Digg style "reviews" / Useful Reviews stay on Page 1

I just wanted to share same idea... but rygetz was first. ;) I support this idea, it's just great. How many points users will get when their reviews gets thumbs? 5 thumbs should equal 1 point, 5 points, or 10 points? It must be discussed.

I'm not really sure how to implement the points.. Maybe Wakoopa's staff would have some suggestions to keep things balanced? I think it you should earn them to encourage people to take the time to write a useful review. Anyone else have any input.. perhaps why someone might not like this idea?

I asked for that a while ago - but since I didn't know about the forum on direct contact. Don't like the idea that the first that makes a comment gets more points than the rest - no matter how useful that comment is... A ranking system would definitely improve the quality of comments.

When you do this, it's also important to have a meta-mod feature or the digging up or down will be gamed too by the ragers.

Slashdot is the pioneer in self-moderation and there are other sites too with unique self-moderation features.

There are also rules that can be put in place to make it harder to game through scripting, etc... Things like only so many votes per unit of time (YouTube); token system for voting based on reputation (StackOverflow), Digg has rules too though I haven't used it in a long time ;)

I wrote about my disapproval of the current points system when it was first added for this very reason:
http://blog.wakoopa.com/2008/10/27/yo...

So surely this foresight gives me a bit more clout now? Maybe not, but whatever...

I half like this idea. Personally I think losing a point for writing a review that people consider bad is not the best idea. Just because something is unpopular does not make it invalid and I don't believe people should be punished for contributing something that is unpopular. But spam is an issue and you don't want to give points to spammers. I don't know how feasable this system is, however I believe the ideal situation from a quality and fairness perspective would be where somebody is awarded points for every review they have that has an average vote of over a set number. eg. Score x points for every review that has an average of 4 or higher (yes this does mean that over time you could lose some points). This would ensure that spam reviews are never rewarded but at the same time rewarding reviews that are really popular and not punishing people for posting reviews that could be unpopular (as this would lead to audience pandering reviews)

However to be quite blunt, I personally feel that the point system is already polluted beyond repair, with spammers ranking higher than regular users, based on rules which have been around from the beginning. I am generally against point systems as they usually promote the wrong kind of activity no matter how well intentioned, but it's made even worse when that point system isn't even focused on rewarding quality.

Its been awhile but I wanted to see if staff/users had any input on this idea... as I still think it would be relevant and great to see it implemented. Was it simply forgotten or was a decision made against it?

Another though on this. Digg style voting works well (as far as rating systems go) for digg, because headlines have a very short life span. However this method has the flaw that it doesn't scale over time. This flaw would become a lot more apparent for things with lifespans which are much longer than a day, because it's a system that feeds on itself. Comments near the top will receive more and more thumbs up while newer and more relevant reviews won't ever reach the levels of a popular review that was made a year or more before the new review. Even after a couple of days of the release of a new product this is likely to become an issue.

Perhaps a system where the value of a vote degrades over time would be better. Or a the ranking could be based on a number of factors,
ie.
average thumb vote
+
days since post as a percentage of days since the first post
x
how much you want this percentage to be worth

Thats a very good point that was overlooked, thanks for the feedback. I like the system you recommended. Another possible simple fix is just a couple of sort by links. Sort by: Highest Rated, Newest, etc.

Or have 3 reviews reviews at the top be highly rated while below it are the newest (kind of like a sponsored search listing / organic search listing structure). Also, if a review becomes so outdated that it is no longer relevant (due to program updates/new versions), I would hope that users would click the thumbs down and move its ranking.

> Or have 3 reviews reviews at the top be highly rated while below it are the newest (kind of like a sponsored search listing / organic search listing structure).

Well those top 3 reviews would still be feeding on themselves. The point of the ranking system would be to have the actual top reviews for that time in that list, so you would need a system that aids that.

> Also, if a review becomes so outdated that it is no longer relevant (due to program updates/new versions), I would hope that users would click the thumbs down and move its ranking.

That would take just as long for it to be removed as it took for it to get up there. Maybe longer as when some software is first released there is a lot of hype and publicity around it that isn't seen for updates.

As said by the original poster, voting for reviews/comments improves the signal/noise ratio, and is currently one of the advantages of iusethis against wakoopa.