forum idea: article ratings?

[FrankBuss]

What do you think about an article rating system, as known from http://stackoverflow.com ? Especially for threads with dozens of pages, sometimes questions are asked again and again, because no one wants to read all pages, if not following it from the beginning. Maybe some kind of voting system, or the creator of an article could mark an article as "solved my problem", like on stackoverflow, which would be useful for the beginners section. If someone doesn't like the rating system, it could be disabled as a profile option.

[SeanB]

I have seen it on other forums, and it is invariably either almost universally ignored or you only get a 1 or 5 star rating.

[Excavatoree]

I have seen it on other forums, and it is invariably either almost universally ignored or you only get a 1 or 5 star rating.

Exactly.  If it's not ignored, it becomes a popularity contest - give people you like 5 stars; give people you don't like 1 or 0.

[FrankBuss]

Somehow it works on stackoverflow. Usually the good rated answers for a question are indeed good answers.

[psycho0815]

I think it could work here. We're all somewhat professional und civilized after all aren't we?

[EEVblog]

This forum did have a 5 star rating system for posts but hardly anyone used it, so I switched it off.
I can add anything from the SMF forum mods website that is compatible with our version.
But ideas about custom features etc are pretty moot, because who's going to write it?

[nctnico]

I agree it works well on stackoverflow. However on this forum the questions aren't very specific so there usually are many correct answers to a question.

[tom66]

And more people browse Stack Overflow than eevblog forum, so more data for point ranking.

[FrankBuss]

I browsed the plugins and this could be useful for the "Beginners" section: http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=3803 But I'm not sure, nctnico has a point.

I agree it works well on stackoverflow. However on this forum the questions aren't very specific so there usually are many correct answers to a question.

Right. I think it works for stackoverflow because they have some rules how to post and the combination of all the aspects of their rating system, answer sort order etc. This forum is more casual, and we all like it.

Maybe as a workaround for the problem with long threads, the originator of the thread could modify the first posting of it with the important information that emerged during the discussion, as I've already seen in some threads. Something which could be added as a recommendation to "NEWBIES PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING".

[GeoffS]

There's also a mod to 'like' a post but it does seem to be a resources hog and not recommended for large forums.
It is being considered as standard for a future version of SMF

[Lurch]

Before you go and add a load of useless mods consider how many people think that the forum is missing critical features like a like button. How many people using this forum think 'hmm, need to know how many stars this topic has'. I read a few forums where this sort of thing is implemented on various platforms and it is distracting at best, completely useless at worst. One of the benefits of this forum over others is that it is simple and clean. Adding ratings and likes will spoil that.

[Hypernova]

Five Star thread! Would read again!

Basically that's what it degenerates into.

[Harvs]

I agree it works well on stackoverflow. However on this forum the questions aren't very specific so there usually are many correct answers to a question.

As someone searching for a code snippet to explain how to do something, the stackoverflow system is great.

However, my experience with it from the perspective of someone asking a non-trivial question is terrible (i.e. a question where you couldn't find the answer yourself by trawling through the API documentation).

Firstly there was a pissing match between mods, because one who clearly english wasn't their first language decided they would correct my question to their interpretation of the english language (i.e. mangle a perfectly structured sentence) and the other mod took exception to that.

Then some other chap who clearly didn't have a very deep understanding of the Android system kept coming up with answers that simply wouldn't work then got pissed off because I didn't want to choose his answer and flag the question solved.

I think a lot more actual "learning" goes on in this forum per post than the stack overflow model.