Designated "Expert" Forum Users?

[Wallace Gasiewicz]

Cerebus has committed an unforgivable cultural misappropriation.

A dog (Cerebus, the dog that guards the gates of hell)  Should not be allowed appropriate feline culture


I do like the picture however, very nice.

[MK14]

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 ! 

I can think of good things about the Tea thread. They seem nice and friendly to each other, and it seems a fun place to hang out. It just seems crazy, that some of the most prominent, 'help others', forum users here, especially in the beginners section. Only get a relatively tiny percentage of the thanks (i.e. don't reach the forums top 10 most thanked people list), or end up last in it.
Whereas the people who do reach the top ten list, with unimaginably high thank counts. Seem to have got it, from the Tea thread, mostly.

Analogy:
It's like a competition, where the people who get in the top 10 table of that sport, get there, NOT because of being good at that sport (i.e. helpful posts in the beginners thread), but because of getting points for appearing on TV interviews, and sports CHAT shows (i.e. the Tea thread and so on).

tl;dr
The thanks total may be measuring the wrong parameters. So making it show up on everyone's forum icon post thing. Is just rubbing salt into the wounds.

[Cerebus]

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.

How often, in real life, is the jack-ass highly popular with their particular in-crowd? Think of the loud rugby/hockey/whatever player at college who was cheered on in their idiocy by by all the other players while the rest of the world went "Oh no, not him again!" as he bellowed his way into the bar? Their friends would up-vote them and with no countering down-vote they would appear universally popular. So, no, there's no reason that the total jack-asses will be kept in check by a public display of "thanks".

[PlainName]

Just to add my voice to a solution: the thanks system is almost perfectly OK, with the big fault that it is 'thanks'. For what? For answering, for not going off-piste, for thanking my post? IMO, 'thanks' is not appropriate because it's too wishy-washy and undescriptive.

I would vote for ed.k's 'valuable' suggestion. I would be very much happier to mark a post as 'valuable' than give the poster arbitrary and unknowable thanks. Make it like Stack Exchange where the rightness of an answer (or just some off-topic off-the-wall post) is, well, valuable.

'Valuable' has meaning where 'thanks' does not. There have been many posts where I would have liked to say "this is a great post" but 'thanks' is not the way to do that. Marking them valuable would have been a no-brainer.

[Cerebus]

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.

It was perfectly clear to the rest of us.

[Cerebus]

A dog (Cerebus, the dog that guards the gates of hell)  Should not be allowed appropriate feline culture

No, that's Cerberus (Kerberos, Κέρβερος). Blame Dave Sim for the spelling, and my friends Mike Collins and Kev Trease for me acquiring it as a nickname.

[MK14]

Learning from a Designated Expert:

vs learning from someone who knows (since we are at human behavior):

Thanks!!!

The first video is so, so funny. On the other hand, I've given you thanks for creating something, not directly connected to Electronics or helping beginners.
The second video seems interesting, but is taking a while to watch.

[Cerebus]

The thanks total may be measuring the wrong parameters. So making it show up on everyone's forum icon post thing. Is just rubbing salt into the wounds.

The nub there is a single 's', as in parameters. The thanks count is not measuring one parameter, but several, perhaps even including some that are diametrically imposed. (e.g. "social affability" versus "ability to challenge popularly held but incorrect factoids")

[Bud]

'Valuable' has meaning where 'thanks' does not. There have been many posts where I would have liked to say "this is a great post" but 'thanks' is not the way to do that. Marking them valuable would have been a no-brainer.

Valuable literally means "having a value". When I want to indicate I "Agree" with the poster it does not automatically means the post "holds a value" to me that I could make a use of. I just happened to be of a same opinion with the poster.

[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.

How often, in real life, is the jack-ass highly popular with their particular in-crowd? Think of the loud rugby/hockey/whatever player at college who was cheered on in their idiocy by by all the other players while the rest of the world went "Oh no, not him again!" as he bellowed his way into the bar? Their friends would up-vote them and with no countering down-vote they would appear universally popular. So, no, there's no reason that the total jack-asses will be kept in check by a public display of "thanks".

Like, Nigel Farage?  (I'm so, so sorry, I just could not resist the bait).

However, this forum is not your stereotypical pub environment and the people here are not in general the college jock type who get their ass handed to them by a wimp bitten by a radioactive spider.

[RoGeorge]

If you want to have a Social Score attached and displayed here, fine, I don't.  If you think a validation counter won't change the behavior on this particular forum, you are wrong.  It changed the whole planet already.

Any "score" is mind conditioning on long term.  It slowly erodes people's personality and steer it towards maximizing a score instead of just posting here because it's fun and interesting.  Pavlovian conditioning works on humans too, not only on dogs.



Seems like everybody lost the plot here:
- designated expert was voted as wrong
- thanks counter was voted already to be kept hidden

Yet we keep talking how to (re)name the Thanks.

And this is not a school, and nobody named any of us as the defender of beginner's potential damage.  This is all bullshit, and it won't increase the popularity or the money income.  In long term it will destroy the community AND the EEVblog forum.

I don't want to be an Influencer, and I don't want to be turned into a "Thanks Whore" either, or to lurk around places where people's behavior is driven by a score instead of genuine human interaction.  Won't add more to this.

