Designated "Expert" Forum Users?

[Nominal Animal]

What is the purported value of such indication of disagreement?

Value being, if you see a post that has 10 disagreements and no agreements, then likely the information is not accurate and can be ignored.

Of course, its not a common occurrence, but it could apply to trolls or "unintentional" trolls and mostly in the beginners section.

That is incorrect, in my experience on Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange.  You are associating unpopularity with inaccurate, and experience shows the two are not correlated at all in discussion forums.

A much more realistic scenario is that answers that do not immediately tell the asker what to type or put into their design or which button to press, get downvoted.
Members whose approach or tone is perceived as unpleasant, answers that are perceived as too long or too hard, will get downvoted because of nontechnical reasons.

I know this, because it happened to me at StackOverflow and StackExchange.  Whenever I engaged an Expert in comments pointing out an error in their answer, I'd get random downvotes in my other answers for the next week or so.  Not by that Expert themselves, I don't think, but by arselickers who believe that Authority Knows Best, and arguing with or pointing out an error their Favourite Authority made is impolite and deserving of retaliation.  (You know, like when at university, when you asked a tough question from some lecturer, and you'd get some very hostile, deadly stares from other students, because I'm Audaciously Interrupting the Authority.)

I have had about a dozen email contacts about my various answers at StackOverflow (Linux + C questions), each one in a topic where I have at most one or two upvotes, where they found my answer extremely useful.  This indicates to me that the Vote counts are absolutely NOT RELATED to the usefulness of my answers.  They only reflect the popularity of that answer.

Even here on EEVBlog, I've participated in threads (see Programming and Microcontroller sections) where the original asker has been initially quite hostile towards my advice, and given half a chance, would have silenced me.  Only thorough patient perseverence and examples have I gotten them to understand their problem, and the details of my suggested solution.  If downvotes were implemented, and you'd trust them to indicate anything, I'd be silenced in these.

Is the intent to remove members like myself, and push answers towards StackOverflow/StackExchange "tell the OP what they want to hear, or your popularity will take a hit" culture?

[cdev]

Very good point. Even when I am asking questions, whatever answer I get even if its off topic, I learn something, and thats the most rewarding thing about being here.

[xrunner]

Thanks can be “withdrawn” too ya know, as I’ve indicated below my “counter”. People: don’t ever diss me or I’ll go back and un-thank every thanks I ever gave you!

Come to think of it my count seems lower than it used to be …

 

[thm_w]

That is incorrect, in my experience on Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange.  You are associating unpopularity with inaccurate, and experience shows the two are not correlated at all in discussion forums.

A much more realistic scenario is that answers that do not immediately tell the asker what to type or put into their design or which button to press, get downvoted.

Yet that doesn't happen here.
Almost any time someone says "OP, you need to post more information, or explain what you are trying to do before we can answer" they get a positive response.

As I noted, theoretical "downvotes" are only relevant in that thread, to that post. Outside of that they should have no meaning or value.

[Gregg]

The thanks that really count are the posts by the OP sincerely thanking a forum member for their input / help. If there were some way to link this style of thanks to a member’s profile, it could be helpful.  Maybe a member could go to their own profile and select a thread that person set up and select an option to add a “special thanks” post to their thread that would also show up as part of the profile for those being thanked.  In addition, this thanks post could be edited by the OP to add others to the thanked list and with each new addition moved to the last entry. 
In other words, positive reinforcement for on topic help as viewed by the person helped. I can see a downside where the overly thankful member might need interference from the mods to permanently disable this feature from his profile.  Also recipients of such thanks should be able to delete them from their profile.

it is not always the result that matters; it can be how you got there that matters most

The path to finding the answer in many cases the real learning experience that can be helpful for a lifetime.  Just getting a quick expert answer is a lot like having an older sibling do your homework for you rather than learning the concept

[emece67]

.

[Nominal Animal]

Very good point. Even when I am asking questions, whatever answer I get even if its off topic, I learn something, and thats the most rewarding thing about being here.

Me too.  I don't like being the only one who answers, because it is those other viewpoints that make for interesting discussions and exploration of the solution space.


