Thumbs down

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28th Sep '10 by davjo

16 comments 4423 reads

Have to say I'm often mystified as to why a 'thumbs down' has been applied to seemingly innocuous contributions. It strikes me as though a lot of thumbs downers are more intent on poking the poster in the eye rather than registering disagreement with what has been written.

I don't think the thumbs down facility is necessarily a bad thing but I think it would be a whole lot more transparent if those voting had their identity revealed somehow...and the same should go for thumbs up people too.

If such a system were to be implemented, there would be far less abuse of the privelege to vote one way or the other.

Thoughts?

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About the Author

Davjo

Premium Member

16 comments

marben100

28th Sep '10

See this site: http://www.sharescene.com for an example of how posters voting for posts can be identified, wtthout too much clutter..

Spurticus

29th Sep '10

Also - when browsing on a smartphone, it's very easy to hit the wrong icon.
- Perhaps increased spacing between them would help here..
- And an option to "Cancel/Reverse Vote" would be useful...

Regards.

djpreston

29th Sep '10

One of the really good things about the Mobile version is that it doesn't have thumbs up or down (and doesn't show the no of votes). That way its much "cleaner" and faster for mobile browsing.

ExTownie

29th Sep '10

In theory the thumbs down function could work well as a means of showing disagreement with a post. In practice it does seem to be abused as a doubly anonymous method of trolling, given that user IDs already provide anonymity. It would make sense to either list the user IDs of those giving negative recs, so people can stand by their comment, or remove the function.

ET

nigelpm

29th Sep '10

I don't really see the problem here.

Although I do wish the thumbs down were netted off against the ups.

sirlurkalot

29th Sep '10

IMO it's worth pointing out that on TMF these days you can see recs that someone has made, for instance http://my.fool.co.uk/profile/repobear/activity.aspx . I don't think this was so some time ago.

I mean nothing personal in picking out repo as my example of this - it's surprising actually how few recs some of the better known TMF writers make. Try looking up the recs made by your favourite Fools. My own equivalent page on TMF shows I haven't recced a post there for a week, which seems right to me. I rarely rec or PP posts. You can see that many of the better known writers on TMF also rarely rec posts. I'm sure there's a conclusion to be drawn from that.

repobear

29th Sep '10

I use thumbs down sparingly on the basis that giving a thumbs down will rarely help me make money and that's what I'm here for. Thumbs up for good posts do encourage people to put the effort in and that's what I feel they should be used for. Although I lapse often and give them because I agree with what the poster has written.

I'm glad that SirL put my TMF activity up on display today. I normally give out less recs than that.

I've had a lot of thumbs down of late, because people recognise that I've been on a bit of a mission and are fed up with me. No problems with that really,except that some telling points about why a certain company, I mention in just about every post is a crap investment, might save me a fortune;-) The fact that quite a few of you have travelled to the dark side, makes me smile a bit but not half as much as when my stock du jour does the business with the drillbit and doesn't go up in price. I can buy more then and it's better value longer term..

I know that I am an arsey bastard and the neg recs are just confirmation. I'll never change.

I wouldn't swap my returns this year, or next year, for all the positive recs out there.

repo

Just smile like you mean it.

StrollingMolby

29th Sep '10

Hi SirL,

TMF users can also switch off the ability for their recs to be made public, and go back to them being given anonymously.

I think the system S'pedia should move to is that used by iii.co.uk, where only thumbs-up can be given and you can see who has recommended a post by clicking on the up arrow.
http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/detail?code=cotn:FPM.L&display=discussion

Interestingly, after years of abuse of the thumbs-down option, iii removed it.

Murakami

29th Sep '10

Hi all, thanks for the comments. Keep them coming. We are testing out a few different ideas behind the scenes to try to address this issue but further input is helpful. Cheers, M

promethean

30th Sep '10

We have been listening and watching the concerns over the Thumbs down facility, and while this is in review, we have made a change so we are now only publishing the 'net' figure of thumbs up or down. This change is live.

As a result, you'll no longer have the irritation of seeing the 1 or 2 thumbs down on an otherwise excellent post - you'll just see the net number of thumbs.

Ultimately, people are using the thumbs up/down for different reasons...

Because a post is informative / off topic
Because a post is entertaining or not
Because they respect/disrespect or know/don't know the poster
Because they agree / disagree with the poster's stance on the stock (long/short)

And therein lies the problem with such a simple system of up and down voting. It's very difficult to communicate the context of the vote from such a blunt instrument! We do think about whether to ask for the vote 'context' on point of voting, but in the interests of simplicity I don't think it would be very well received!

Thoughts would be appreciated.

doverbeach

30th Sep '10

I like it. Please ignore the negative rec I gave one of the above posts in order to see if it worked!

db

emptyend

30th Sep '10

Yes - I agree with db.......that is the way to go, and I'd also guess that the number of thumbs down will reduce in line with the reduction in instant gratification for those who wish to disrupt! ;-)

davjo

30th Sep '10

Agree...good move. However, I would hope that those losing the 'benefit' of seeing their thumbs down write in to express why they might disagree. Not sure they will though.

nigelpm

30th Sep '10

Perfect - solves the issue I feel.

MrNachos

30th Sep '10

Yes. If someone's disagreement is strong and reasonable, this could encourage more posts with constructive argument instead of a red thumb.

ohisay

30th Sep '10

Good idea -As I mentioned before this is the way that the Hot Copper ASX website does things.

http://www.hotcopper.com.au/default.asp

Incidentally their guidance is ..

"You are about to rate a post.
If you think the post is informative, insightful, entertaining or otherwise of high quality and likely to be interesting to viewers, rate it up.
If you disagree with a positive rating and think its of low quality, rate it down.
Remember - a high quality post that disagrees with your views is still a high quality post. Please don't rate a post down just because you disagree with the author. "

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Davjo

16 comments

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