New feature in the forums

the buttons are an eyesore in my opinion and once I realized each individual post rating effected the thread rating you lost me. For instance... there is ~110 posts in this thread right now... that means I could drop the thread rating by 110 points if I wanted to. I don't think this adds any value to the forums or at least I can't tell what it is doing besides creating some color change and number change.

It stupid. Its not going to change how we interact. Trolls will still troll and people will still argue that the sky isnt blue.

I really dont see the point. Anyone who is going to change their post habits based on this system is a pussy.

upvote please

Hey guys,

Thanks for all of your feedback. I've been watching it unfold over the past 12 hours with great interest, and I really, really appreciate all of your thoughts.

First off, please give this a week to see how it plays out before assuming it's a bad idea, because we're as curious as you are to see how it goes. In addition to it being a much more accurate tool to determine the best quality threads, I personally think this is going to end up being an incredibly positive feature for the forums and will act as a way to help steer conversation in a more positive direction. It's possible that for the first little bit some people may get crazy and overuse it, but I'm confident that once people get use to it things will settle down and it will be utilized for exactly what it's intended for, which is precisely what happened when we first launched the Karma system. Everyone complained and said it was a bad idea that was going to ruin Newschoolers, and now, in addition to it be woven into the fabric of numerous aspects of the site that help make this place so great, virtually everyone loves it.

In response to a couple of posts I've seen, please note that we currently don't have any plans to link this to Karma for the time being or to allow this feature to determine the order of how threads are displayed, as like the news, video and photo sections, we will always display things in a chronological order, where as on the homepage you have the option to view each section by popularity or latest added.

The fundamental reason behind launching this feature is to help determine which threads are of the best quality (and therefore will appear on the homepage), as we felt that an overall thread rating didn't do an accurate enough job of showcasing what was a great thread, especially when there were hundreds or thousands of posts within them. I've noticed that quite a few of you are saying that you think people will now just down rate individual posts for the sake of being passive aggressive, but please keep in mind that they could just as easily have done so in the previous system to the thread as whole, which would hurt/drastically affect the thread's overall rating due to one bad post when there could have been a wealth of great conversation within it, which would therefore take away from the thread's ability to appear on the homepage and/or cause people to skip over it due to its overall rating. And while it is true that one person can now drastically decrease a thread's overall thread rating by down rating a number of different posts, be sure to focus on the positive as well, in that one person can drastically increase it just as easily, which is exactly what I hope and trust will happen, because contrary to some people's belief, there are a hell of a lot more shiny red apples than rotten ones in this community.

I've also seen a fair number of complaints about the positioning of the voting buttons, so rest assured that we're going to have an internal discussion about that, because we always listen to your guys incredibly valuable feedback, and on behalf of all of us, thank-you so much once again for it.

All in all though, give this some time to see how it plays out, because it is indeed a big change, and like all things in life, most of the time, change is good...it just takes some time to get use to :)

Cheers!

Get out of here, this isn't some Utah regional thread where you can make fun of kids cause they ski at park city. This is the second time I've seen you try to express your opinion about how ns is run and you have no idea what you're talking about, gtfo

When I go on NS and read threads, I see who made the posts and that adds more to them. I just skimmed down this page and I recognize every name except for the one guy with 23 posts. Does this exist on reddit? NS is personal. Anonymous ratings and comments from users without history are not.

Hmmm, kind of have to agree with this.

i think the feature is decent. the look and placement is not. definintely should be off to the right of the post and centered on something, it looks just slapped into place.

Idea is good, the design sucks

Idea is good, but it looks horrible. I liked it at first but now i hate it. Kids take their time to downvote every single comment in a thread just for fun.. or whatever. This won't work as long as

one thing i seem to be noticing is that people are may more inclined to vote down than up. scrolling through threads and seeing almost every post with a -1 or -2 rating for no apparent reason is sorta leading me to believe this isn't working as intended

I'm noticing the opposite, although I don't go on nsg that much, maybe that's why? I'm thinking it's working surprisingly well.

More and more time is passing and I'm starting to really dislike this feature.

Example, I made a post, yes talking shit and it got a couple responses people discussing what I said and/or disagree stating their opinions, but now it has like -11 score. My issue with this is kids are just gonna downvote posts they dont like and they wont say shit. This new passive aggressive way to dislike someones post is taking away from the whole MO of a forum, which is to discuss. Whos gonna disagree or hate on anyone if they can just down vote the post?

Another thing I noticed (this has nothing to do with my personally, overall observation) is that people are down voting WAY MORE than up voting. Again, another issue with the system is that it promotes kids to just hating on shit without any consequences, they just downvote and thats it and then they'll post when somethign is positive and cool but wont up vote it. Im sure doug will say this will change but with the general population of people on NS being quite immature and looking to just hate/troll the majority of the time, i dont see it changing.

