Regarding the rating system: I've been voted down. Multiple times. A few times it fell awfully.

But what did I learn from that? I realized I was being an ass, and more importantly, unprofessional.

I often learned the hard way that I was wrong.

I'll agree when it comes to political/religion discussions, the rating system becomes unfair, but I just stay away from them. This is a technical forum after all, a few comments may go into the lounge but an actual debate isn't best handled in GD.Net

I learnt to shut my mouth when I don't know about something or my opinion isn't needed, and to only speak when I am required and I can add something of value to the topic. Surprisingly I saw how my rating went up.

GD's old rating system was fairly atypical... and most other forums I'm on don't descend into anarchy without it, even those with NO rating system. The fact most people here are not jerks is the main thing... didn't you find people telling you that you were an ass affected you?

Not to mention - the rating system caused massive complaints when it was added.

I know the personality comes from us, but I'm talking about the site. Now it looks like any other forums, but okay, it's just my opinion. I never liked forums so much because of their layout. Maybe I'll get used to this one.

GD didn't have a distinctive look because they wanted to be cool, it was because they wrote their own software and were stuck with it. It has stayed 'retro' because it was getting out-dated, not because they chose to BE retro.

The biggest problem I have with the current system is that there is no negative feedback ability to either a) make people correct their attitude

How about, you know, telling people you don't like what they've said rather than making a cowardly down-vote where they can't even see what they did wrong? PM them or write in the forum in a respectful way. If they are properly offensive, report to mods.

Alrighty, we are at 125% line-height right now. When I refreshed the page it did roll up a bit. Still seems readable to me, but we'll see if anyone notices or finds it worse.

It feels better... but I can't tell if its my eyes adusting, or if its because i'm on my laptop and not my desktop.... or if its just really better.


My other thoughts:

The feedback tab on the right needs to go.... its pretty lame.
Also, I do not need to know how many post a user has (located under group). If I wanted to know this, I could look it up. I'd rather save the vertical space.
Can we move the 'vote this post up' botton to the 'footer' of the comment/post? Again, less white space in the vertical would be a good thing. Though, there is a chance if this is changed that it may not look as good as I think it would.

Overall... Good Job with the changes... especially the response to user comments you've had so far.

Edit: One more thing. With some people, the 'joined' date under their name in the forums doesn't have enough space and gets kicked down to the next line. You may need to abbreviate Months to make this fit correctly, or widen the right column/div and push everything left.

'MaulingMonkey' said:

But did it go right in other forums? I can't think of a single forum I frequently read anymore that has rating up without rating down of any sort. Especially if we're de-emphasizing the per-user aspect of ratings in favor of the actual post contents. But I guess I'm just another negative nancy

yes, sir, as i stated repeatedly, it works just fine everywhere. notebookreview.com has a forum i'm frequently on as an example. others exist.

That communities manage to survive, and sometimes even thrive without downvoting doesn't surprise me - I have seen them, after all - but it doesn't work "just fine everywhere", not in my books by any stretch. More to the point: Did those communities succeed in spite of the lack of negative rating options or because of that lack? Some can get by on the quality of their moderators, others by their elaborate systems of warnings, points, suspensions and bans. We tend to forget those that fail: we don't stick around.

And we know well what gdnet was like before the ratings system. Do you seriously believe introducing only the positive ratings would've improved the quality of posting? We could have the moderators issue more suspensions and bans at the expense of their time, but how is that an improvement?

'phantom' said:

The biggest problem I have with the current system is that there is no negative feedback ability to either a) make people correct their attitude

How about, you know, telling people you don't like what they've said rather than making a cowardly down-vote where they can't even see what they did wrong?

Yeah, because that's totally effective on it's own, since everyone who even thinks about rating someone down is a coward that hasn't already voiced their distaste and gone blithely ignored.

Is there no place for a middle ground between simply ignored words and moderator action?

Being able to point out an erroneous post, at the very least, seems something worthwhile. You can hope everyone reads the thread in whole, but some threads drag long, and in my experience, not even in on the best of forums will everyone read every page. If protecting precious egos from scary negative signs is that big an issue, make it bloody opt in like help wanted.

Is there no place for a middle ground between simply ignored words and moderator action?

The middle ground being a simply ignored number?

'MaulingMonkey' said:

Is there no place for a middle ground between simply ignored words and moderator action?

The middle ground being a simply ignored number?

Except that in general the number WASNT ignored and the introduction of the rating system was a POSITIVE step for the overall post content of this site.

'MaulingMonkey' said:

Is there no place for a middle ground between simply ignored words and moderator action?

The middle ground being a simply ignored number?

That followed you. That number was an awesome stalker, man. Did the job of 10 men!

I find the layout cluttered. Too many boxes in too many places with too many icons and too many badges. Also, the moderation tools in forum listings cause things to move around due to changes to the size of the containing div. Nothing is worse in UI than things arbitrarily moving around.

I don't like that i have to click the drop-downs to activate them (Safari 5.0.3, OS X 10.6.6). Drop downs on the web should drop on hover, close on mouse-out.

I think the social tools were chosen a little indiscriminately (throw everything in). I think Twitter and Facebook were all that were needed; what use is a StumbleUpon badge on a GDNet forum thread?

I hate the quote boxes. They're hideous.

I dislike the new smiley tags. They complicate programmer-y stuff like enumerated lists or parenthetical expressions.

Formatting is problematic for me. Newlines in the edit box aren't properly converted into paragraphs plus vertical margin, so I have to append additional newlines.

Other than that, it's fine. It's a forum; it'll do just fine.