230 replies to this topic

[Puds38]

Thanks for all the hard work walking us through the update.

Can I just toss in my two cents about reputation votes? Hate them with the fury of a thousand burning suns. It just feel juvenile & unnecessary and I honestly can't see how it adds anything to discussion of tv shows. In fact, I think it would get really crazy in some of the more bat shitty forums and thread.

[janie jones]

Can I just toss in my two cents about reputation votes?

Is that the same thing as the "+1" on posts? And how would you know that someone +1ed your post? Would you have to go back to the post in question to see, or do you get a notification? I'm just wondering about the usefulness of +1ing someone if they're going to have to go hunting for it.

And thank you, Strega, for the info.

Edited by janie jones, Mar 18, 2012 @ 11:59 PM.

[SnideAsides]

Between threaded PM conversations (no more having to save the outgoing message!) and being able to actually see the last poster in a forum/thread instead of just the time, I'm really looking forward to most of the new features. I'm not entirely sold on the +1/-1 thing (it feels like the batshit crazy "think how I think OR GET OUT" threads are going to be even more ridiculous than usual), but hopefully the possibility of knowing at least someone liked a minority-opinion post will let people feel more comfortable to stray from the hivemind.

In other news: It's been possible to post pictures?!

Edited by SnideAsides, Mar 19, 2012 @ 1:27 AM.

[squidge]

While reading one of my favourite forums I was thinking about how the +1 button might work, and realized I might, personally, be tempted to do so and then post a reply in the thread saying "I liked your post, xxxx, because of this specific line:" .... followed by quoted text from their post.

Would that be acceptable practice in the new normal? Is this something you might want to flag for general consumption?

[TWoP Pembleton]

Strega can weigh in on that specifically, but my instinct is to say no unless you are using it as a jumping-off point for your own thoughts. That's the same as things are now -- you can't just post a quote and then, "I totally agree!" I think posting, "I liked this line in your post" isn't much different.

That's kind of what the +1 is for -- to let someone know you liked the post when you don't really have anything else to add to the conversation. Consider it like laughing at someone's joke or high-fiving them (or fist-bumping) or whatever.

If you REALLY need to tell the person which specific line you liked, you can always send him or her a PM.

[squidge]

Thanks, Pendleton. I was sitting here trying to figure out if it would be boards-on-boards. I guess I was hoping it was clearly boards-on-boards, because from another perspective I think seeing a lot of that would get annoying. I think your point that it is like an "ICAM" post is dead on.

In the specific example I was thinking of, it wasn't the entire post, but just one line, that I liked. The PM thing is a good idea, though I generally don't do too much of that...

Edited by squidge, Mar 19, 2012 @ 1:07 PM.

[MsTaken]

Hmmm...the 'reputation' feature sounds kind of cliquey and potentially Mean Girl-ish to me, with those who have the force of the majority opinion behind them racking up popularity pluses while others feel badly that their posts weren't deemed plus-worthy. I totally appreciate that Strega and others are keeping an open mind about it, though, and will try to do the same!

Otherwise, even someone as generally change-averse as I am think the updates sound terrific.

Edited by MsTaken, Mar 19, 2012 @ 1:11 PM.

[janie jones]

I can see myself using the +1 feature because I sometimes agree with someone but don't have much else to say. Or like, I think their joke is funny but am not just going to post "Ha!" It's the fact that total numbers are being kept track of on people profiles (that's happening, right?) that seems like the popularity contest to me.

I agree that most of the updates sound good. I'm in particular pleased with the option of notifications when a thread I'm interested in has a new post. That saves me from have to repeatedly refresh when I'm trying to procrastinate.

Edited by janie jones, Mar 19, 2012 @ 1:29 PM.

[MsTaken]

It's the fact that total numbers are being kept track of on people profiles (that's happening, right?) that seems like the popularity contest to me.

Yeah, the prospect of TWoP devolving into a 'popularity contest' nicely sums up my trepidations. Thanks for putting it more clearly and succinctly than I did! Still, I'll try to keep an open mind and keep those high school flashbacks at bay. ;)

Edited by MsTaken, Mar 19, 2012 @ 1:37 PM.

[snowflakey]

Hmmm...the 'reputation' feature sounds kind of cliquey and potentially Mean Girl-ish to me, with those who have the force of the majority opinion behind them racking up popularity pluses while others feel badly that their posts weren't deemed plus-worthy.

I understand the sentiment, because a rating system is not the best idea for every forum. Not to sound dumb, but wouldn't openly complaining about getting or not getting a "point" be in the territory of Boards on Boards.

IMO, if someone is going to be upset about who has points and who doesn't, it's that poster's problem, not the forum's.

