For this? I do not use the rating system here. That’s part of why I didn’t like Dkos. Too many times I would read an excellent essay and discussion that would deteriorate into a ratings gaggle or popularity contest. This turned me off from writing any diaries there because I’m not running for homecoming queen, nor am I competing for a Nobel or Olympic prize – just trying to connect with my fellow humans.
It’s too high school for me – a woman of a certain age who is delighted to find a welcoming community where I can publish whatever I like. I’ve received criticism and bad ratings sometimes, 4’s and kind words sometimes; but have never rated. I’m not here to judge anybody – if I have a comment, I’ll say it and expect the same from other people.
Now I find myself feeling indebted to many kind people here to whom I have never given a rating. If someone goes to the work of putting up a diary, I figure the best appreciation I can offer is an expression of support and a recommendation.
Today I discovered that I have achieved `trusted user’ status. “Thank you for contributing to Booman Tribune and for taking on the mantle of responsibility.” Sorry Boo- I didn’t take on any responsibility. All I did was shoot off my mouth. Thanks for the salute anyway. It all seems pointless to me, can I be excused and still hang out with y’all?
Two more things – Tip jar: I worked fifteen years for tips, never asked for a tip, never will. People give what they want to, let them. Truth be told, I just don’t want to bother to learn how to use that system – I’m old, I’m tired. I just learned how to use my new telephone, isn’t that confusion enough?
Also: The word mojo was coined by Jim Morrison. It’s an anagram of his name – Mr. Mojo Rising! Interesting guy, great tunes.
I understand your point and agree to a certain degree, especially with what goes on over at Dkos. It has been abused and used as a way to agree or diagree instead of responding directly. I don’t hang out there much anymore for that reason amongst others.
I think 4s generally get handed out here more as a pat on the back, feel good sort of thing. Not to speak for anyone else here but I personally have felt so angry and frustrated these past five years sometimes its nice to have whatever I may venting about validated. If that means a reply or a 4 than so be it. I don’t go to see who has rated me what. I am just here to vent and get ideas for action against the warmongers and take our country back. Thanks for posting and recommended!
Actually mojo is of African origin… although we all love Jim Morrison here, especially sjct 😉
Pax
is an acronym for “Jim Morrison.”
‘mojo’ was not coined by him. He was a ‘word man’ though.
The ratings system at dkos is broken and abused.
That said, on this site, I see it as a community building thing. If I don’t have a comment, or if I just can’t say something any better than someone just said it, I’ll drop them a 4 to say so. If someone mentions that they are going through a hard time in their life I’ll drop them a 4 instead of a little hug. If someone responds to a comment of mine I’ll drop a 4 on them as a way of saying “thanks for reading my comment and responding…and, hi!”
I do often respond with comment, and love when someone responds to me. I don’t care about mojo or trusted user status….it means very little to me. But support? That feels nice.
That’s what I’ve been doing Second Nature.
If I don’t think adding a comment would really enhance the dialogue but I want to let the poster know I’ve read and been intrigued with what they have written (agreement or not), I’ll give a 4.
Or if someone replies to me, I’ll give a 4 to let them know that I have acknowledged their reply.
And then there’s the mojo threads, and well it’s 4s all around!
O.
I agree that dKos ratings are abused – hugely.
I DO rate – in the sense that I give 4s to posts I particularly like, because I want to encourage those posters.
Other than that I have never needed to rate here but have on occasion at dKos for REAL trolls.
There are such people – they just pop into the community and try to start name calling fights and unless there is some way to deal with them they can destroy a site – I’ve seen it happen.
Thus far I haven’t seen any here, though 🙂
As someone fairly new to BooTrib and who also who does a fair amount of posting at other sites where there is no rating system, I find myself both liking and disliking the rating system.
At most sites when you make a comment, the only way you know what people thought of your comment is if someone responds. So I do enjoy knowing that people are responding in some way to what I’ve written or to photos I’ve posted.
I also like letting people know that I’ve found their comments valuable, even when I don’t have anything in particular to say in response.
But I find the mojo, trusted user competitive angle very offputting.
I also don’t like the low rating and troll-rating aspect. If I don’t like what someone is saying then I ought to respond to them to explain why, not simply gve them a bad rating.
I’d be happier with a system that wasn’t a rating system at all but just a way to let people know that their comments are appreciated.
Ratings give me a headache, largely because you can only use two of them, the highest and the lowest. If you 3-rate someone, which is supposed to mean “good,” it’s actually an insult, and if you 2-rate someone, because you think their comment is of marginal value, you might as well have fire-bombed their house. I got TU status my very first day here, and haven’t had it in six months at Kos.
In fact, I just got my first troll rating ever at Kos, because I got in an argument with one of the mighty front-pagers. Never mind that I cut my blog teeth at Clark Community Network and bleed blue, I’m now a “troll.”
That said, I find the quality of posting over here uniformly better than the average quality at every other sites. In the future, I will strive to be judicious when I rate.
clarification – I’ve been at dKos for 2 years-ish. I had TU status for about a week 6 months ago, and lost it in the post-election catatonia. But now I’m a troll (insert evil troll grunting noise here).