[Sredni]

Yep, to keep egos out of the picture, the judgement should be on the answers alone.
And it does not matter that there would be only a positive evaluation, this being a 'back and forth' forum. In fact, is someone posts something like

2+2 = 5

_{this post was thanked/agreed upon 23 times}

someone else might post below

Sorry, no. That's wrong. 2+2 = 4

_{this post was thanked/agreed upon 345 times}

[Bud]

Do not kill youself making judgements. Read a post and move on with your life. Garanteed - tomorrow noone will remember who posted what yesterday.

[jonovid]

IMO this could quickly become problematic arms race between who is the top expert of experts in this or that

My so called expertise tapers off in the 1990s with fall in the use of thru hole components & the rise in SMD.  making todays electronics way too diverse
for any one individual to comprehend it all ,as I see it.

[nctnico]

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.

But what is your goal? How would this improve the EEVblog forum in your view? Should this thank/endorse feature even apply to all sections?

The parallels with Stackexchange have been brought up repeatedly; keep in mind that Stackexchange is also under much heavier moderation to keep discussions on-topic.

[magic]

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

Well, in such case I simply drop "thanks" to the poster who has relieved me of posting something I fully agree with. I'm not the only one.

And frankly, more often than that, I just roll my eyes at the utter inability of the OP to communicate and a dozen people trying to second-guess what the problem really is and writing walls of text which the OP likely doesn't need and may not even understand. Maybe that section is not really for me, but I read a lot of it. Also, maybe, just maybe, similar reasons exist why many others don't bother endorsing posts which have already been made.

Maybe the "thanks" button should simply be renamed "like" as on You Know Where, as that appears to be the best overall fit to how people use that thing in practice

edit
MK14, did you set up some bot to automatically like all my posts as soon as they are up?
Maybe I should like yours in return?

[rstofer]

How about an 'opt out' option?  I don't want to be graded by my peers and certainly not be newbies.  I'm willing to give up the ego points to avoid grading.  Just print '*' chars instead of a number.  Or, cause the field to overflow and maybe the default is to print asterisks.  Fortran does!

There was more but I used the Cut feature.

[PlainName]

'Valuable' has meaning where 'thanks' does not. There have been many posts where I would have liked to say "this is a great post" but 'thanks' is not the way to do that. Marking them valuable would have been a no-brainer.

Valuable literally means "having a value". When I want to indicate I "Agree" with the poster it does not automatically means the post "holds a value" to me that I could make a use of. I just happened to be of a same opinion with the poster.

It is whether the post has value to others - you know yourself if it's useful or valuable to you, this is about letting others know you think the information in it is valuable in relation the the thread. It is a decent answer, perhaps, or explains something well.

I would also suggest that users' 'valuable' count isn't shown (as the thanks count is now). It's not about who posted and entirely about the content, which stands alone.

[emece67]

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[magic]

I would also suggest that users' 'valuable' count isn't shown (as the thanks count is now). It's not about who posted and entirely about the content, which stands alone.

I don't disagree with the former, but if you like forums that are entirely about the content which stands alone, why not try 4chan instead? That's their mantra

[SiliconWizard]

Yep, to keep egos out of the picture, the judgement should be on the answers alone.

That's indeed yet another issue with scoring and status flags. They are largely dependent on the person and not just the individual contributions themselves. That's a well know social effect. The exact same answer from two different people with different social images and status will usually get very different reactions.

You can see this all the time in all situations. But just on this forum, the same happens. In many threads, you'll see several people basically posting the same answer. Some will get a 'thanks', some won't (and no, not necessarily following posting order). What's the value in that? Is adding more buttons and flags going to make things better? I doubt it.

But I'm not surprised Dave got this kind of suggestion. As I said, many people these days just want quick answers to their questions, without having to further work on understanding the answers, checking that they are relevant. They just want quick recipes and move on. That's the opposite of learning.

And, flags and counters are useless if you are a regular on a forum and half know the other regulars and their usual contributions. So that "need" arises mainly from the non-regular users, a number of which fall into the above category; they'll post once, will want quick and authoritative answers, will not even reply back, and you'll never see them again. Until next question.

[PlainName]

if you like forums that are entirely about the content which stands alone

The value of the post in relation to the thread. Not the forum, not the poster, not other threads.

[PlainName]

you'll see several people basically posting the same answer. Some will get a 'thanks', some won't (and no, not necessarily following posting order)

Part of it may be not to reward a poster who is usually a pillock, but often it's merely which post one comes across first. People often drop into threads at random posts (where 'random' may actually mean 'latest') so just because one post was entered first that doesn't mean it's the first that will be seen. The first actual post may never be seen by the thanker.

[rstofer]

if you like forums that are entirely about the content which stands alone

The value of the post in relation to the thread. Not the forum, not the poster, not other threads.

In whose opinion?  Do I even care about their opinion?  Hint:  I'm too old to care!

This whole topic is about drive-by questions (and ego points but I'll let that rest awhile).  The OP has an ill defined problem and often doesn't reply back when the other users have questions that need to be resolved before a solution can be proposed.  As stated above, they don't want to learn the approach to finding a solution, they want a quick number.  A hit-and-run question...

And they haven't even tried Google.  All of human knowledge is available on Google including an answer to their question.  Quick self-survey, how many times have you used a Google link to answer a question without adding much personal content?  Sometimes Wikipedia has really good explanations.

Even reading the Wiki seems to be too much effort, they just want a number and they want somebody else to do the work for them.  And complain when they don't get it in the first reply.  So they want to identify the experts and will probably wonder why none of them have responded.  Are the experts really going to get involved with every question posted in every forum?  It's going to be a full time job!

Numbers guys:  What is the average number of new threads opened per day?

[emece67]

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