[tip and fall]

I don't think it's a big deal to have a +1 system. Other sites have it, and I agree that it'd be useful in the cases where you agree with someone but don't really have anything to add to the convo. Lurkers should be happy, lol. The downvoting is iffier - people can get incredibly invested in whatever the heck they're talking about (er, not that I'm guilty of that or anything), so there is no way that would end well. I know y'all aren't enabling the downvoting function right now, just saying.

I'm also intrigued at the idea of leaving comments on people's profiles. Would the same boards-on-boards rules apply there, since it's more public than a regular PM?

Edited by tip and fall, Mar 19, 2012 @ 2:04 PM.

[cutecouple]

I like the idea of upvoting with the limitations provided. If the total number of upvotes is buried far enough (requires an extra screen or two to reach), it shouldn't be a big ego boost problem. I also like the idea of not having downvoting at all.

Also, is there going to be a switch to jump from the mobile forum skin to the full skin? There are some mobile scenarios, like quirky large Android tablets, where the mobile skin might show up where it's not desired, or where it might be better to swap to the full skin.

Do the updates keep the ability to "print" a thread, or at least have the opportunity to download a thread as a text file or PDF or something? I know it's kind of useless here in many cases with the huge, thousand-page-plus threads, but that's probably the single feature of the current forums that needs updating the most.

I too would like to see this come back, if there are no technical or logistical issues to resolve.

[Bastet Esq]

I'm sure I'll refer back to this thread after the update is completed, but it's nice to have the information up front - complete with screen caps - so thanks for that.

I don't have any experience with the rating function, but it reads as something that's silly yet harmless. And while I initially thought it was completely pointless, I now realize it could be useful if it provides a replacement outlet for those who forget/ignore the rule against posts saying nothing more than "I agree" and the like.

The profile stuff also sounds senseless (bear in mind this is coming from someone who finds Facebook utterly ridiculous), but similarly benign, since those features can just be disabled; there for those who want to use it, but no inconvenience to those who want to ignore it.

[FrogsRule]

TWoP Howard, may I lobby for no-limit to up or down votes? Look at Survivor only. Eighteen pages on 24-6 only. That doesn't count the Colton pages. :-)

I think that the up-down buttons serve a very useful service and should be encouraged (more the up than the down). It's basically a like button. They give readers the opportunity to "say" they agree without writing those words. You guys will have to worry less about the ITA-posts you don't like if there's a like button.

If I only have five I can parcel out per day, I will be less likely to use them at all. In this week's Survivor thread, there were probably 30 posts out of the 180+ that I really, really enjoyed. And that's just Survivor. [Same thing will happen with TAR on Sunday.]

Just my recommendation. Think about how the like button is used on Facebook. I would guess that 70 - 80% of the time, people don't comment on a FB post, even if 15 or more people "like" it. In addition to cutting down on the number of ITA-posts, it also gives you a sense that something you said resonated. Which all of us need now and again. :-)

But I have to say, you are all miracle workers. I've spearheaded an accounting software conversion once, not NEARLY on the level of what you're all doing. Drove me nuts when people expected the new software to be fully functional the very second it rolled out. So I appreciate everything you are all accomplishing.

[aquarian1]

I have 2 questions about the plus 1 thing on posts.

1) Does it have to have a limit of 5 per day? I ask because I was gone for a while, and not keeping up on the site, and to catch up on my favorite threads I had over 13 pages in ep thread, another 20 in another ep thread, 10+ in yet another, plus all the single show threads (and really, it's not THAT many that I follow) totaling dozens and dozens (if not more) of pages. Even being judicious I ran out of the ability to "plus" a post. I understand not wanting people to continuously plus a single post, but that seems to get disabled automatically, I just don't know about the reasoning behind the 5 per day thing. I can live with it, of course, I was just asking.

2) When is the day reset? I tried again after midnight (gotta love jet lag) and it still wouldn't let "plus" a post. And I tried again recently, and I still can't. It seems the cutoff isn't midnight to midnight, or 8am to 8am or anything I can figure out.

Thanks.

Edited by aquarian1, Apr 10, 2012 @ 11:44 AM.

[smrou]

Notification question: [Edited out because my confusion was solely due to my own lack of observation. Figured it out now.]

2) When is the day reset? I tried again after midnight (gotta love jet lag) and it still wouldn't let "plus" a post. And I tried again recently, and I still can't. It seems the cutoff isn't midnight to midnight, or 8am to 8am or anything I can figure out.

I think it's 24 hours, though I'm not sure. I've only bumped into the 5+ limit once, and when I tried again the next morning I still couldn't give a +, so I waited until the afternoon (since that's when I'd given my first + the previous day) and then I was able to give a + again.

Edited by smrou, Apr 10, 2012 @ 9:01 PM.