Also, I know you guys are saying you wont filter posts or hide bad posts (youtube, reddit, etc style) but then what is the point of doing this? You say the votes help produce a good thread to put on the front page but when everyone is down voting, threads wont show up. Ive been noticing HUGE differences in thread ratings, they're usually either really postive or really negative, which is what you want. Now they have high scores but have way more negative votes because of people downvoting certain posts. I dont think this works and I think the whole idea isn't really worth much either. Who really looks at the front page for threads? Anyone who cares about threads takes 2 mins out of their lives and surfs the forums.

This whole system is starting to turn me against the new home pages in a way too, the thread stuff isn't working for the home page so you guys are trying to make it better. I understand you guys want to create this certain home page but I dont think its working. I think you guys need to take discussion away from the home page and then really focus on making new more prominent. Its not just me who is noticing way less new, sure you can go to the news page but thats what the home page is, its where people go to see the new shit and if you guys can make actual news a little more visible and ditch threads i think itll be a great improvement.

& if somebody dislikes a thread they'll often downvote every single post in the thread, just to fuck over the thread, in this way it will never be able to be linked to karma.

raddleraddleraddle!^

But what is so important about making sure that all the great threads appear on the homepage?

Please, correct me if I'm wrong here guys, but I don't think the homepage is heavily used as a conversation tool by the NSers who spend a lot of time in the forums. The serious NSers who come here to TALK about skiing - and talk with other people who truly brand themselves foremost as skiers - don't use the homepage. We use the entire site, not snippets of the entire site crammed onto one page.

Now my roommate checks the homepage daily. He is always up to date on whatever is at the top of the homepage. But he hasn't actually signed in with his NS username in years. He isn't a part of the NS community because he doesn't care to be. He is only here to view and read content, not to contribute. You could replace all the "skiing content" on the homepage with the greatest threads in NS history, and he still wouldn't post in the forums.

Why are sacrifices being made in the forums for the sole benefit of making the forums more visible to non-contributors on the homepage? Are the good threads really that hard for most people to find? It just doesn't make sense.

I'm happy to give it a shot, but seeing legitimately helpful posts I've made and others have made with negative numbers next to them has turned me off to NS more than any change since 2004.

My encounter with the new feature has been both good and bad.

.

Alright I've been lurking here for 10 years now, and I'm probably "not with it" but why has the best freeskiing website turning into a game about scoring internet points?

It used to be a free flowing conversation about skiing (sometimes amazing, sometimes hilarious,) but now it's all about having the most karma, the highest rated front page picture, and now the best rated comment in a particular thread?

Are you doing this just trying to combat the trolls?... Trolls for better or worse are part of NS and always have been. We laugh at them and their terrible threads often disappear because nobody cares to comment or just get deleted by Mods.

I'm sorry I just don't like the whole direction this site is going in. Maybe I'm just an old fart at the age of 30, but I don't think freeskiing has anything to do with scoring internet points.

I love the update!

2 minor things to fix though.

We are able to rate our own posts! KARMA TRAIN! also once you have rated you cant take your rating back and leave it at zero, you have to up or down the person.

it doesnt affect your karma but i see what you mean

not to toot my own horn on this, just using it as an example..

but take a thread like this one:

https://www.newschoolers.com/ns/forums/readthread/thread_id/737358/


What 1/4 of the posts says is an amazing thread yadda yadda yadda. an original idea that everyone likes that gets people involved, etc etc and due to the new system it has an overall negative rating due to maybe 2 shitty posts out of many.

If threads like that get overall negative ratings, this is absolutely a flawed system.


also I don;t care, just using it as an example.

what this site really needs is notifications in the forums. as in if someone quotes you, you get a notification for example.

kinda like the idea, would be interested in seeing this feature implemented into the forums better though

This. It defeats the purpose of posting in favor, or not in favor of a post. Also, kids are just blatantly downvoting posts that they do not agree with. Reddit has a huge problem with this. Look at the liberal vs. conservative post ratings. Two articles may offer the same quality of material, with completely different ratings. I would not expect NS to be able to distinguish a post they disagree with from a post they do not like the quality of. I'd say just stick with the overall thread rating system. Plus, threads seem a bit cluttered with all these arrows everywhere. I'm on the fence about this whole post rating idea.

ns is weird as fuck these days.

spot on, my friend.

I think the idea of trying to increase thread ratings to put them on the front page is completely flawed. IMO the front page shouldn't have threads, only pictures and videos. No active member searches for threads on the front page. Most of the pure gold threads won't make it to the front anyway, stumbling across an amazing thread is half the fun. Also it's a major conflict of interest to have to not downvote a horrible comment if you don't want it to effect the overall thread rating.

