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[Draco18s]

Solution to the up/down/neutral absolute value issue:

Number of Votes + Up ranks - Down Ranks.

A popular voted suggestion, even one with lots of down votes, would still have a higher absolute value than a suggestion with no votes.

This does end up making an up vote worth 2, a neutral worth 1, and a down worth 0.

[Footkerchief]

^^^ Just to clarify, you mean that it solves the problem of a neutral 0 looking "negative" by offsetting it so only the truly disliked entries are scored 0?

[Neonivek]

Wait a minute... doesn't that make Negative votes the equivilant of -2 and Possitive ones a +1?

[zagibu]

Solution to the up/down/neutral absolute value issue:

Number of Votes + Up ranks - Down Ranks.

A popular voted suggestion, even one with lots of down votes, would still have a higher absolute value than a suggestion with no votes.

This does end up making an up vote worth 2, a neutral worth 1, and a down worth 0.

Yeah, and that's the problem. Unrated suggestions having lower votes than negatively rated ones. Also, I'd have to select another column in the DB query to retrieve the number of votes per item, which isn't hard, but is unnecessary, if you use the -1, 0, +1 system.

[Draco18s]

Wait a minute... doesn't that make Negative votes the equivilant of -2 and Possitive ones a +1?

-1 + 1 = -2?

[Footkerchief]

Yeah, and that's the problem. Unrated suggestions having lower votes than negatively rated ones.  Also, I'd have to select another column in the DB query to retrieve the number of votes per item, which isn't hard, but is unnecessary, if you use the -1, 0, +1 system.

Read that last line in Draco's post again -- the system is really just ((-1, 0, 1) + 1) => (0, 1, 2).  Bad notation but hopefully you get the idea.  So you don't need an extra column either (not that it matters, this forum software has to be doing all kinds of crazy joins and subqueries all the time anyway).

[Neonivek]

Wait a minute... doesn't that make Negative votes the equivilant of -2 and Possitive ones a +1?

-1 + 1 = -2?

Well here is the actual math

(-1)-(+1) = -2

Since voting 'No' effectively removes a neutral vote and adds a negative vote.

[Footkerchief]

It doesn't do that.  It adds 1 because every vote adds 1, then subtracts 1 because it's a thumbs down.  Try to think about one person's vote by itself, without worrying about whether it "negates" another vote -- it's less confusing that way.

[Neonivek]

It doesn't do that.  It adds 1 because every vote adds 1, then subtracts 1 because it's a thumbs down.  Try to think about one person's vote by itself, without worrying about whether it "negates" another vote.

But then... Voting down does absolutely nothing but serve to make possitive votes crazy.

Alright how about this

A Down vote does nothing
A possitive vote adds one

Keep voting limits. (No point in Neutral votes anyhow. Just don't vote)

[Draco18s]

A down vote that does nothing is exactly the same as not voting.

Also:

Well here is the actual math

(-1)-(+1) = -2

Since voting 'No' effectively removes a neutral vote and adds a negative vote.

Where did you get that math?

Number_of_Votes is a positive integer, equal to #Up + #Neutral + #Down where #Up, #Neutral, and #Down are all positive integers.

A positive number plus a positive number minus a positive number (where the first one is larger than the sum of the other two) will always be a positive number (assume that 0 is considered positive).

Thus a singular vote would be counted thus:
Vote Up: #Total = 1, #Up = 1, #Neu = 0, #Down = 0.
1 + 1 + 0 - 0 = 2
Vote Neutral: #Total = 1, #Up = 0, #Neu = 1, #Down = 0.
1 + 0 + 1 - 0 = 1
Vote Down: #Total = 1, #Up = 0, #Neu = 0, #Down = 1.
1 + 0 + 0 - 1 = 0

[Granite26]

Edit 2: - Up/Down also allows you to see the difference between the sexy stuff people get excited about and the simple engine stuff that everybody just wants to show up.  Perhaps show 'average vote' as a variable in the multiple vote system?