[smrou]

This is totally an unimportant issue, but I'm wondering why the ability to +1 is not available for moderators and recappers. Not that they can't +1 other people but that we can't +1 them. Obviously it doesn't really matter, but some mods and recappers actually do post in the forums (about shows, I mean, as part of the ongoing conversation) and sometimes I agree or like what they said and would like to give a +1.

[ccridernyc]

To snowball on this, I am now curious about the +1 as it pertains to one's "reputation" - I, to my astonishment apparently now have a "good" reputation. Does it just get incrementally more funny? Can one have a "sterling" reputation as a TWoP village elder and graduate to "beyond reproach"? I can only imagine the sobriquets used for -1s. Doesn't play well with others? Trouble? Will jump off a bridge and want you to come with! If I'm being gaslighted I'm on to it.

And please, not to be an ass about friending, J'adore y'all but I think I've been inadvertantly friended and I'm guessing I have inadvertantly friended others - that little face is so sensitive to the cursor. Maybe if you click on it, it could ask "Are you sure you'd like to be friends with Blank?" Not exactly a problem, a small glitch. I'm pleased as punch if people want to friend me, but I'm also pretty sure the ones that have are in error, and there's no oops option to remove from your roster or somebody else's. I thought some of Bastet Esq's tweaking suggestions a while back were solid. Again, not complaining. Just sayin for the record.

Pertinent Info: IE 9 Windows 7 - Yes all prior compatibility half names issues are solved for this user. Thanks.

[Canmander]

Just a comment about the 5-upvote-per-24-hour limit that was mentioned some pages back: I'd really, really like to see a way to get that limit raised (or even eliminated altogether). Five just seems like so few, especially if you're catching up on a popular episode thread. I want to try to save my +1s for posts that really have me fist-pumping, but it can be hard to keep track of how many I've used and cumbersome to ever go back pages and pages if it turns out my favorites were among the first ones I'd read. As it stands, what usually ends up happening is I use them all up on clever posts in the first 5-10 pages of a topic and then wish I had more when I find a really great post down the line—and judging from the lower number of overall upvotes in the backpages (at least it feels that way), it kind of seems like that's what happens with most people, which seems a little unfair to all the brilliant posters who can't get their comments in within the first hours after a show airs. Since people can only +1 a post once, I don't see what the harm would be in having more upvotes to give. I get the idea of not wanting them to be meaningless, but I also can't imagine there would be too many people who would want to sit around, 24 hours a day, mindlessly +1-ing every single post they read... Just my two cents!

[randomchance]

I agree on raising the +1 limit for the reasons stated above. And I will add, since our +1 "reputation" is meaningless as far as our fellow posters go (it's not used to either punish or reward us), it doesn't even matter if someone plus-ones their buddies all day long - they would get absolutely nothing out of it. There's no little trophy next to the username, there's no "most-liked posts" feed to aspire to or an elite forum for the multi-plussed - nothing that would make it worth anyone's time to use it as a weapon.

Edited by randomchance, Apr 24, 2012 @ 2:01 AM.

[janie jones]

I'd be more into +1ing if people knew that their posts got +1ed. As it is, you'd never know your post got votes unless you went back and looked at it. (Correct?) I mean, maybe people do that, I don't know. On the other hand, it is interesting for other readers to see that posts got votes. I just don't necessarily do it for the sake of the poster.

Edited by janie jones, Apr 24, 2012 @ 10:45 AM.

[ccridernyc]

I've +1'd posts but have never encountered a 24 hour period where 5 were not enough. I guess I'm a judicious +1er.

[akg]

I'd be more into +1ing if people knew that their posts got +1ed. As it is, you'd never know your post got votes unless you went back and looked at it. (Correct?) I mean, maybe people do that, I don't know.

I do wish the votes showed up on our posts page so it would be easier to track down where they came from. I'm curious and would love to have that feedback more accessible.

[ccridernyc]

I think that goes back to it not being so much for the poster as much as the reader. As novel as it was, I'd also vote to get rid of it.

[MsTaken]

I think that goes back to it not being so much for the poster as much as the reader. As novel as it was, I'd also vote to get rid of it.

Is it too ironic if I give this post a +1?! Seriously, while it's not something I feel strongly about, I'd vote for getting rid of this feature as well. I'm just not sure that the benefit derived from a slight decrease in the number of "I agree!" posts is worth making posting more feel like more of a popularity contest.

[randomchance]

I'd be more into +1ing if people knew that their posts got +1ed.

The only other board I've been on where they used it, you could elect to be notified when you got one, and the notification would include the post. But I'm not sure I want to go down that road either, because it changed the way people posted - everyone was angling for that plus one fix, and it became obvious enough for the term "plus one whore" to emerge. I'd rather they just got rid of it. Along with the friending business, which is just another popularity contest.

