Raise the Hammer

for the record i think the hullabaloo about censorship and complaints about majority rule are simply ridiculous.

option 1. keep the feature. default set as off.

I voted for option 3, b/c of this point: "There may be accessibility issues for readers with disabilities."

There are those who are legally blind who could still use a computer if they've enlarged the view, and the font is sufficiently dark. Could you make the feature optional for all users, not just registered ones?

If the goal of rating the comments is to get feedback for developing a progressive understanding of the thoughts posed in the article/blog - via a visual reference of agreements, disagreements or recommendations [a non-zero sum approach], - then we should step back from using sports and political terminologies like "Scoring" and "Voting".

A simple mechanism at the end of each post as below should suffice to express the readers opinions:

>>> Agree 2 | Disagree 6 { alert moderator }


If the goal of rating as mentioned above, is to establish who wins and who looses a position or an argument [a zero sum approach], then the existing system goes a long way in perpetuating the bipolar approach to discussions --- where the original article/blog stops being the centre of deliberations and the comments take over the personality of what is being deliberated.

The {Agree/Disagree} approach - or the {Recommend} approach has been used by many newspaper and magazine websites with very tempered outcomes most often resulting in furthering the original thoughts posed in article/blogs.

How often would you {Recommend} a post if you did not agree with it? How often would you choose to {Disagree} and the go on to say %$#F $@!% because you disagree? Or how often would you {Disagree} and not be naturally inclined to explain your disagreement in a tempered post?

The {Thumbs up/Down - Icons} approach very similar to the {+/- Votes} mostly leads to harsher feedback cycles and derailments on account of the defensive position of those who end up receiving the many minuses or thumbs-downs.

I'm conflicted on this one. On one hand I realize that trolls completely ruin the web and we've experienced that here several times.

On the other hand, I would hate for someone with a legit, well-thought out, but opposing view to the majority in any given article to have their thoughts fade to white simply because people don't agree with them.

Honestly, I'd much prefer if we just flat out delete trolled comments and use a 3 strikes, yer out rule. 3 trolls and the account is permanently cancelled along with any other accounts on that email address.

Yay on Option 1.

You worry too much Ryan.

I look at this way, sometimes people will say things that are ok one day but not ok the next, depending on the subject at hand. The view one has may be outside the views of others but that does not make it necessarily wrong or irrelevent? Sometimes in looking at one thing, that there are many other things to look at, which people may or may not want to think about.

Opinions and feelings about a particular subject always carries emotion, sometimes that emotion rightly or wrongly, is the driving factor. After all we are human, frailities and all.

Ryan >> I also don't trust either myself or the RTH community to decide which comments should be put to death. A downvote is reversible; deletion is not.

If you don't trust yourself or the RTH community to decide which comments should be put to death, why the heck are you entrusting yourself and the RTH community to fade comments from view?

That's like saying, "I admit I have no idea whether something is good or bad, but I am going to cast a sentence anyway."

Back to Salem we go.

Ryan, I just changed my vote from option 2 to option 1. Yet it shows up as a minus now on Option 2 FYI.

I really don't see the purpose in this though unless the comment ends up fading away completely at some point.

I'm a little late to this thread, but I think the fading is sort of cute but gimmicky, and not really all that fairly applied. It's pretty clear that people on RTH are apt to vote on whether they agree with the comment or not, not on its adherence to the commenting guidelines.

As annoying as some of the opinions expressed by A Smith or Capitalist or whoever might be, they offer this site some MUCH needed perspective. With all due respect to the many intelligent people that post on this site, for the most part there a lot of different shades of the same colour. I've actually found myself skipping right to A Smith's points sometimes because I'm in desperate need of some critical commentary, and it'd be nice if I didn't have to copy/paste comments to a Notepad when I'm reading comments on a computer where I'm not signed in.

My two cents.