Re^2: Troll Warning

It has nothing to do with vote budget, but I've often wished that I could see the various votes on a node prior to reading it and/or voting on it, and that this feature was configurable in user settings. See votes all the time, see votes only after voting, never see votes. Yes, I know that I could see some votes this way so long as they made it to Best/Worst nodes, but what about those that didn't?

Whether or not other votes impact the way I vote, if I choose to, is beside the point. It is more a matter of content filtering. Sometimes the number of votes tell you something that the title of the node does not. Isn't this effectively what occurs when you are browsing "Best/Worst nodes?" You're viewing nodes that people felt positive enough to vote for or against. Perhaps they agreed, Perhaps they found it useful, or (unfortunately) maybe they just like who posted it...

It could affect whether or not I choose to read a long post, and it may give me an additional way to judge the reliability of a response. Not a definitive way, but one nonetheless. There are lots of nodes, and I don't have time to read them all. So I figure a "rough" ranking is sometimes better than no ranking (A broken watch is exactly right twice a day, and one that is 10 minutes off never is, yet which is more useful?). Sometimes I'll read a node solely based on the person who posted it, or even because of a person who responded.

I find that I sometimes will use this approach when browsing through user-submitted book/movie reviews on other sites. Sometimes, I find myself wanting to focusing on the extreme good, and the extreme bad reviews, and skip the middle-of-the-road comments. I also see it similar to viewing survey results without ever taking part in the survey.

I don't think I get any more value from seeing this information once I've voted, than before. It just tells me how others felt about the same node. At that point, generally speaking, I don't really care how others voted. I've already read it, formed an opinion, and cared enough to vote. I will likely be more interested in what other people had to say rather than vote at that point.

Update: I've thought about this posting several times since writing it, and I haven't read anything since that's changed my opinion, but being a bit critical, I think I mispresented my position and may have given the impression that the reputation was sufficiently useful to use by itself as a sole indicator on the value of a node. While I believe reputation can have value, I think that value is lessened when taken in isolation of other criteria.

I primarily browse Perlmonks through Recently Active Threads, and use whatever information is available to determine whether or not I'm going to look at a node, much less vote on it. While this may be slightly unfair to judge a node by it's title, author, number of responses, and identity of those who respond, I don't really care.

I have a finite amount of time in which to browse the site, and that doesn't allow my the luxury of reading everything. I view the reputation as one more potential criteria that could be useful.

An isolated reputation alone tells you one story, and not the whole story, however a reputation taken in the context of a particular thread may have value. Nodes in topics that attract a lot of interest (and often responses) tend to have higher reputations than nodes in niche topics, so comparing nodes in different threads seems useless to me. Witin the context of a thread however, I find that it can serve as a general indicator of perceived value. How did individuals who were interested in the subject matter rate the node... that sort of thing.

Just a few parting thoughts on this topic, since I don't expect to author many more (if any) nodes on this subject again.

Comment on Re^2: Troll Warning

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Re^3: Troll Warning by chromatic (Archbishop) on Nov 17, 2005 at 22:54 UTC
One node of mine has a reputation of 6 right now. Another has a reputation of 14. One has a reputation of 39 and another 81. What can you learn from that? By focusing on the particular value of a node's reputation, you can answer only one question: what is the current value of upvotes minus downvotes for this particular node? You cannot answer several other statistically relevant questions such as: What is the total number of people who voted on this node? What is the total number of people who read this node? What is the total number of people who would have voted on this node if they had sufficient votes to do so? How many votes did this node receive in comparison to other nodes today? How many votes will this node receive in the future? What is the average daily distribution of votes by time? What is the current reputation of this node in comparison to all other nodes in this thread, of the day, and in the system altogether? What is the current maximum or minimum possible value for this node? There are likely many other important questions. Looking at even that minimal list, it's easy for me to say that the single numeric reputation of any single node is exceedingly useless. You're welcome to intuit some shade of meaning from that number, but that single number is admirably short of any sort of context that can put it into a statistically relevant and analyzable setting.	[reply]
Re^4: Troll Warning by demerphq (Chancellor) on Nov 18, 2005 at 11:38 UTC
One node of mine has a reputation of 6 right now. Another has a reputation of 14. One has a reputation of 39 and another 81. What can you learn from that? That none of the nodes was so controversial, or so obviously wrong that it didnt get downvoted into oblivion. And it also suggests that it won't be a total waste of time reading them (presuming one is interested in the subject matter.) I find all these arguments about how rep means nothing to be pretty bogus. Positive noderep by itself only really suggests that a node doesnt have many characteristics that would lead it to be downvoted. But i think that a negative noderep is highly indicative of various things. It suggests the node for one reason or another is controversial, it suggests that care should be taken when relying on the information in the node, it suggests that a fair of number of presumably reasonable people thought it was worth receiving negative feedback. I have written nodes that contained 100% accurate information, detailed code and analaysis but that was presented in an agressive, rude, or otherwise unsocial way. Unsurprisingly these nodes have been downvoted into the negative. And you know what, when I go back and review those nodes I generally tend to wince and think the downvoting was deserved. So in short, I think that there is a point that postive noderep is probably not a very useful metric, but negative noderep in my experience almost always is deserved. --- $world=~s/war/peace/g	[reply]
Re^4: Troll Warning by rcseege (Pilgrim) on Nov 18, 2005 at 00:47 UTC
What can you learn from that? Admittedly, little to nothing, and I pretty much agree with your post. For nodes that have only a few responses, you might have a rough, and arguably inaccurate idea of how others felt about the various responses, and that could add or subtract weight to someone's comments. Keep in mind, my take is flawed because it's based more on my own personal habits when it comes to voting than anything else. I rarely, if ever, vote negatively, and typicically when I vote, it's more a way of saying, "Yeah.. I found that interesting or worthwhile. I may not even necessarily agree with it, though more often than not it's a vote of general agreement. It's more in line with other sites that allow others to say that they found someone else's comments helpful ("There were X others who found this review useful..") Is it scientific? No. Is it statistically sound? Again, no. Keeping in mind the numerous and possibly random way in which some people vote, I'm amazed at how often reputation -- most often on some of the smaller threads seems to fairly accurately (IMO) reflect the quality of a node within a thread. I don't think it's ever been the only reason why I've ever looked at a node, but then again, I have looked at some nodes that I never would have seen if they hadn't appeared in the "best/worst" lists, so I guess - yes, in a sense I've occasionally found it useful. That probably doesn't reflect very positively on my judgement, but there you go... My question to you would be why show this information at all to anyone but the person who wrote the node, if it's so useless? What does the act of me voting positively or negatively on a node have to do with making the information any more or less worthy of being viewed? Just curious, and trying (but failing) to see the downsides of seeing the reputation of a node prior to voting.	[reply]
Re^5: Troll Warning by chromatic (Archbishop) on Nov 18, 2005 at 01:33 UTC
If it were up to me alone and if Perl Monks had never displayed node reputation to anyone but the owner, I wouldn't show it at all. I think it's useful within the context of a thread for arranging nodes in order from highest reputation to lowest and within the context of PM as a whole for showing, to some degree, the collective value of an individual's participation. That's about it though.	[reply]