[possibilities]

I like the +1 stuff because sometimes someone says something I find very interesting, and I want to let them know that, but I don't have anything to add to the conversation.

Also, I admit I have appreciated receiving that kind of appreciation when I've said something that was either hard for me to articulate or in some other way I put some energy into. Sometimes, a forum will be a bunch of people all saying what they thought, but not much back and forth, and in those cases, a + helps indicate that you are listening, not just shooting off your own opinions.

It's true that it's hard to figure out what post of yours got +'d, though. Your profile page will say how many + votes you've received, and you can see if there are more than there used to be, but tracing down where they came from it incredibly difficult, because of the problem of searching for posts, which has been already beaten to death previously in this very forum.

I think that whether 5 is enough per day probably depends on what threads you read and how many of them. If you read 50 pages of posts a day, vs 3 pages, probably there are more gems in the mix. Also, I personally think some threads are way more profound and/or amusing than others; I read some of the more inane ones, but am less frequently moved and inspired by them.

I haven't seen the + stuff be disruptive, which I was actually worried would happen when it was first introduced. I like it. I will say that the post I've seen that had the greatest number of + (by far-- more than twice as many as any other post I've come across), was one that said something i was horribly offended by, so sometimes it's kind of a shock to see what's popular. But it's interesting to me, also.

I think the + stuff is the only thing I like about the update to the site, actually.

[FrogsRule]

SVNBob, I got the error message on two back-to-back friendings (is that a word?).

Interestingly, the whole error message thing may be a weakness of the new system. I noticed that after I +1'd a post the other day, I got the error message that I had exceeded my limit. However, when I went right back to the page, that post apparently had "received" my +1, despite the error message. Funny, huh?

In other words, I think some of the behind the scenes stuff still hasn't quite sorted itself out.

I checked out the duplicate friend. I did indeed friend Z, and half an hour later got a notice that Z had friended me. So evidently TWoP didn't recognize that the "friending" relationship already existed.

To the +1: I feel like Facebook has created a virtual world in which people *expect* to be able to express an opinion about a post. I know that TWoP isn't Facebook. But for any public forum to survive (actually, for any business of any sort to survive), you have to plan for growth, and to do that, you have to design to attract younger readers-viewers-participants. That's the future.

Not having a "like" button for younger participants is (I feel) the equivalent of having a cell phone without Internet access. Sure, those things exist. But few kids and young adults would be caught dead with them.

My two cents. :-) [And I'm not a kid, but our work requires a lot of interface with kids and young adults. So even I now have an almost-expectation that I'll be able to give a "like" feedback to a post.]

ETA: I agree with possibilities. I don't see it as disruptive. Some people are going to be cantankerous (or as my GGM used to say, ornery) whether you have a like button or not.

Edited by FrogsRule, Apr 25, 2012 @ 5:28 AM.

[Glory]

I'd be more into +1ing if people knew that their posts got +1ed. As it is, you'd never know your post got votes unless you went back and looked at it. (Correct?) I mean, maybe people do that, I don't know. On the other hand, it is interesting for other readers to see that posts got votes. I just don't necessarily do it for the sake of the poster.

Yes, this! I just realized that I have a Reputation of 9 - does that mean I've gotten 9 +1's? I don't know how to find out if/when I got +1'd!

[smrou]

It's true that it's hard to figure out what post of yours got +'d, though. Your profile page will say how many + votes you've received, and you can see if there are more than there used to be, but tracing down where they came from it incredibly difficult, because of the problem of searching for posts, which has been already beaten to death previously in this very forum.

What would be nice, for those folks who do want to see where they got their +1s from, would be if they were visible when you look at your posts in My Content. My Content still has issues as it is with not all posts showing up there, or if they do not showing up in any kind of logical order, but I'm operating on the assumption that eventually that will work as intended. But the thing is, while you can see a list of your posts, there's nothing down in the corner where the +1 numbers would ordinarily be. I thought at first that might be because I was largely seeing old posts from before the upgrade, but it's true for new posts as well. At least if that number were visible in My Content then someone who's curious could just take a quick scroll through their posts in My Content and see what got a +1 and what didn't.

I'm assuming, though, that that functionality is not available as I've gotten the impression from other issues in control panels/notifications/etc. that there's not much customization that can be done in those areas.


I don't really think any of this +1 stuff is a big deal at all. It's all just extra and not necessary for the basic use of the forums. But since I've been thinking of the +1 as a way to let someone know I agree with them, it does seem that it's not really serving that purpose given that they're likely to never know I gave them that +1. It does show people reading through the thread afterward that someone agreed with (or just liked) the post, so it serves some purpose, but perhaps not the one that the people doing the +1-ing expect.

Edited by smrou, Apr 25, 2012 @ 8:53 AM.