I recently made this thread: Did OpenGL miss a golden opportunity against DirectX? Which Im sure many of you remember. What I find strange, is that in spite of me expressing my opinion openly, in a civilized and non-rude matter (at least not until the end), I can still take an extreme hit (almost 500 points in all). How come that points gathered by helping other people can so easily go away in a a standard discussion, where opinions clash? Is it really sensible, that those are related? Isn't it a bit dangerous, that people who may be of differing opinion but lacking the rhetorics skills, can just throw a User Rating hit, instead of trying to argue against it? Isn't it at problem, that it is even possible to punish someone, just because he is expressing his opinion? What happened to freedom of speech? Of course, one might say, that you can just say what you want, but if a person cares about his rating (which I don't - at least not anymore, hehe), he simply cannot express his opinion openly. That is not a good development. Another thing I noticed, was that of coordinated attacks. I seemed to take an extreme hit almost instantly, to a post that was a day old, and had not triggered any kind of reactions, until someone brings attention to it. That tells me, that a coordinated attack was running behind the scenes. And if that is the case, then the User Rating is nothing more than a popularity meter. People with few or no friends on the boards, are doomed to take hits, without being able to punish back, because they don't have friends to help them punish and level out the punishment on themselves. One might ask oneself, if not User Rating should be reserved for expressing helpfulness to people in problems, and not for differing opinions in discussions.

1. In what way do you think this is even remotely a 'Game Programming' topic? I'm moving this to the 'Comments, Suggestions and Ideas' forum.

2. You can get points just as easily as you can lose them, and the system is designed so that people may award or remove ratings for whatever reasons they see fit.

3.

Quote:non-rude matter (at least not until the end)

Do you think that being polite for most of a conversation allows you to be rude at the end? If you're rude anywhere, anytime, for any reason you may take a hit to your rating.

4. You don't actually have any idea which of the potentially many (I can't be bothered looking at your posting history) posts you may have been rated for at any given time. This is also not an immediate system of communication, and others may not read the material you post till a long time after it is posted, so it is therefore perfectly fair that they can respond to it (which includes potentially rating you based upon it) whenever they wish.

5.

Quote:That tells me, that a coordinated attack was running behind the scenes.

That's just paranoid, and frankly a bit silly. The majority of people just don't care enough to even think of attempting such a thing - get over it.

Quote:Original post by jbadams
1. In what way do you think this is even remotely a 'Game Programming' topic? I'm moving this to the 'Comments, Suggestions and Ideas' forum.

2. You can get points just as easily as you can lose them, and the system is designed so that people may award or remove ratings for whatever reasons they see fit.

3.

Quote:non-rude matter (at least not until the end)

Do you think that being polite for most of a conversation allows you to be rude at the end? If you're rude anywhere, anytime, for any reason you may take a hit to your rating.

4. You don't actually have any idea which of the potentially many (I can't be bothered looking at your posting history) posts you may have been rated for at any given time. This is also not an immediate system of communication, and others may not read the material you post till a long time after it is posted, so it is therefore perfectly fair that they can respond to it (which includes potentially rating you based upon it) whenever they wish.

5.

Quote:That tells me, that a coordinated attack was running behind the scenes.

That's just paranoid, and frankly a bit silly. The majority of people just don't care enough to even think of attempting such a thing - get over it.

Ooh, you dumped it in one of the deadest forums - nice. Lounge could also have been an alternative (and I will probably repost it there if it vanishes into oblivion here).

B1: My original post, that spurred this one, was posted in "Game Programming", so it does have some relevance.

B2: I know how the system works, thanks. This was a criticism of it.

B3: Push me and at some point I will push back. I had taken a hit of well over 300 before I was rude in any way.

B4: "This is also not an immediate system of communication". Not true. And that is obvious to any user who isn't totally new here.

B5: Paranoid? Is it? No, the way it happened proved beyond doubt that it was coordinated.

Quote:Original post by Mercenarey
Ooh, you dumped it in one of the deadest forums - nice. Lounge could also have been an alternative (and I will probably repost it there if it vanishes into oblivion here).

I've moved it to the correct forum, and I'll for your own benefit (surely you've seen what happens to the rating of users who seem to be whining about ratings in the past) I'll be enforcing our usual rules if you choose to cross post and will close a repost to the lounge. You're more than welcome to express your opinions, but we're not interested in any idea you might have that whining to the largest number of people possible will gain you anything. We've had plenty of threads about ratings in the lounge before, so you're really not being deprived of any greater effect (except the potential of negative ratings) that reaching that larger audience might provide.

