflow directly is a mixed bag. Most of the time nobody will take the time to answer a difficult question. I am given to understand, after reading many blog articles, that it's part of the problem with the SO culture -- it's all about the votes, so people only take the time to answer something where they can provide a fast answer and get lots of votes.
And the "community" there is apt to go downvote a lot of nodes by anyone where they found one thing worth downvoting, which is reprehensible school-children level behavior.
So I'm hesitant to change anything we're doing differently than Stack Overflow, because the bullying behavior here is limited to a handful of noisy accounts, whereas on SO it seems to be the order of the day, every day.
My inescapable conclusion is this: While we might be able to improve on what we have, we're definitely doing enough things better than SO that, by and large, they should not be our role model, but rather, the other way around.
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A solution that could help (at least me) would be to mark nodes after a certain time has passed, e.g. after 3 months.
Then nodes could be marked as "be careful" if they have a negative reputation and with "outstanding" if they have a very high
positive reputation (e.g. > $norm * 4).
I assume the crowd-effect would be low, as these nodes are no longer very visible (they are mostly found using search-engines).
And for nodes found that way a general inidication of the quality would be helpful, as the reader might not see/check the whole context of the node.
Just an idea ... Rata
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[d/l] |
