New feature in the forums

Wait a second...

Have you looked at these views?

https://www.newschoolers.com/home/?view=discussion&sort=top,day

https://www.newschoolers.com/home/?view=discussion&sort=hot

Top rated is all positive threads. Hot is all very active threads, with a mixture of controversial and positive.

I think that most of the fear is that we would only sort by top rated, eliminating stuff with lots of downvotes. This isn't true - hot gets contribution from downvotes, so something can score high with lots of both types of votes.

As well, we can easily add 'controversial' sorting so you could see all the internet fights easily, and 'worst rated' so that you could see all the really cringe-worthy threads.

Are people looking at what is coming out of the system right now? Its kind of working if you ask me...

Yes - and usually it requires people calming down before they can look at the merits of what has changed.

For those who were threatening to leave newschoolers and never come back because of this - has your opinion softened after letting it sink in and reading some of the justification?

I also really think that the top rated / hot stuff is important to look at. The threads in there could be more, but they're pretty accurate.

Don't fix what isn't broken, fix what IS broken.

Its more complicated than that.

We can't just 'fix' message history on mobile without completely overhauling the forums. Its all tied together - and that is why certain things that seem small to you take longer to fix for us.

Things may not be broken, but they may be built in a way that doesn't allow further changes in today's web world. NS is very old, so certain parts of the code use old web philosophies. We have to rip out a lot of the perfectly functional stuff to get at the root of the problem.

Rest assured though, we're going to address a huge amount of issues in the forums with the update we're going to do to 'em.

Damn it, oh well.

Once we're on the topic of improving features.. I've mentioned this before, but the videos/picture/news comments sections are outdated and don't allow for any real discussion. If they were redesigned with the same format as the forums (i.e. quote reply functions, etc.) I think it would enrich the site significantly, and draw more attention to news and other neglected sections.. It would also avoid some clutter in the forums because there would no longer be the need to make threads about pictures/videos/news since the discussion would already be taking place in the comments section.

Keep this for another thread. We'll go over general improvements that people want to see at the beginning of summertime, and integrate these into the massive round of development we have scheduled.

I've semi gotten used to the feature and don't mind it. Still kills me on the inside that all posts contribute to a thread's overall rating though. I would like for those ties to be cut. If that went and the individual ratings stayed, I wouldn't be too offended. What's everyone else's concencus?

OK, but have you actually looked at what is happening en masse? See some of my earlier posts and make sure you're looking at the data vs. just reacting emotionally.

So far, the overall thread rating being tied to individual post rating is actually working out very well - as long as you look objectively.

Remember, there is fancy math behind the scenes we use for ranking stuff. The 'score' that you see has very little to do with how its ranked.

Ohh k. I see now. I guess that actually makes loads of sense that a thread with loads of upvotes and downvotes might make it to the hot section. Soo I guess I'll keep rolling with the system and test driving it for a little while longer.

Yeah that is the key here - the definition of 'hot' isn't 'positive'. most of what I'm pretty sure people are worried about is that the idea of the ratings are to whitewash, which isn't the case. Its simply to give the ability to sort.

Ahh, I didn't realize that there was a top rated before. I thought hot was the top rated so I thought the system was completely flawed. Makes a lot more sense now haha

But I still think post and thread ratings should be separate. Or maybe even just have post rating make less of an impact on the thread rating somehow

Yeah there's all kinds of stuff we can do with the data. That is the key to this - now that we've discovered the wonderful world of mathematics, we can take very granular data and make it do wonders.

The thread and post ratings being unlinked might feel right to you - but I really do encourage you to look at the hot vs. top rated. It seems to be that we're getting pretty accurate data out of the post ratings making the thread rating.

I do see that top rated right now would be interpreted as 'lollipops and rainbows' - because forum threads aren't necessarily good because they're 'good'.

Try to look at the results though and don't just use your intuition. We've really carefully studied the math on this, and I think that its working better than you might think. See if you can spot the difference between hot and top rated threads.

If this proves to work, then its easy for us to build the rest of the views that would allow you to find the threads you want.

After giving it more time, honestly this new feature sucks and doesn't really add any value to the forums or the community.

You need to expand on that. It hardly does anything yet, right now we're just collecting data.

The one place you can see it in effect is looking at the homepage and checking hot vs. top rated threads. Those are extremely accurately populated now that we added this.

This also isn't too bad of an example where it could be used:

https://www.newschoolers.com/ns/forums/readthread/thread_id/740385/

That thread not only has gotten pretty high up on the homepage, but you're able to see much more who people agree to send. If we had an optional sorting view, you could super easily see who the top ranked suggestions were.

I'd argue that the vocal majority would be the +108 rating this thread has received.

Or perhaps Bishop's original post has been rated +108 on its own and the rest of the posts in the thread cancel each other out... The truth is we don't actually know.

Which makes your +108 claim completely useless...

This thread was at -380 a couple days ago. It took 2 people to bring it back to 100. Would you call the two people it took to sway the rating a majority? Because you just did.

Oh shit, the threads at 590 now. We went over this stuff on the last page.