Quote:B1: My original post, that spurred this one, was posted in "Game Programming", so it does have some relevance.

Valid point, but your thread is still off topic in that particular forum as it has no relevance to the topic of Game Programming.

Quote:B4: "This is also not an immediate system of communication". Not true. And that is obvious to any user who isn't totally new here.

The fact that this is a particularly fast moving forum where you'll usually receive responses very quickly does not change the fact that you're absolutely wrong here - it is not an immediate form of communication (such as a chat system), and posts may be responded to long after being made. This is by design and is often desirable in order to get good (and detailed) responses.

Quote:No, the way it happened proved beyond doubt that it was coordinated.

It proves nothing - has it not occured to you that if a particular post of yours pisses of one user it may well also piss of others and cause them both to rate you down with no 'planning' at all?

Claiming that the circumstances "prove without a doubt" that there was some sort of planned down-rating of you is not only paranoid but outright stupid - and I'm sure if you don't jump right into responding and logically look at what you've said and my response you'll see what I mean. The circumstances may indicate a planned down-rating, but they are far from proving it "without a doubt". Don't sensationalise things.



If you'd like to give additional feedback on how that rating system will change and work in future you may like to check out and respond to the latest posts in Superpig's journal.

Quote:Original post by jbadams

Quote:No, the way it happened proved beyond doubt that it was coordinated.

It proves nothing - has it not occured to you that if a particular post of yours pisses of one user it may well also piss of others and cause them both to rate you down with no 'planning' at all?

Claiming that the circumstances "prove without a doubt" that there was some sort of planned down-rating of you is not only paranoid but outright stupid - and I'm sure if you don't jump right into responding and logically look at what you've said and my response you'll see what I mean. The circumstances may indicate a planned down-rating, but they are far from proving it "without a doubt". Don't sensationalise things.

It was close enough to "without a doubt". There is no doubt in my mind after seeing how it happened. The post that resulted in the 150 point hit had been up for over a day, without a SINGLE hit. Then one person puts focus on it, and immediately (within 30 mins) I take a hit of more than 100. How can that not be coordinated?


You still haven't addressed the topic, namely that ratings gained by helping people is eaten up arbitrarily in discussions because of differing opinions.

Quote:Original post by d000hg
Your discussion wasn't unbiased, you were just taking a chance to complain how you think MS are stupid, at least that was the message I got.

I have used nothing but Windows in my entire PC career, except MS Dos before Windows came out. In my development career, I have only used the DirectX API ever. I haven't even written a single OpenGL test program.

Im not an MS hater. Not by a long shot. Still that doesn't prevent me from viewing and assessing where the development is going - and giving my bid on it.


Now address the topic please, instead of derailing this into another OS vs. OS flame war.

Quote:Original post by Mercenarey

Quote:Original post by jbadams

Quote:No, the way it happened proved beyond doubt that it was coordinated.

It proves nothing - has it not occured to you that if a particular post of yours pisses of one user it may well also piss of others and cause them both to rate you down with no 'planning' at all?

Claiming that the circumstances "prove without a doubt" that there was some sort of planned down-rating of you is not only paranoid but outright stupid - and I'm sure if you don't jump right into responding and logically look at what you've said and my response you'll see what I mean. The circumstances may indicate a planned down-rating, but they are far from proving it "without a doubt". Don't sensationalise things.

It was close enough to "without a doubt". There is no doubt in my mind after seeing how it happened. The post that resulted in the 150 point hit had been up for over a day, without a SINGLE hit. Then one person puts focus on it, and immediately (within 30 mins) I take a hit of more than 100. How can that not be coordinated?

No, what actually happened was that you took a very small hit up until the post where you said:

Quote:"Listen guys, Im really glad that you all love your Vistas so much. You have managed to turn the discussion into OS vs. OS instead of graphics API vs. graphics API, where it was supposed to be.

Clap your hands, because we have only one graphics API now, and now you will dance to MS' tune, whether you like it or not. You can claim you aren't "forced", because you like the one OS you have the choice of, but just know that if you weren't happy with it, you WOULD be forced"

For reasons that should be obvious to you, that led to you losing between 50 and 100 points over the course of a few hours, Bringing you down to just above 900. Then you started complaining about your rating and lost another 200 points in short order, which is what usually happens when people bring up their own rating. Then you talked about how much worse stuff you've written on other boards and presented a strawman argument by misrepresenting an analogy made by another poster, which brought you down another couple of hundred points to where you are now.

You have noone to blame but yourself. Your rating decreased in spurts over the span of a day and a half. It did not happen at all like you claim in this thread.