Why is this system in place? It seems that some people like to abuse it but I'm not seeing the purpose.

4 hours ago, francoisdiy said:

Why is this system in place? It seems that some people like to abuse it but I'm not seeing the purpose.

The purpose is to acknowledge helpful and useful post. OPs can acknowledge helpfulness by posting (and voting) but other experts that don't post can also validate posts (or opposite) by upvotes (or downvotes)

I think forums would be filled blank posts without votes. Votes don't harm, they are just a rough indication of the value of a post - as the implicit assumption is that statistically majority of votes are sincere and reflect the intellectual and logical correctness (or incorrectness) of a post 

As for the abuse (which in a strict sense is unavoidable), it is statistically very low

As a side note though- despite the weaknesses of the old voting system - its way far better IMO than this new voting system. To me the new voting system is extremely uninspiring. Not that i'm expecting anything to be done about that at this stage 

We have the reputation system (up-/down- votes) for a couple of reasons.

1) It helps to recognise and encourage positive and helpful interactions with the community. Helpful and friendly posts are often up-voted, and over time the reputation score of more helpful community members tends to rise.  Some people are motivated by numbers like that and will strive to increase their score through positive interactions or simply being more active, which is a win for the community.

Because there is no mechanical impact (that is, we don't hide posts, ban or suspend members, etc. based on score) those who aren't interested are free to ignore it.

2)  It provides a form of self-moderation for the community by allowing people to express their disagreement. Basically the opposite of my first point, having a post or two voted down or a decreased reputation score can discourage anti-social behaviour, unfriendly or unhelpful responses, etc., again helping to improve the community. After first implementing a reputation system and after some of the major overhauls we had a notable reduction in trolling and unhelpful posts.

3)  It can help to recognise better responses. Whilst a higher voted post or higher reputation member isn't necessarily more correct or more experienced than another, in general you can infer that at least a lot of people agree with highly rated things, and that there may be something questionable about lower rated things.

The system isn't perfect, and I don't think any similar system can be, but in general I think it does a pretty good job of it's stated goals, and is implemented in such a way that people who aren't interested can easily ignore it.

Abuse does happen, but is pretty rare, and is addressed when we see or are made aware of it. If you think there has been a case of abuse, please report it for investigation.

We do also take feedback into account for future tweaks or improvements, so if anyone has specific complaints or suggestions please feel free to speak up; we may not action your feedback immediately, but we definitely do read it and take everything in to account when making changes.

Hope that helps!

29 minutes ago, jbadams said:

We have the reputation system (up-/down- votes)

You do?  I can't see anything related to up or down voting.  Which is too bad, because I wanted to give someone an upvote for giving me some good help there the other week. Or is this some new fangled method only the young folks understand like swiping SSE or NW or some such?

5 minutes ago, Tape_Worm said:

I can't see anything related to up or down voting

See the little up-arrow in the lower-right corner of each post?

Bottom right of each post, you should see an up arrow. Click or tap and it will expand to give a couple of different options:

- Up upvote is what it sounds like, and increases the member's reputation score by 1.

- Downvote is what it sounds like, and decreases the member's reputation by 1.

- 'Like' is there to express that you like the post without necessarily endorsing it as correct/helpful, and increases the member's reputation by 1.

 - 'Thanks' (the trophy) is there to express appreciation for the post, but does not effect the member's reputation score.  Good if you want to recognise that someone has joined the discussion but you don't think they were really helpful, or maybe to show appreciation of something that's off topic.

It's by design that there are three positive choices and only one negative.

Yeah, don't see it.

At first I thought it might be uBlock filtering it out, but I disabled it and still didn't see anything.

Tried Edge, and still nothing.

I mean it's not the end of the world, but I just figured you guys had finally done away with that system or something.

How odd, perhaps some sort of permissions glitch.  Any ideas @khawk ?

@Tape_Worm it was a permission thing with your group. You should see it now, and I'll double check the rest of the settings to make sure nothing else is missing.

Thanks!