I agree

wow the fact that everytime I post you get your fat girl panties all twisted in a wad amuses me.

and if I don't gtfo what will you do? Huff and puff and downrate my stuff? Show up w/ your  clownschool crew of wanna b thuggies and flash gang signs?  Get up early hike up and snake my pow? bwwahhhh

I asked a simple question and it wasn't even directed at your knuckle riding prohoe nutsack lickin internet warrior ample ass.

Now  Better Tasting asked pretty much the same question.  If no red names wanna answer fine

here's a question for you

Did you ski yesterday or sit at your computor and make more shitty butthurt posts all day?

I know you don't like me but try and show some self disipline and not quote all my posts with stupid gtfo for christs sake you sound like my 12 yo neice only difference is she can actually ski

can she even double bro?

She sounds hot

sorry guys, I really don't like this new feature. I'm finding that it is giving a very inaccurate portrayal of a good thread vs a bad tread. One 'witty' post in a shitty thread can make the thread have a good rating, but in all reality, the thread sucks. I personally thing it's bullshit.

I also have to ask the same question as most other on here: why is it so important for threads to be on the homepage? Since the new homepage came out I switched it to "latest" and "news" because of all the random stuff like threads that were on there that I didn't understand were there in the first place.

i mentioned this in a different thread just now but ill just paste it right into here:

the idea's almost as bad as the +/- karma idea. more +/- ratings are going to inhibit people from expressing their true beliefs at times because the majority of people on newschoolers care more about what people think about them than anything else

I don't think this is anything NS should strive for. It kills debate if more people are conscious that their opinion could be more negatively received. Then when we see a post which rating wise wasn't received well, we get a million people saying they don't agree but no one saying why. What is the point? A collection of downvotes on NS doesn't show strength in silence. The same is also true for upvotes.

What is positive conversation? If what was intended to bring more positive conversation stifles conversation, I don't think it's worth it. I don't think lack of debate is positive.

I'm starting to see posts with a lot of ratings and I'm wondering if people would have responded and are now voting instead of responding just killing threads.

As a proud member of NS i have gained much from the site over the past 3.5 years, friends, laughs, good time wasted, but these new upvote downvote features are fucking stupid. Eheath said it better than i can but everyone is downvoting there are NO fucking upvotes and it's stupid who cares if some one likes or dislikes what you say its an opinion, if they have something to comment on they should just quote you and say it. now its a little fucking stupid passive aggressive way of being little shits of 15 year olds. It will quickly become a poopularity contest to see which 15 year old gets more upvotes for talking shit to kids.

As a proud member of NS i have gained much from the site over the past 3.5 years, friends, laughs, good time wasted, but these new upvote downvote features are fucking stupid. Eheath said it better than i can but everyone is downvoting there are NO fucking upvotes and it's stupid who cares if some one likes or dislikes what you say its an opinion, if they have something to comment on they should just quote you and say it. now its a little fucking stupid passive aggressive way of being little shits of 15 year olds. It will quickly become a poopularity contest to see which 15 year old gets more upvotes for talking shit to kids.

Get these arrows out of the forums and save them for pics/vids. I had a bad feeling NS was turning in the wrong direction when you made a feedback, picture, and video post count towards your post count. Now the thread rating (Not AS bad...) and individual post ratings...

You can just ignore them... the forums are still ordered chronologically. Like how I think karmas the dumbest shit ever, so I totally disregard mine.

After a few days with it I honestly don't find it to be the worst thing. I'm still not a huge fan of it, but I think I'll need more time to make up my mind. Anyone else had it grown on them a little?

i find it comes in handy when i already have the poster at 0/10. not that either of these numbers matter to anyone who actually uses this site but it's a nice lil extra fuck you to everyone i don't like.

and vice versa for 10/10. The whole thing is really screwing up thread ratings though. Theres a few good threads out there that are at like -6 because some dumbass is spewing shit in the threads and getting downrated big time...

i have yet to pay attention to thread ratings either. what do those do exactly?

the new front page fucking sucks. one time i tried to get it to display something remotely interesting or current, but then i logged back on and it was automatically set to "all" and "hot" again. what a piece of shit. i don't even look at it now. who decided the old front page needed replacing? it was informative, at least. this one just throws a bunch of bullshit at me like i'm on youtube or something.

My post got rated down in NHL thread because people don't like the team I do?

I don't mind the rating arrows, and rating individual posts. However, I think it's stupid that the rating of individual posts in a thread add on to the rating of the entire thread. So if a troll writes one stupid post in a decent thread the entire thread could get downrated 50 votes due to one person who isn't the OP.

something also tells me that this up/down vote thing is making karma more obsolete since rather than rating the person for a good/bad post with karma one will just rate the post instead.

TGR says eat dick and stick to arrow clicking on NS.

The opinions of a bunch of middle-aged suit-wearing weekend warriors is of great importance here, NSers will definitely take your advice into consideration.

you're thinking of epicski

Lol at me making you and your little cubicle friends on TGR mad when I was banned on NS. Sorry for trollin poly ass!