Now, it can be bewildering to new members and anyone not used to the thread getting too deep into the details if the OP does not actively participate to focus the discussion, and I can definitely see the underlying problem the suggested "designated Expert forum users" and now displayed "Thanks: counts" are supposed to solve: helping new members (and everyone else, really) with tools on how to differentiate between useful answers and less than useful ones.

I don't like the numerical count being shown at all, because it is a step too far toward social gamification.  Not intentionally, perhaps, but we've seen in other forums how that ends up being the end result.

My preferred suggestion (separate Agree button) is not technically available at that point, so instead, to solve that underlying problem the recent change and the suggested designated Expert forum users are intended to solve, I am suggesting tweaking the Thanks button a bit, adding to it an orthogonal social purpose, making it into an Thanks/Agree button instead.  (Or, if you like, Endorse.  I don't like it, but it describes the intent, and me fail English anyway.)

The trick is that the numerical count is not shown, and that it is up to the readers to decide whether the members who pushed that for a specific post are thanking or agreeing with it (or what kind of mix between the two is intended).  Since there is no post, it cannot be too severe an endorsement; just equivalent to a nod, a brightening expression and agreement noises.  For anything actually important or meaningful, we express ourselves in text.

Because there is no numerical count, new users may initially look for answers that have several endorsers.  That is okay, even though it is kinda-sorta misleading.  They will soon discover that depending on the subject, it is a good idea to look at what the endorser has posted in other threads, because that helps evaluate the "worth" of the endorsement in each individual case.   For example, like if I Nominal Animal were to endorse a post in the TEA thread, while I have basically no test equipment myself, and don't participate in fixing or calibration topics, it's obvious that my endorsement is more of the "Thank you, I find this informative!" sort, than any kind of "I lend credence to this post", because I have none (no credence with respect to test equipment, that is).

See?  I am proposing a minimally invasive, delicate change (mostly affecting past Thanks, which does worry me) that is easy to fine-tune later on, being just text in the forum interfaces.  Yet, because of the above, I truly believe it would at least partially address the underlying issues, and move "posting culture" here in a positive direction (because it makes endorsing existing answers easier, thus hopefully reducing the cases where a suggestion post "ends" a thread with the asker having no way to tell if that is because nobody endorses it, or because others see the existing answer as sufficient but don't want to post a "+1" message).

Now, I know I am repeating this.  The reason I'm doing so is not because I want Dave to implement this.  The reason is that I want to see why others believe this would not work.  There are a small number of members who seem to agree this might work –– at least would be test-worthy, similarly to the Thanked: counter now shown ––, but others seem to disagree, or at least do not endorse the idea.  I want to know why, because as I above explain, I believe it would solve the underlying problem; and knowing why others disagree would be very valuable information to myself.  I am perfectly aware that I may be wrong, and since there are lots of members all over the world here, knowing the reasons to the disagreement would be much more valuable than knowing they (or even how many) disagree.

See?
Knowing someone disagrees is not useful information.
Knowing the reasons they disagree is valuable information.
Knowing someone endorses an idea, even mildly, may be useful information.
Knowing the reasons they endorse the idea is very valuable information.

The second and fourth points are conveyed in posts.  The third one is useful, if there is a way to evaluate each endorsement by looking their other posts; the number of endorsements is not actually useful, because the 'value' of each individual endorsement varies from not useful to useful.  Knowing there are X of them, without any way to quantify them, is deceptive: it looks and feels useful, but is not in reality.  As to the fourth point, because there is an infinity of reasons for disagreement, from the color of the bike shed to the typos in the post, with only a small fraction of reasons being valid (technical points related to the subject at hand), it is far more likely that the first (downvotes) will be misused, provably so if there is a numerical counter shown.  Downvoting only works if you only measure popularity.  Trying to use it for anything else is futile.

[EEVblog]

Now, it can be bewildering to new members and anyone not used to the thread getting too deep into the details if the OP does not actively participate to focus the discussion, and I can definitely see the underlying problem the suggested "designated Expert forum users" and now displayed "Thanks: counts" are supposed to solve: helping new members (and everyone else, really) with tools on how to differentiate between useful answers and less than useful ones.

