I find it inconceivable that I would get rated down for helping someone and providing my opinion in this thread: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/648747-adding-objects-via-tiled-editor-or-programatically/. The first time I got rated down, I brought it up, but only because I saw who rated me down and I respect them anymore and I figured they knew something I didn't.
Maybe it's because I rated another guy down once, because I was in a bad mood. But I have never rated down his posts 4 times in a row like some people are doing in this thread to me. This is politics and "group mobbing", as far as I'm concerned. Every time the thread gets bumped, and it probably will 10 more times, I have to worry about seeing a -12 popup. And I didn't even do anything that bad. I provided an opinion.
The rating system
The tooltip over the downarrow is:
This response is not useful and does not improve the conversation
Perhaps simply a few people felt that way about your posts? Perhaps these people think that to determine which is easiest, he still will still want/need a pro/con list?
If that is the case, they probably also feel negatively about your 4 follow-up posts defending your original post, and this new thread is just drawing more attention to it.
If some people felt it downvote worthy, then more attention is probably going to just net you more down-votes 
There was a joke with the old rating system that the first rule of the rating system is: do not talk about about the rating system, because whenever anyone made one of these posts, it always resulted in more of a rating drop for them...
If you like I can go and moderate that thread to remove all the discussion about the rating system, which will prevent any further downvoting.
The first downvote on the first post was "deserved" (though "deserved" is a very harsh wording, please don't be offended) as explained in frob's post. If you hover your mouse over the rate buttons, you'll read something like "the response is not useful and does not improve the conversation". The people who downvoted the post obviously thought so.
Incidentially, this not only downvotes your post, but also your "person". Which, admittedly, is an unlucky thing, but it's just how the system works.
The mere mention of downvotes (second post) has historically always caused more successive downvotes, immediately. Don't ask me why, but it's how it's always been. Arguably, this does not improve the conversation, so the downvote on the second post is also "justified".
As for all the others, people probably felt that you were arguing about something they just didn't want to read and that didn't contribute anything valuable.
Now you can discuss whether it's their right to do that and whether that's justified (technically, it probably is), or whether it's just childish to vote down each and every post.
Of course, if you search the forums, you'll find many examples of people who also have posted things that don't improve the conversation, and they weren't downvoted every time. Alas, life is never fair.
My opinion on it is... get over it. Ratings are not the meaning of life. I understand that seeing a "-12" pop up when you log in gives somewhat of a "Huh, WTF?!" experience and doesn't precisely make your day. But then, what does it really mean. Some guy on the internet didn't like what you wrote. So what.
It's not like you're going to lose your job and your girlfriend, or you're going to die.
Next week you'll have a dozen upvotes, and it will all be forgotten.
Author
I remember the joke of not mentioning the rating system. However, for purpose of discussion, the strange thing is that people can get away with talking about the rating system half the time, and the other half, they seriously got rated down for it.
And it's not so much about the rating for me, I guess. I care about the discussion. I care about the peer review. But the peer review seems to be corrupt if I get rated down a million times for providing advice.
And it's not so much about the rating for me, I guess. I care about the discussion. I care about the peer review. But the peer review seems to be corrupt if I get rated down a million times for providing advice.
I get rated down a million times for providing advice.
I didn't participate in that thread, so I'm just assuming and trying to backtrack from the outcome to an explanation -- but put yourself in the head of another person witnessing this conversation (inspired by a true story, retold to be more dramatic):
I have these two options to choose from that I don't know much about. I need more information about the good and bad sides of each before I can decide which one is the easiest for me.
Just go with the easiest one.
But... I need more information to know which one that is... º¿º
If someone else was interpreting the thread that way, then it's pretty obvious why they didn't like your post -- in this interpretation, it's not advice.
And hey, I once lost over 500 rep from a post (before making one of these threads, which made it worse) 
Author
I didn't participate in that thread, so I'm just assuming and trying to backtrack from the outcome to an explanation -- but put yourself in the head of another person witnessing this conversation (inspired by a true story, retold to be more dramatic):I get rated down a million times for providing advice.
I have these two options to choose from that I don't know much about. I need more information about the good and bad sides of each before I can decide which one is the easiest for me.
Just go with the easiest one.
But... I need more information to know which one that is... º¿º
If someone else was interpreting the thread that way, then it's pretty obvious why they didn't like your post -- in this interpretation, it's not advice.
Ouch. I'd say that Tiled Editor was easier, but a lot of people support Text and stand by it. Text is really quite good. But there's really no answer to the question. It's like when someone asked me what my goal was in pixel art, when I wasn't making pixel art - I was making raster art.
But the peer review seems to be corrupt if I get rated down a million times for providing advice.
I think the problem in this specific case is that you didn't clearly provide useful advice. People don't know what you were thinking or the tone you meant to convey when they read your posts, and your original reply does not clearly communicate your apparent intended message; that you feel there aren't really pros or cons -- perhaps you might consider editing your post to clarify this. 
As noted above, the down-votes on subsequent posts are likely because you've continued to keep the discussion off-topic.
I've gone ahead and hidden the posts in question from the topic -- this should help both with keeping the discussion on topic, and should also help to protect your reputation a bit. I would suggest editing your first post (the one that still remains) in order to better explain your advice.
The system certainly isn't perfect, but we've done a lot of work to improve it based on years of user feedback, and I think it's a pretty good system.
It seems to me that What Goes Around, Comes Around !! My personal Feeling is that a Down vote on anyone should be followed by a reason why, so that the receipient of the down vote understands why.
Those members whom "Willie Nille" upvotes those post, simply to improve their own rating is equally as ir-responsible as those whom DownVotes and then runs
Think About your Actions, Not only does it affect others, but reflects poorly on yourself.
Author
At the risk of making an off-topic post, I'd say:
I like jbadams. He seems to understand people and provides clear responses on subjects. If this was real life, I would buy you a beer. Lol.
I like jbadams. He seems to understand people and provides clear responses on subjects. If this was real life, I would buy you a beer. Lol.
My personal Feeling is that a Down vote on anyone should be followed by a reason why, so that the receipient of the down vote understands why.
That would be nice in an ideal world -- and users are of course welcome to voluntarily make a normal reply explaining their down-votes -- but there are a couple of reasons why we chose not to implement a mandatory explanation with down-votes:
- If the system isn't very easy to use, it doesn't get used much. Forcing users to provide a reason would likely result in people using the system less frequently, and likely also filling the explanation field with "junk" reasons rather than something helpful.
- It may potentially remove anonymity from the system, encouraging "revenge voting", which would obviously be undesirable.
- It would add more stuff to the UI. There's already more stuff than we would ideally prefer, and we don't want to complicate things needlessly.
Note that we did make down-voting cost a reputation point in order to discourage frivolous down-votes.
This topic is closed to new replies.
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