I’m heading home after a family death tomorrow, but I have kept up on things during family down time and that has been a lot these past few days. I finally got my fanny kicked to the back of the room today it looks like as far as Kos is concerned. Somebody call me a Waaambulance please. I don’t know if I was troll rated recently, but most likely I was yesterday when I couldn’t stand all the hubbub over Walmart. How can anybody who is a regular there really give a shit about Walmart employees who are heavily women after these past few weeks. There is an authenticity so lacking that I am celebrating my fanny kicked to the doghouse by going out to a gourmet dinner at Gertrudes tonight in Manitou and I am having dessert celebrating amazing people on here who are working so hard and authentically. I love signing on and reading the diaries and the comments…….just wonderful!!! And not only is it feeling really great lately but it is looking equally great as people gain confidence and post that diary and the numbers are climbing over here along with the confidence and the bang up job being done so well by so many!! God, I think I will even have a glass of red wine and treat myself to deep long exhale and AHHHHHHHHHH!
I must say that I have a lot of admiration for you fighting the good fight there. Had I known I would have supported you while your comments were still available for rating.
Ps… I don’t think dkos has that much power in the blog world. The thing that keeps me from taking the place seriosly is the fact that it has been taken over by the supporters of one candidate who use the place as a bully pulpit. Most of the rating abuse there is related to that very problem.
I did not post there much if at all before about a month ago, but I’ll bet it was a more interesting place before the primaries.
djinniya hits in on the head when discussing 3’s, 2’s, and the effect of being “down-rated” by community leaders.
Thankfully, all of that baggage that is so active elsewhere is very very rare here.
Its really a shame that the ratings system uses so many seeming mutually exclusive and so many seemingly related concepts in such a messy off-putting jumble.
Hidden comments: No one wants trolls running around the community. 0-rating a comment hides it. But only “trusted users” can hand out 0 ratings. In traditional forums, marking and removing trolls would be a moderator’s job.
Good ol’ 4’s: Wonderful recognition that someone read your comment, considered it, and agreed with it — in the content, the presentation, or both. Its a compliment to receive them, whether from vehement agree’ers or respectful disagree’ers. It also builds community in that its a way to show support for each other, and of course self-identification through positive feedback.
3’s: The most disagreeable of ratings. A snub. Even by the official Boo-Trib definition: used to downrate a comment you feel was overrated.
2’s: Warning: this comment is hostile and heading to trolldom.
1’s: You are being a troll. Walk away from the keyboard, and calm down.
0’s: You are being a disgrace. Your comments should not exist.
Averages (x.yz/Q): A unweighted relative average of all the above numbers.
Trusted User: A person who has accumulated a certain amount of 3’s and 4’s in a certain recent timespan. Able to hand out 0’s.
So, it seems with one ratings system we do a few different things:
I think using a single system to do all of that is a bit silly. From a technical standpoint, its easy enough to do, but is shows a real lack of understanding of people on a social level. I don’t blame Booman for the BooTrib version of this system, as obviously its modeled after the dKos usage, and being a Scoop site, its what he gets by default. But the software designer who created it has little appreciation for how humans think, and really needs a clue in a big way.
A mojo button (replacing 4’s), a Troll scale (replacing 2,1), and an entry on the troll scale or a means for ‘moderators’ to hide offensive content would better separate the functions into their distinct components. Whether ‘moderators’ were all the non-trolls (the current effect at Booman), appointed community leaders (zander, diane101, shirlstars, man egee, etc), or whatnot is a preference thing based on how Booman wants the community to operate.
I’d love to see the mojo button and the loss of 3’s and 4’s tho. Putting them on the same scale as troll-worthiness leads to silly context-specific applications “I give you a 4, because you aren’t a troll, but I don’t think your post is worth mojo”. And averaging mojo with trolliness… eh.
At every site where users rate each other I always ask “What is the point? What is it you’re trying to achieve?”. I usually get referred to a FAQ that explains what the author thought each of the numbers should mean. Except usually that’s: a) not how they ratings are used in practice, and b) the ratings are almost always averaged together to give a false sense of “fairness”.
The net effect is often silly, to say the least. A 4 and a 0 here average to a 2. So, that’s saying a “Mojo” + a “hide this troll” = 2.00/2 “approaching trollness”. Right. Or a 4 and a 1 = 3.00/2 (informally, “snub”). Sure, that encapsulates the intent of both parties… riiight.
Anyhow…
I only ever gave out a troll rating once. I was always interested in what others had to say even if it wasn’t what I was saying. I did troll rate Kos though during the pie fights. I troll rated him when he altered the name of a diary during the wars because it crossed lines, but the pie ad didn’t. My head blew up. I couldn’t accept Kos as the “sexually crossing lines” police. It is my one troll rating I ever gave anybody, even a troll. I remember asking some obvious trolls if they were trolls but I never even troll rated them trolls. Goofy strange the landscape of my life seems sometimes.
I encourage you in ignoring the ratings system entirely! Speed dial is infinitely more important anyway.
While there is plenty of theory and learned discussion about this system, it’s benefits and pitfalls – it is possible to live without it, or more commonly, to treat it as a very simple and personal good karma distribution mechanism. If your use of ratings in limited exclusively to 4’s – no harm can possibly come of it.
PS – the Jim Morrison diary that soj alluded to – … – well, you should hunt it down and read it…