Yeah the issue here is that this thread is being completely abused by a few people trying to prove a point.

They are certainly proving that the overall thread rating can be cheated, but that fact has made this thread an irrelevant data point as to whether or not the system works.

The issue I have is that the thread turned into a lynch mob without me here to explain why we were doing it. Its a few people extremely angry about the way they think this is going to work vs. masses of people agreeing.

The thread rating is being gamed by a few people using aliases and up or down voting every single post. I can research who, but I'd prefer to not have to start naming names.

Instead, I would like the people who dislike the feature to disregard this thread for a moment, and check the hot vs. top rated homepage filters. Those are showing the data of how the threads are being sorted, and frankly I think its pretty accurate.

If we still can't come to a clear consensus, I'll propose changes. If we can't come to a consensus on that then I'll put it to a vote whether or not to ditch the feature.

I urge you though - I spend all day every day analyzing what Newschoolers needs next - not only what it needs now. This is a good thing, and I hope that you can try to share my vision and accept this feature for the overall good of the site.

Actually,

Can you explain your extreme distaste for the post ratings? Since there is no system in place and its just up/down ratings on posts I need to better understand what part of that you hate so much.

Also, is there changes that you think could be made to make it work?

Going to bump my 2nd post on this topic, as I feel the above thought may have been overlooked slightly.

As stated in the quoted text, this will work better in M&A, Site Discussion and Gear Talk.

I completely agree with you - not necessarily that it would work everywhere but that there are circumstances that highlighted information could be extremely helpful.

The whole reasoning behind us doing this is to open up these possibilities. For instance, if we had a way of switching into top rated ordering, you could go into a Gear Talk thread, M&A or any other that seeks information and simply see which is the top rated posts. Those likely would be the best answers to a question.

Sort of like how Stackoverflow works - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7278029/rails-3-1-asset-precompilation-include-all-javascript-files

When you need a question answered, its super helpful to be able to see what is the top rated answer in a forum thread. Much more helpful than chronological ordering.

The reason we added this is we want to open up the capabilities to handle certain discussions in different ways.

On that note, I think it would be really cool to have a feature where you could order the posts in any subforum by replies or views, or rating. Then you could go into M&A and simply order threads by replies, and have all most popular threads easily accessible, instead of having to search for them or find them through a sticky.

We intend to work on giving loads of sorting options to help find stuff better. Yes we also intend on working on search, but that is a different discussion.

The whole idea is to up the ante on making the forums easier to navigate.

+1

So for the people that are claiming that the up/down post voting is the absolute spawn of satan - note that it is not possible to offer these types of sorting options without voting being a regular part of the site culture.

I'd also like to give this system a run with the upvote downvote buttons in a more visually appealing location. A huge part of my dislike for the system is where the buttons are. Looks gross. I think the whole thing would grow on a bunch of people who hate the system as is. And any idea when we'll see upvoting and downvoting posts on mobile NS?

Any suggestions?

We're going to completely overhaul the forum code soon so we can totally update all the templates of where/how stuff is displayed.

Mobile is under the same thing. We can't add cool new stuff to mobile without nuking the entire current mobile forum setup and overhauling what is on the site.

at which point we should also change the name of the site to reddit/ns

Really, I understand why people like this idea, but DON'T DO IT. The forums I think are the most unique and awesome part of NS. No other forum that I've ever looked at even comes close in terms of perfect layout and design. Everything is simple, it looks awesome, and it makes sense. The forums roll by with time. Great threads come and go, which is awesome because it allows new stuff to come out of nowhere.

But if you guys want to go ahead and change NS from being an awesome site into a combo skiing blog/subreddit, go right ahead and ruin every good thing this site has going for it.

I wouldn't be opposed to completely changing the look of them, but even something like this would look much neater and more out of the way imo. Or using the location under quote reply like I did and having them be plus/minus, either way.

this could kill the karma system - or at least the user ratings part of it. nowadays i find myself just up/down voting a comment where i used to +1 or -1 a guys karma.

The part that mystifies me about this line of thought is why do you not trust the people who made the site the way it is to improve it over time?

You joined in June 2005, which was just under one year after the current administration took over the site. Before that it was running for six years under Matt Harvey. Believe me when I say the NS that you had then is drastically different than the NS you're at now.

Hell, you would have jumped into the forums right after they were completely re-built by NoPoles, which happened on the drive from the US Freeskiing open to SIA in the back of an '82 Oldsmobile. There's plenty of features that you rely on today that did not exist in the past.

For me, it is all about evolution. We need to look to the future, and try to grow with the community. Something that stays stagnant forever eventually dies out - people drastically over-romanticize things being 'like the old days'.

As well, I have no idea why there is this idea that we won't work with the community to hammer out things. We have always done that, and always will. The big difference right now is that as a staff we're coming up with some more drastic changes to help continuously push the envelope of what Newschoolers is.

"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

-Steve Jobs

We're pushing the boundaries, and I guarantee you that as the future vision really starts to shape up more people will understand where the future of Newschoolers exists.

I understand that the site changes and evolves, and I remember how different it was back then. But at the core, it was, and always has been relatively the same.

