Subscriber Discussion

Voting Button

KL
Keefe Lovgren
Dec 12, 2013
IPVMU Certified

can someone explain the appearance of a voting button next to posts in discussions?

Avatar
Derek Ward
Dec 12, 2013
Hanwha
The voting button is a new feature. Let us know if you have feedback.
Avatar
Brian Karas
Dec 12, 2013
Pelican Zero

Neat feature. Votes should really default to 1 though, that is more of the "standard" for these kinds of things.

Avatar
Ari Erenthal
Dec 12, 2013
Chesapeake & Midlantic

Because the hope of gathering fake, meaningless internet points is supposed to encourage people to post more and post better. See Reddit and Facebook.

Avatar
Brian Karas
Dec 12, 2013
Pelican Zero

It also serves as a good way for people to indicate agreement or disagreement with something without having to fill up a thread with "me too" comments. I think it's a useful feature.

CD
Chris Dearing
Dec 12, 2013

Its interesting how its a net like/dislike number. A zero could mean a yawn or a bitterly contested stalemate.

Even more interesting is that it seems to be available to all the old discussions/posts!

Get back to your all-time favorite posts and vote, vote, vote!

Are they anonymous? Pseudonymous?

Also fun is the polarizing "take a position" mechanism of the button, once you go up or down you can't get back to Switzerland...

Regardless, an Excellent move,IPVM!

C

JH
John Honovich
Dec 14, 2013
IPVM

Votes are anonymous.

We've made it available for all comments, though certainly the numbers will have little meaning for old ones. Of course, a few months from now, it should be quite useful for new ones.

HL
Horace Lasell
Dec 13, 2013

Hey, cool! I just discovered that you can vote for your own posts, but once you've voted, you can't move it back to zero. It's either +1 or -1.

I second Brian Karas' suggestion that they default to 1, provided it's stored as own person's vote for self. That would equalize all self-voters with all self-ignorers.

Avatar
Jonathan Lawry
Dec 13, 2013
Trecerdo, LLC

This absolutely nails my craving for external validation on IPVM. Thanks!

JH
John Honovich
Dec 17, 2013
IPVM

We made a few changes to voting:

  • Voting now shows the individual up and down votes instead of just the net number - example: previously it might be "4", now it shows "+6 / -2" giving members a clearer sense of how much interest the comment is drawing
  • If there are no votes for a comment, it displays 'vote' rather than '0' to make it clearer that no one has voted at all
  • Members now cannot vote for their own comments.
CD
Chris Dearing
Dec 29, 2013

Here's a crazy idea:

You can't see the name of the poster until you vote, kinda like temporary Undisclosed.

Might make people really read, and even then you can never be sure who it might be!

JH
John Honovich
Dec 30, 2013
IPVM

I'd like to encourage more people to vote but blocking them from seeing the person's name is a pretty sizeable limitation. i am open to other suggestions/ ideas.

Main problem right now is that 80% of the votes are coming from a dozen members, so the votes are very skewed and therefore not as useful.

CD
Chris Dearing
Dec 30, 2013

IPVM EDITOR - DELETED - CONFUSING - MADE UP

Avatar
Carl Lindgren
Dec 30, 2013

Too late. I already received the email....

Only 20 negative votes? I guess I'll just have to try harder. :-[

CD
Chris Dearing
Dec 30, 2013

Well hold on to it please, cuz you know now that the post has been deleted and I have offered the charity wager, I realized I don't even have a copy! ;)

CD
Chris Dearing
Dec 30, 2013

1. it wasn't made up.

2. It clearly said it was unofficial as well as not from IPVM.

3. Readers are just as intelligent as admins. You could just strike it out instead.

4. $100 dollar wager to charity of your choice that the post was 90%-100% accurate?

JH
John Honovich
Dec 30, 2013
IPVM

Chris, it was off topic and your response is off topic (i.e. the topic of voting). I appreciate your suggestion and if you have others about improving voting, I am all ears.

Please remember that everyone in the thread gets an email for each comment plus I need to review all posts so I want to keep discussions focused as much as possible.

CD
Chris Dearing
Dec 30, 2013

I'd like to encourage more people to vote but blocking them from seeing the person's name is a pretty sizeable limitation. i am open to other suggestions/ ideas.

Ok, John why don't we talk about the elephant in the room then:

The posts are supposed to be anonymous right?

So, are they anonymous like Undisclosed posts are anonymous?

( i.e. yourself and admins can routinely view who voted for what as a matter of course.)

If you do or can do that then why don't you think that heavily influences who votes and what for? (esp. when voting on an admin post!) and results in low usage??

If you haven't thought of that then you're out of touch.

Maybe you have set up 'need to know only' access using a chinese wall or id obfuscation.

Great! It needs to be communicated before anyone except the sycophants and the brave dare use it!

It's not like people don't trust you or the admins, they overwhelmingly do! But here it is genuinely unclear what you intend and what procedures you have in mind and guidance is necessary in this area.

Interestingly I don't mean to imply that people only would vote up the admins because they can see, you as everyone, has their detractors who will vote you down just because you can see its them.

