http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=169150


in reply to Node Tension

After having seen discussions about XP, displaying votes, tension indicators and other similar threads, with all the give and take, I've ended up ambivalent.

One of the good things about PM is the good-natured atmosphere and general positiveness about posting both excellent, and stooopid, questions. It's a relatively safe place for getting answers, tutoring, some acculturation (or is that occulturation :), news, reviews, peer review and more.

I have wondered if displaying votes prior to voting is a bad thing - and I think it is (the lemming effect).

Would displaying the downvotes post-voting be a bad thing? Possibly, in that it might have an inhibiting effect on new arrivals which is a bad thing. BUU's admirable tenaciousness notwithstanding :), I can see others reacting badly to seeing the negative side of their posts.

However, to prevent overly complex solutions from evolving, maybe it's the simplest, best thing to do to just stay basic and not introduce too many things that need CB interpretation ('Hey y'all, what's this tension stuff?'). However, some of the suggestions are really interesting.

Could it be adequate to show the #pos, #neg, #ttl, and let it go at that? Could the tension rating be as simple as the percentage of positive votes/ttl? (yeah, that means light voted nodes get punished with a possible larger % of neg votes...)

It's also interesting to me that we downgrade the actual value of a monk's XP (and rightly so), we sure pay a lot of attention to threads like this! lol. The voting/experience system is an intriguing feature, and like good art, allows individual interpretations.

Like it or not, it seems that it's certainly part of the fabric of features (including our good fortune of having such able monks) that keep PM interesting.

0.02