What's with the 'Rating' and downvote options?

profdanger said:

my mother. She loves conflict

Mine was like that too. She got in hysterics when anything went wrong, over-compensating for her sense of failure. My brother and I never got praise or feedback. After she died, I found a suitcase under her bed filled with my school reports and exam results. I finally got over the anger about this in my late 60's, when I stopped over-exerting myself to 'win' and being angry when I experienced failure. After reading Alain de Botton's books, I feeler calmer and not hung up on 'success' or 'approval'. Have a look at his works - I hope they might help you!

Sporadic Sparkly said:

It caused a degree of amusement (to me) when the former member began making desperate pleas for people to unfriend him.

That's amazing

My understanding is that before the Online Community Forum became a thing (15 or so years ago), NAS has been offered a selection of templates. None were perfect, so they went with what they thought was the best one.

I don't know if it's still the case as I haven't checked, but in the area of the site where we can view and edit our profiles, there was a tab called 'Achievements' (or something like that), which contained a whole host of virtual medals that one could earn as a result of being an active member here. One of these medals was to have something like 100 friends. Yes, this on an online community forum for autists who often struggle to make and keep friends!

About 2 or 3 years ago, there was one former member who had somehow managed to earn that medal, and was curious to find out if he would lose that achievement if all those friends were unfriended. It caused a degree of amusement (to me) when the former member began making desperate pleas for people to unfriend him. It was on the understanding that members could re-friend him after the experiment, if they wished to do so.

I didn't even notice they were there, but now I'm wondering why posts are a star rating system but comments are upvotes and downvotes.

On a somewhat related note, does anyone else get annoyed by comments on the internet of "If I could give it 0 stars I would"?

I think I'd be happy with a fire and a public library.

You now have me thinking about decorating a cave! How cool would that be. As long as it had plug sockets I’d be fine ….. 

yeh sorry, I just go into tech talk and realise too late. 

I wasn't insulted by your comment about living in a cave, I'm sure many people here think that I do, I'm such a dinosaur, I was quite amused, even thinking of how I'd decorate my cave.

I dont' understand your second paragraph, I mean I know what the individual words mean, just not when they're put together like that.

The cave comment was aimed at the forum owners/engineers that built it, not you, or anyone else so sorry you interrupted it that way. 

A more modern forum would be functionally more stable, more responsive, optimised, and would definitely get rid of the stat rating. There’s a whole bunch of enhancements under the hood that no doubt could be made. 

I use up and down votes when someone has said something I agree with, often far better than I could, but the star ratings I ignore.

If I say something a bit contravercial, which I do fairly often, an up vote gives others a chance to agree with me, without sticking their heads above the parapet, of course the oposite is true too.

What would a more modern site look like? What would it have that this one desn't? Being a total technoklutz, I probably wouldn't know how to use a more modern site, to be honest I find photo's and stuff like that a bit intrusive and offputting, I dont' understand what emoji's mean, mostly I can't see them properly even with my glasses on. I must adit to not understand most of JB33's posts, way to techinical for me. Maybe I live in a cave?

I've just had a look under the hood to some extent (anyone can using F12, Devtools to inspect page elements and long running network calls). I can immediately see a large problem: they're using jQuery (and that's without looking at their API backend). I mean, unless you're living in a cave, no one really uses that anymore. It's dated, horrid to maintain when compared to modern web frameworks and more importantly, likely swamped in technical debt. My take on this is would be it's too time consuming to uplift this forum to a new tech stack and enrich the features. Either that, or the software devs there aren't sure how to without breaking something important - I bet it is like a house of cards. I wish I could actually see the code to give a more detailed evaluation. 

Summary: this forum uses dated web technology that is either too costly to upgrade or too problematic to. Likely both.

Unknown said:

I'd happily redesign and build a better forum myself.... for free

One member did offer to do so around a year ago, but I don't know if they contacted NAS:

 RE: Build a better forum 

Arise 

I'd happily redesign and build a better forum myself.... for free

Unknown said:

We should start a small army ... :D

This thread isn't about the ratings although that's been discussed here before:

 RE: List of forum faults part 2 

Don't try to go to newest as it hangs.

The thing is that many of us have tried to improve the forum and failed.

We were asked about emoticons and reactions and which type we would like, gave feedback and the old voting system remained.

We were asked once about what improvements could be made to the forum generally as a new one was being rolled out, and lots of suggestions were given, but we got back an almost identical forum with more faults.

 RE: New forum? Really? 

There have been suggestions too of changing to a different, more modern type of forum but I don't think there is the will or the funds from the people running this one to effect change.

I've come to the conclusion that we are stuck with it and that eventually, hopefully, faults will be remedied.

It's old and clanky but it's what we've got.

Yeh, can totally understand that. Worrying about what they're going to do to ruin you. I've felt that terribly at times - I think you have the right approach, just stay clear of conflict if you can. 

I think mine comes from my mother. She loves conflict and it is impossible to convince her she is wrong about anything. My brain absolutely shuts down when I need to defend my position, but she is able to stand her ground. I think that’s why I’m so meek and tend to just disappear when conflict arises.

Unknown said:

but do you ever wonder if the reason you're so afraid of it is that if you start, you just won't stop until you feel like justice has been served?

Weirdly it’s the opposite for me; I am afraid that once a debate happens it won’t stop until the other person gets “justice” over me.

I hate conflict too - but do you ever wonder if the reason you're so afraid of it is that if you start, you just won't stop until you feel like justice has been served? I tend to avoid confrontation at all costs, but I have seen me get involved as feel so strongly about an injustice (workplace bullying) and end up so invested and go to the ends of the earth to prove my point before mentally collapsing from all the stress, sleepless nights and worry  ... my brain is then like 'nope ... we aint doing that again'  

Yeah I’m deathly afraid of conflict, but even so you’re right, downvoting is probably not the best way about it.

Ohhh if that's happening then that's extremely poor design. I think the problem is the fact the rating system exists at all. We should start a small army ... :D

Yeh, I was being sarcastic with that comment. I think leaving a comment sometimes feel you're exposing yourself for potential conflict too, waiting on them turning into keyboard warriors and the anxiety that comes with that. Oddly, I can see why some people may use the downvote option now, but still think it has more of a negative impact overall. 

Oh yeh, I can relate, at times, I sometimes try to zoom in on my phone to see who the voters are .. and then end up downvoting by mistake ... then try to fix it by upvoting again ... but the number is not now what it started out at ... spiral commences lol 

Good point.