Till then it will likely be "very skewed and therefore not as useful".

CD
Chris Dearing
Dec 30, 2013

Just to clarify I wasn't saying to block them permantly, just maybe when you load the page any unread comments would have a placeholder until you hit 'reveal author' or something... Or not if you set a preference... Not in love with the idea tho, just thinking anonymous voter=anonymous votee...

Actually one of the reasons that I was trying to come up with something is it looks like someone is down voting you as a matter of course instead of for your position. '

C

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Dec 31, 2013

I also agree with the idea of not being able to see who made the comment before a vote is placed. That way people are either agreeing or disagreeing with the comment rather than the one posting the comment.

HL
Horace Lasell
Jan 02, 2014

Interesting that the articles themselves are not subject to member voting.

Avatar
Brian Rhodes
Jan 02, 2014
IPVMU Certified

You do realize that members are free to leave a comment on any article, start a discussion, or email any of us directly?

JH
John Honovich
Jan 02, 2014
IPVM

We can add voting on articles, but I am still trying to see the value/use of it on comments. A number of people asked for voting on comments, but this is the first request for voting on articles.

HL
Horace Lasell
Jan 03, 2014

Thanks for posting, Brian; these insights often escape me :)

It's not always clear that the number of comments on an article necessarily correlate to the value of the article.

Chris asked for nominees for the best post of 2013, which seemed like a neat idea.

Because voting has been in place for a limited time, it wasn't able to shed much light on this question.

The next thought that came to my mind was, I wonder people might have nominated as the best article of 2013?

One can argue the merits of crowd sourcing "best of" selections through the voting buttons, but it does provide one particular view into the matter. At the start of a new year, if there was IPVM management interest in this particular method of assessing value, now's not a bad time to implement such a feature.

JH
John Honovich
Jan 03, 2014
IPVM

Horace, regarding voting on articles, it's not about 'management interest' or even time.

The issue is the value / meaning of votes. Right now, the top voted comment is Brian's pimp/pricing one with a +9 / -1. This is ridiculous as it's an off color quip, calling into question on what merits people vote for comments.

CD
Chris Dearing
Jan 03, 2014

*Tied (unofficially) with Keefe of course beginning this thread.

JH
John Honovich
Jan 03, 2014
IPVM

Missed that. Again, though, not an example of a profound comment getting top votes.

KL
Keefe Lovgren
Jan 03, 2014
IPVMU Certified

agreed not the most profound comment... is that what keeps me out of the top of all time category? :) maybe the votes are sometimes in regard to the topic getting started rather than the initial comment being made...

JH
John Honovich
Jan 03, 2014
IPVM

Right now, the 'leaderboards' are based strictly on total comments made. We have not factored in the net voting on one's comments as we are still trying to figure out the value it brings.

KL
Keefe Lovgren
Jan 03, 2014
IPVMU Certified

John I understand that the voting doesn't count towards the "Top - All Time" and it is just the comments. What I was joking about is that my comments (150+) apparently are not profound enough to count as comments or else I would be on the leader board. I was making ligbt of you saying they aren't profound.

JH
John Honovich
Jan 03, 2014
IPVM

Keefe, you have 162 total comments. However, the leaderboard only counts comments from discussions, not articles nor classes, and only those that are disclosed. That would explain the difference.

For instance, I have a total of 5634 comments but many of them are from classes and articles, so it only shows 3236 on the leaderboard.

KL
Keefe Lovgren
Jan 03, 2014
IPVMU Certified

John thank you but I am not concerned about it the leaderboard. I can sleep better now knowing that my comments not being profound isn't what is keeping me from the leaderboard :).

CD
Chris Dearing
Jan 03, 2014

Simply browsing my posts would have no doubt been reassuring. ;)

CD
Chris Dearing
Jan 03, 2014

Maybe you're both right, it might be better if we only allowed voting on articles as a whole and discussions at the top level. Those authors are usually asking (and ready) for feedback and their content mostly quip-less...

Avatar
Carl Lindgren
Jan 04, 2014

That was exactly my point in a previous thread Lose The Votes!

Voting tends to make comment posting popularity contests, IMO.

Avatar
Carl Lindgren
Jan 05, 2014

YAY!!!

Two more negative votes. Please feel free - I need to balance out my score (now approximately 43 to 22, according to Chris' last estimate).

CD
Chris Dearing
Jan 05, 2014

Carl: Don't use reverse psychology!

Avatar
Carl Lindgren
Jan 05, 2014

Not reverse, forward. Who the heck voted those last two posts up?

Avatar
Carl Lindgren
Jan 06, 2014

Stop it!!! You're taking my vote count in the wrong direction.

CD
Chris Dearing
Jan 13, 2014

can someone explain the disappearance of a voting button next to posts in discussions?

JH
John Honovich
Jan 13, 2014
IPVM

Yes, we removed it for now. It's become more of a distraction than a benefit. We'll consider bringing it back in the future.

New discussion

Ask questions and get answers to your physical security questions from IPVM team members and fellow subscribers.

Newest discussions