   Negative/Positive Ratings attached to posts
  Wouldn't it be a lot more helpful to the site if people actually knew which posts people were irked by?I realize that my bad rating means that my opinion is invalid, or that I'm rude, but I would like to know which posts people think are invalid. If anything it would serve to red flag my bad opinions to myself. In my experience, people just give a bad rating, and never bother to publicly (Or privately) state what they don't like about someone's comments. At least by attaching a bad rating to a post, people would actually know what they did wrong. Some people actually do try their best to get along with others, and most people just have bad opinions because that's what they learned.People should be able to link multiple posts to the bad (And the good) rating they give someone. But the judge should still remain anonymous.P.S. I don't care who gave me a bad rating, and I'm not looking for reasons as to why people gave me a bad rating.   
  The problem with this is that the feedback would hardly be constructive and serve any purpose. I would bet most negative ratings are done out of a single or couple of posts where someone said something so ridiculous that the user felt they just had to rate them down. I mean consider when you rate someone up, do you actually go through all a users posts to see if they are worthy of being rated up or do you rate them up on an instance where they were of a great help? That's been the argument for a new rating system, but that's another topic.Your rating isn't that bad really, it's more than recoverable, but obviously you are getting the notion that people are not finding you as quite "helpful" to warrant a 4 digit rating, hence why you made this post. Looking over your replies, I can see some reasons why you were even rated, but you really don't have enough posts here to have a balanced rating. 54 posts in just under 8 months is simply not enough for people to get an idea of you as a poster or whatever you might have to share with the community.So, some general rules of thumb to help keep your rating up and avoiding situations of where you make yourself an easy target of being rated negatively:- Don't post in the Lounge (and for experts, don't post in the Lounge yet). This is the number one reason most beginners here take rating docks.- If a thread is asking about which language to use or anything remotely related to comparing languages, just avoid replying to it. This point pretty much speaks for itself, you (not you WazzatMan, but you being a poster in the thread) can't say anything about an existing language that is not already known, so your insights are really worthless in those threads as if the person asking the question did their own research, they'd not be asking a question.- Don't ask silly questions. Do your own research first and only then after understanding what you are asking ask for opinions. You don't have many posts so this doesn't fit you as well, but before you ask a question, ask yourself this:1. Am I really incapable of figuring out the answer to my problems?2. If so, will asking the question actually get me replies to solve my problem?3. If so, will I actually listen to the replies given or do I just want to ask to backup my own thoughts?If you answer yes to all of those, then go ahead and ask. If not, take some more time to work out your issues before jumping to post a thread to ask for help. There is nothing wrong with posting threads for whatever reason, but you have to understand as a developer or whatever you are, you are hurting yourself if you do not figure out how to do things yourself and have to rely on others all the time.- Finally, understand that there is always someone that knows more than you and has more experience and will most likely reply to a thread in the For Beginners section with a reply more accurate and faster than you, (looking at you SiCrane!). It's nice to want to help people, but most of the time the For Beginners section is a big competition of everyone trying to post helpful replies to win the kudos of new posters who need help. It's hard to compete there and with big name posters, it's better to not reply to a thread unless you are absolutely certain you know what you are talking about. If you do decide to post and are just totally wrong, when someone else has already posted a right reply, you just look bad as a poster, so avoid it.That pretty much leads up to this. If you want to actually help people on the forums and achieve a higher rating, you need to build up two things: knowledge and experience. Unless you have real knowledge and real experience, a lot of people pretend they do and they stick out like a sore thumb, then you need to work on those things first before thinking you can help others on the forum by posting what you know which is "to the best of my knowledge".Likewise, if you want to build up your public image, which is also a part of your rating, you need to make sure you make posts that don't sound ridiculous. Unfortunately, you won't be able to identify these posts until you put in more time here and grow as a developer and mature as a person (only at death does a person reach a stage where they can no longer improve, it doesn't matter how old you are, there is always something to get better