I think changing it from Thanks might have some value.
As for Endorse, I have Thanked posts before not because I endorse or even necessarily agree with them, but because they went to a lot of effort to provide the response.
Both a Thanks and Endorse like option would be nice.

[tautech]

Now, it can be bewildering to new members and anyone not used to the thread getting too deep into the details if the OP does not actively participate to focus the discussion, and I can definitely see the underlying problem the suggested "designated Expert forum users" and now displayed "Thanks: counts" are supposed to solve: helping new members (and everyone else, really) with tools on how to differentiate between useful answers and less than useful ones.

I think changing it from Thanks might have some value.
As for Endorse, I have Thanked posts before not because I endorse or even necessarily agree with them, but because they went to a lot of effort to provide the response.
Both a Thanks and Endorse like option would be nice.

Yet we've been here before Dave and few wanted their Thanks shown and why would you, how hard is it even for a newbie to research the history of a members reply ?
Now it's visible to anyone even if they're not logged in....or would you rather not have members logged in so to reduce the load on the server.
The poll even reflects ~2/3rds of members think a badge is a bad idea, a percentage that has increased slightly over the past few days.
Then there's those that have taken the piss editing their sig or profile to display what they think of all this.

Dunno what you're try to accomplish Dave but the mood of this thread is you need ditch it.

[eti]

Our group lost before we even knew there was a problem.

Downvotes remind me of an occurrence when I was a young whippersnapper doing IT support at a University Dept. a quarter of a century ago.

One of the teachers had noticed a problem on one of the computers in a classroom (PPC Macs).  Instead of letting me know, they decided that a post-it note on the classroom door would suffice.  It read: "Nominal Animal, one of the computers has a problem.  Please fix."

To reiterate, downvotes are NOT USEFUL, unless they intend to gauge popularity and nothing but popularity.  And I for one am not interested in popularity contests.

Someone actually referred to you as “Nominal Animal”, on a note, in ACTUAL REAL LIFE?!

That’s either a lie, or if it’s true, I worry about the sanity of those who take their aliases a bit too seriously 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[Ed.Kloonk]

It's Mr. Animal to you!

[Nominal Animal]

Someone actually referred to you as “Nominal Animal”, on a note, in ACTUAL REAL LIFE?!

No.  I wrote it in italics, to indicate that in real life, it had my actual first name instead.  The other option would have been to write "[Nominal Animal], one of the ..."
Apparently, I chose a poor way to indicate this replacement.  Apologies.

[Nominal Animal]

Both a Thanks and Endorse like option would be nice.

This is SMF 2.0.18, right?  With the "Say thanks" -feature provided by kelvincool's Say Thanks v1.3.6?

If so, creating a variant that differs by the visible texts and the database keys, so that it can safely be installed in parallel with the Say Thanks itself (mostly replacing 'say_thanks', 'saythanks' and upper/lower/camelcase variants with 'i_agree', 'iagree', and similar), would not be much work.  (I'd unpack the package in two directories, modify one, and regularly compare the changes with e.g. diff).  Most work would be in testing the modified module with a test installation of SMF 2.0.18, since friends don't let friends test any code in production, ever.  Since kelvincool licensed the module under CC BY 3.0, this would be perfectly allowed/acceptable/legal, too.

[fourfathom]

The good news is that as long as these various counts just show as a couple of lines under the member ID, probably nobody is going to pay them much attention.  One can hope, anyway.  I voted "NFW"

[Siwastaja]

Sometimes  an expert can be the wrong person to explain things to a beginner.

The thing I’ve often seen, when you are an expert, someone asks a question and you give a reply that makes perfect sense to you, but leaves the question asker totally baffled.

The problem isn't being an expert, the problem is either:

• Con expertise - remember, true experts understand the very basics well, and once you understand something well, it's usually easy to explain, too. Many who act like experts, are actually not, and hence struggle explaining the thing to beginners. Leaving others baffled is a way to hide your incapabilities and make others think you truly must be an expert.
• Personal unsuitability for teaching others. Teaching is a skill of its own, many just are not good at it. But they sucked at it even when they were beginners themselves. It's not the expertise that took the skill away.