What do you mean with average vote in the multiple vote system? An average of the up/neutral/down vote total per item? I thought I'd better not display this, because it could hurt some people's feelings when they get -345 or something on their suggestion...

That's really two thoughts there... 

1:  Stuff that is contentious will have a lot of up and down votes.  Stuff that is boring will have a lot of don't cares.  They will have the same ranking (score) but are very different.

2:  On the 'voting multiple times' side, it would also be interesting to see the difference between 10 people using 10 votes or 100 people using 1 vote.  (although it sounds like you are getting ride of the multiple votes for 1 thing?)


I think you'll lose a LOT of interest in the voting if you don't let people see the results, hurt feelings or not.  I'd actually be impressed if someone could get a -350 score.

I'd like to reiterate that 'don't care' should have the same value as 'didn't vote', while a the negative should be less.  Unless you want the options to be 'really like', 'it's ok but don't rush', apathy (no vote), and 'nevar!!!!!!!'

[zagibu]

Well, we never had a multiple votes for one thing, but it would be possible to change the pickX mode accordingly.

[zagibu]

I've had an idea for this: why not allow multiple votes for the same thing in pickX mode, but make subsequent votes cost more? The first vote would then subtract 1 from the available votes, the second two, and so on. With ten votes, it would be possible to assign max 4 votes to 1 thing (1 + 2 + 3 + 4).

Also, I'm not sure whether to allow negative ratings in fractional mode. By doing so, it would become similar to thumbs rating, while otherwise it is similar to pickX mode.

[BlckKnght]

I think there are two issues with the current voting page that any future voting system should address if it intends to be useful over a long term.

First, it needs to avoid too much of a "positive reenforcement" effect on highly voted suggestions.  I think we have a lot this in the current voting system because the highest voted results are listed first when new voters come to look at the ideas.  This is problematic when voters have a limited number of votes because they are likely to see suggestions they like near the top. Even if they read all the way down the page, they probably won't have any votes left to give to the ideas there (and many won't even look). The ideas that are near the bottom of the list may never get serious consideration on by more than a few dozen very persistent contributors, even if they are better ideas than ones high up in the list.

The Second issue is that old suggestions should not automatically outrank newer ones. If an idea is posted on the day after the new voting system goes live, how will it compare with a slightly better suggestion that gets posted six months later?  Some of the voting systems suggested on this thread appear to have effectively zero chance that the a new suggestion will ever overtake one with a long history.

While there are surely many ways that we could avoid those issues, I have one favorite, which has only received a brief discussion:

The idea is to avoid the direct evaluation of suggestions, and instead have voters compare two ideas to each other (the pair would be chosen randomly).  When a user comes to vote, they'd be presented with two idea and asked which they'd like to see Toady One work on first.  After making their selection, they'll be given another pair of suggestions, and could keep voting for as long as they want.  A variation on one of the Condorcet vote counting methods can turn the collection of relative preferences into a ranking of all of the suggestions.  The rankings would be shown on another page (not the one where the voting takes place), though the position of the suggestions that were voted on could also be shown immediately after a user's vote is recorded.

This system avoids both of the issues I raised above, because it does not show ideas in any order (avoiding a feedback effect) and allows new ideas to be compared with older ones on an equal basis (avoiding historical inertia).  It also allows voters to contribute without requiring them to spend a lot of time trying to evaluate every idea that has ever been suggested.  Some users might only enter one or two relative preferences, while others might enter their preferences on dozens or even hundreds of pairings (with N suggestions there will be N*(N-1)/2 pairings, so it's doubtful that anyone will get to all of them).  One final advantage is that suggestions that are duplicates of each other could easily be identified by putting that as one option on the voting page.  Whereas duplicate entries tend to work against suggestions in most limited votes systems, it won't hurt anything in a comparison system.

[Draco18s]

Yes, I believe I suggested that method some time ago prior to the creation of the "new" voting thingy.

I would have put it up myself, but I don't have access to php/MySQL and didn't feel like converting the algorithm out of python into something usable.