at).So, there's my short collective knowledge and experience form being here at GameDev for about 5 years now. The important thing is to focus on the long term, not the short term. Ratings fluctuate and sometimes seemingly for no reason, I know I've been there. However, if you post constructively and take to heart the guidelines I laid out previously, you should be well on your way to a more renowned path. The trick to success is figuring it out without being told how to do so, so good luck. [smile]   ;Quote:Original post by Drew_Benton- Finally, understand that there is always someone that knows more than you and has more experience and will most likely reply to a thread in the For Beginners section with a reply more accurate and faster than you, (looking at you SiCrane!). It's nice to want to help people, but most of the time the For Beginners section is a big competition of everyone trying to post helpful replies to win the kudos of new posters who need help. It's hard to compete there and with big name posters, it's better to not reply to a thread unless you are absolutely certain you know what you are talking about. If you do decide to post and are just totally wrong, when someone else has already posted a right reply, you just look bad as a poster, so avoid it.This, but also: Even if someone else hasn't already posted a reply. Do not post wrong information. If you don't know something is absolutely true, then do not post it. All too often we see stupid posts like "C# is interpreted" or "std::vector is a linked list". Things like that, things which even less than 10 seconds on Google could have shown were blatantly false, will get you dinged more than most things (an exception to this would be posting in the lounge [grin]).   ;  Thanks for the advice :). Although, I was honestly trying to give my opinion on what would give the rating system a bit more focus--Obviously, a bit of my own 'What did I do?' feelings seeped through. As Drew_Benton said very well, most ratings are given based on a single post people appreciate or don't like. I know that that's how I give my own ratings. But I would like the option to actually show the people I'm rating which posts bothered me, or which posts I gave them kudos for.[Edited by - WazzatMan on June 13, 2009 5:49:23 PM];  I actually like the simple +/- or thumbs up/thumbs down buttons on comment threads for sites like Joystiq, and the more a post is rated up a notch the more prominent the background of the post becomes to highlight it, and the more it's rated down a notch it becomes gray and translucent. Everyone only gets one vote in one direction. It's pretty easy to skim over stupid comments that way   ;  I have to agree, per-post ratings would be more useful than the current per-user ratings.  Highly-rated users will always get away with the rare (or not so rare) elitist, completely useless posts just because they're so highly rated and therefore carry an "always right" aura.  Keeping the ratings per-post would allow a single post to be considered as either really helpful/truthful/good or unhelpful/incorrect/bad.   ;Quote:Original post by WazzatManIn my experience, people just give a bad rating, and never bother to publicly (Or privately) state what they don't like about someone's comments. At least by attaching a bad rating to a post, people would actually know what they did wrong.I agree. I don't know if you've noticed, but usually when someone complains about being rated down, they make assumptions about why it happened, and are usually wrong.If they can see what posts of theirs are flagged as unhelpful/unfriendly then it might help them to stop doing it.   ;  Oh, and there's also the case when you make a post and a couple of weeks/months(/years?) later someone is reading the thread (because it was bumped or linked to) and starts rating people based on those posts.   ;  I think a mix of rating styles could be useful.Posts could have a +/- rating for if they're helpfulThreads in general could have a similar +/- rating, and maybe a tag system to help people better sort stuff with in a sub-forum.Users should still keep their general rating, but a few simple improvements to the system would be helpful. Currently we can see who rated us up, but we can't see where they rated us. Shouldn't be that hard to detect where the rating link was clicked, and include that tidbit of info. This could help users reflect on where they have been, and what the community has found useful.Part of the same issue is a listing of what was rating down. That way users can go back and easily see just where they went wrong, and re-evaluate themselves.Another option I was thinking of, to encourage ratings to be more technical in nature, is to remove the rating links from the Lounge. Or maybe just remove the option to rate someone up for what was posted there. (If you really feel they needed to be rated up, you would have to take the time to search out one of their posts outside the lounge. This is more likely to give users an idea of if someone actually has something useful to contribute to game Development, rather than an exceptionally good post on geo-political theory.)   ;Quote:Original post by GaiidenI actually like the simple +/- or thumbs up/thumbs down buttons on comment threads for sites ...I would thumbs up your post..