[magic]

If you split "thanks" into "thanks" and "agree", you will be splitting them into four categories next year

Pedantry (you can also choose to read it: autism ) is what fuels sites like W***pedia and St*ck and pedantry runaway is what inevitably drives even the pedants out of there. Yes, using a single "like" button for every form of positive reaction is silly. But better silly than pedant and no one is forced to use it in the first place - the old "reply" button still works for those willing to put in enough effort to actually elaborate on what they agree with, so as not to look silly by simply clicking "like".

Those people will always feel silly by clicking certain canned response buttons in certain situations, no matter how many buttons there are. The solution isn't more buttons, but fewer - they are a silly idea in the first place

"Thanks" was supposed to remove pollution with single line posts saying "thank you" or "cool project bro". I ask, where are the threads polluted with single line "I agree" posts?

[thinkfat]

IMHO, a public display of the "thanks" counter can be a valuable contribution to overall forum climate.
As it is public, people will in general seek to increase it. And I think they will find out it helps not to be a total jack-ass.
An option to disable the public display for one's personal profile, for those who absolutely despise it, would be welcome.

[wilfred]

• What problem/deficiency are we attempting to solve by implementing this?

That's the key question. Hard to solve a problem before you clearly know what it is. It is the same with "thanks". I use thanks to reward someone who put some effort into helping someone. Using it to say "I agree with this" is the thing that needs to be resolved there. It devalues the thanks.

[Nominal Animal]

"Thanks" was supposed to remove pollution with single line posts saying "thank you" or "cool project bro". I ask, where are the threads polluted with single line "I agree" posts?

The "I agree" would solve a completely different problem: when someone asks a question, with one or a couple of suggestions, but no further discussion; and to help new members assess suggestions provided (if existing contributing members started endorsing suggestions they consider worthwhile especially in the Beginner forum).

Because we do not want to pollute the threads with "I agree" posts, we are now silent, and in many cases leave the askers hanging, with beginners having difficulties in assessing suggestions they receive.  Elsewhere, threads often suddenly end with a final suggestion, but nobody can tell exactly why the thread ended there: whether it happened because the suggestion was good, or perhaps because the suggestion is so silly everyone else got fed up with the topic and moved to more interesting things.  We cannot tell.  The purpose of the Agree/Endorse button would be to help with this.

The purpose of an Agree button is to not avoid single line posts, but to solve the above problem.  Functionally, the Agree/Endorsement is similar to existing Thanks, but its purpose is completely orthogonal/independent/separate.

I do not know whether the forum needs it.  I do not know whether having separate Thanks and Agree/Endorse buttons is better, or if merging the current Agree button into Agree/Endorse (into Thanks/Endorse, say) is better.  I only know that there is an underlying problem (as I once again describe here above), that prompted Dave to consider designating "Expert" Forum Users.  How big is that problem, I do not know.  But I know that most experienced members that feel comfortable participating here are the most unlikely to perceive that problem, or acknowledge it exists.  My own experience says the problem exists.  I am suggesting options for Dave to consider, and others to shoot down by showing why the suggestions would not work, and hopefully suggest something that has a better chance of working.

I do know that adding upvote/downvote counters will not help with this problem.  Thus far, everywhere they've been used that I know of, they devolve into measuring popularity only, with minimal to no correlation to usefulness or correctness at all.

Claiming that adding this one feature will inevitably lead to a proliferation of such features, and therefore should be rejected, is nonsensical.  It is arguing a step should not be taken because it is likely to lead to additional steps and walking that far is undesirable.  There is nothing automatic in this, nothing that indicates the one step would be followed by further, similar steps.  Adding even a single step like this is very nontrivial.

(I know, having looked at the exact sources for the Say Thanks extension, that I could easily craft the new plugin; but the security specialist in me says that Dave would be silly to trust me, someone they've considered a Troll at not so distant past.  In fact, my advice to Dave is to not trust anyone without having several eyeball checks by people with experience in server-side PHP, carefully checking and comparing such new extension to the existing Say Thanks one for suspicious differences.  I know several members here who could do such checking, but again, the security specialist in me says that me mentioning their names should immediately disqualify them.  [I did mention my approach to security issues has been described "paranoid"; but it is effective.])