My problem with this is that it isn't NS boldly forging a new path and introducing awesome new things that make it unique. It's just straight up adopting stuff from reddit, and putting it on NS.

That is evolution, but not the good kind.


(the homepage reference was a stretch I admit, because I really like the home page)

I just think you guys missed the mark with this one. That's all. It doesn't happen often, but it did this time.


and to illustrate the point, this thread's rating has fluctuated something like 1100 points in the last week, from deep in the negatives to deep in the positives. What's the point if a thread can go from shit rating, to amazing based on the whims of a few users?

i still don't understand why i (or anyone else) should care what a thread is rated?

Are you just ignoring all of Bishop's posts? He's explained the ratings' purpose several times now; it's a sorting mechanism to quickly identify popular or controversial threads.

First off, what I don't understand is why you aren't reading anything I'm posting?

Yes we have always listened to the community, but additionally it is an open discussion with both sides able to explain themselves. The first week of this thread was straight up lynch mob style when I wasn't here and telling people WHY this exists.

You can't make a statement like the community feedback is no longer important when I've been spending massive amounts of time every day since I came back to work early after having a kid to deal with this freaking thread. Most people take 5-6 weeks of paternity leave, but when I saw how south this had gone I literally cancelled the rest of it and jumped right back in the game.

I bleed newschoolers out my ears, and I have its best interestes at heart always. So don't ever accuse me again of not caring what you guys say. This is an open discussion though, and you need to listen to me as much as I need to listen to you.

In terms of you talking about us just taking ideas from other sites and implementing them here - this isn't a new thing - and we aren't just taking ideas directly. Life is all about influences... if you were to ask Kurt Cobain how he made Nirvana he would tell you that he tried to copy Scratch Acid and other weird punk bands. Early days at Newschoolers, the whole concept of forums was stolen from other sites, and when we implemented news it was taken from other ski media that had news on their sites.

Ideas are never new, you just borrow bits and pieces of them. You are looking through a very narrow view to house your negativity. I just happen to be open about where we take our influences from instead of pretending like we made this stuff up on our own. I mean look at Freeskier - its basically cold ripped off from the old version of Mashable. Everything is stolen and everything comes from somewhere else.

You also are totally off base with saying that this feature comes from Reddit. The obsession with us copying reddit has gotten completely out of control here. You are letting your anger cloud your vision for some reason. This feature is up/down voting yes - but that is everywhere on the internet. The core thing that Reddit does is post comment thread order based on rating, and keeps threading in the posts. If we took the up/down voting and eliminated latest view, then boom yes we'd be getting on reddit's dick.

Sites like Stackoverflow, Quora, Google product forums and many others implement a voting system. The reason we use up/down votes is because of Evan Millar -

http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html

Not because of Reddit. It provides solid mathematical data which allows the accurate comparison of different data sets on a website. Using the Wilson Score formula that Evan shows in his post, you can do wonders with properly sorting things on a website. This is what the up/down voting is for - it allows us to generate all kinds of accurate data out of the aggregate.

Will I take this feature down? Sure, if it comes to it we can re-think what we're doing here to try and accomplish the end goals. However, I refuse to just take it down because a few of you are really mad and making angry posts. Lets think about this a bit more carefully and actually work together on a new future of Newschoolers.

Trust me - if we just keep things exactly the way they are, leave them forever and you just keep making NSG posts in the same way its always been - this place will eventually stagnate and die out. You must be a part of the evolution, and you must stop being so incredibly angry at us for working on it. Join up, and together we can actually get something incredible done.

I'd just adjust that slightly:

The purpose of the rating system is to attach granular data to forum threads that will allow us to sort them in all kinds of different ways as well as give stronger data on member-to-member interactions within the forums.

so why should i (or anyone else) care?

sorry, i guess i should clarify. yes, bishop has done a fantastic job of trying to explain to all the mad people why this system is here. what i'm still trying to understand is why everyone is still bitching about it, 6 pages later, even though bishop has done a fantastic job of explaining why we all should just not care, because it doesn't actually affect the site in any way (much like the karma system). i will admit i haven't read all of bishop's posts, but that's only because i read a bunch of them already and they already answered everything that needs to be said about the system.
1. it rates threads
2. thread ratings don't matter
3. why is everyone so mad
4. shut the fuck up

You get 10/10 karma from me, sir.

My favorite thing about this is going into a perfectly good thread and just down voting every post then the thread gets a shit rating....

Says the person with 26,000 posts...

I'm too lazy to read through this thread to see if it has been brought up but are there any plans on making it possible to unrate a post?

i thought about this too, because i've accidentally clicked the button once or twice, but then i remember it doesn't matter.

Now that I've seen this feature for a while, I'm going to go ahead and retract my previous statements on this, as I was wrong as it really doesn't affect anything like I thought it would. Sorry!

You care way too much man.

the voting has grown on me when it first got put in i wasnt really feeling it but now pretty much every thread i go in i vote a couple posts. also it eliminates kids just quoting a post saying "this" cause you can just upvote it instead