Besides, if I were to help with such a new extension, I would only do so if the current Thanked: numerical counter is removed first, because I believe such numerical counters cause more harm than can be regained by a separate Agreed/Endorsement button would. 

[MK14]

people will in general seek to increase it

Which is the exact reason why it shouldn't be displayed (the totals), for anyone.

Users should be posting, because they want to, it is fun, they want to help people. If they see the thread starter (OP), mostly/fully ignore the posters in their thread. Those same people will stop posting in that thread (perhaps), and stop replying to that OP.

Making people post, because that counter/line GOES UP, UP UP .....

Means that they are posting for different (and arguably the WRONG) reasons.

So you might get quick, not necessarily that accurate posts, which the poster considers are enough to get more THANKS (counts). But the posts are just quick, not especially useful ones. (Dare I point people to the Tea thread, to see what happens, when the posts are mainly orientated to get thanks, in my opinion). Hence things like, post a cat picture or post a dog picture, type of threads.

Which can cause (motivate people), to create all sorts of CAT/DOG/RANT/YOUTUBE-VIDEO content threads, to attract THANKS (counts).

Which (can) then leads on to lots of off-topic threads, uninteresting threads for those wanting real technical threads, on a forum they are a member of. It can then attract the wrong sort of new forum members (not trying to be rude, but imagine if a facebook cat lover, joins, just to post in the CAT thread, Cooking Threads area and post crazy/silly electronics questions, which are so hapless, that no one here, can possibly help them).

So a THANKS orientated forum, might sound like a very good idea. The intentions were all there, all good ones. But in practice, it can lead to damage/destruction of the forum, in reality.

Example:
I'm already fed up with the thanks counter being so visible and feel rather inadequacy being on here, as there are so many, members, with thousands and thousands of thanks. It makes me feel bad. Even though, I know in some cases. It just meant they participated in one of the overly popular threads, and/or have been especially helpful to lots of people.

tl;dr
It could cause a considerably reduction in the proper/longer/decent technical forum posts. Which some here, are really looking for. Hence an increase in much less useful, Cat/Dog/Tea like threads, which some of us just are NOT interested in, most of the time. (The Tea thread can be interesting, but in a proper technical way, it is more of a quick chat, post a picture and get lots of thanks counts for it, type of thread. From what I have seen of it).

N.B. I don't mind there being such threads, but if THANKS counts, being visible. Makes such threads, increase out of control. I'd be disappointed.

[Brumby]

Change for the sake of change is a bad reason.  Change must have clear purpose and a structure to achieve that purpose - with minimal negative impact.

Even with the efforts made, I still don't see any solutions that stand out as being a clear and valued improvement over what we have now. 


What I WILL say - and quite emphatically - is that there should NOT be any form of negative scoring.  I have little faith in such mechanisms being able to offer anything positive and they have the inherent ability to be weaponised, with (as others have stated) collaborative assaults all too easy to launch.

Please, do NOT venture down that path.

[Bud]

The Tea thread can be interesting, but in a proper technical way, it is more of a quick chat, post a picture and get lots of thanks counts for it, type of thread.

It is a THERAPY thread. If people say thank it means the post achieved its therapeutic goal ! 

[Someone]

Which can cause (motivate people), to create all sorts of CAT/DOG/RANT/YOUTUBE-VIDEO content threads, to attract THANKS (counts).

Those are the users that end up on my ignore list!

[Cerebus]

But these voting schemes, and even more the new and super-evident thanks counter, may alleviate beginners of the work to read such answers and learn something. Instead they simply need to locate the more thanked poster in the thread and repeat what he said. Problem is that the more thanked poster may have got his thanks posting lovely images of kitten, whereas the beginner is asking about best practices when biasing reciprocating coaxial DIACs in assembly language, a matter that has no evident relation to kitten.

[RoGeorge]

Learning from a Designated Expert: