Positive Feedback is Now Live

Personally, I would like to see a star rating rather than a percentage. It's just more visual than an alphanumerical value..

I find that using the positive feedback is a great idea and can help filter out some of the stuff that we do not want to see here on the vine. But the problem that first comes to mind for me is redemption of those who have a low rating. Perhaps someone has posted a few bad things, but now they post something good, there may be people who see the low rating and skip over the article/column because of this.

Those things put aside, I think this will be a great tool for keeping Newsvine a quality source for news.

I have a question. How exactly is the percentage calculated? What gives an author positive feedback?

I just checked my column, and I'm apparently rated at 89.2% (a B+ ?). How did I get this rating before this feature was implemented?

It probably takes into account your vote to seed/post ratio.

I like the system and I think that the percentages are good. I agree with Colin's comments on the stars.

My feeling is that people will like it as long as their own score is high (like mine:93%). If not, they might trash it. Except for the really honest people. I don't care. It's better to be a little controversial so I feel that it doesn't matter much to me.

Oops! I just "fired off" an email to Newsvine asking what this feature was about a minute before I saw this article (sorry guys, go ahead and disregard that email). It seems like an overall good system to me, but it seems slightly flawed in the fact that if your views are controversial, your feedback rating can drop.

Here is an idea that sounds good to me:

In the comment posting area, give a check box where the person commenting can choose "Agree," "Disagree," or "Neutral" to represent their feelings toward the article. This will keep people from reporting the article just because they disagree with it. If something is truly obscene or simply uncalled-for in the article, then it can be reported.

Keep the ratio of agree to disagree separate from the feedback rating, but perhaps give it its own rating next the user's avatar. For example it could read (for me) "66% of users agree with J. Halbert, 14% are neutral, and 20% disagree." Each article would of course have its own rating as well as an overall rating for the entire column.

By the way, I just made up those percentages, I'm sure far less than 66% of people agree with me! ;)

-Josh

Currently we have set the "floor" at 50%, so anybody under 50% will just show up as "50%". Is this the best way to handle marginal contributors?

I think that from a peer evaluation and a personal achievement point of a view, a floor level at 50% is a great idea. On the note of personal achievement, if ones rating is 10% it is quite an ego blow, and may lead to users just giving up and leaving it at 50% gives them the hope that they are in the high range of it, and they will strive to improve.

Do you like seeing a percentage value up there? Would it be more useful to simple see a "star" rating system where users have between 1 and 5 stars?

Part of me wants a star system, solely for it's graphical value - but that is easily fixed with a graphical interpretation of percent (perhaps give us the option to use graphical vs text, or both?). For the amount of users, and the purpose of ranking and self improvement, I feel that a percent number is much more useful - just as they stop giving grade levels (at least in Canada) at grade 6 and move over to percentage grades in 7.

Of course, it's a bit more complicated than that, but this is the main point.

Calvin I love you, but if all you understand is the main point of it, just admit it...we love you all the same

Score another 1 for newsvine. Keep up the good work!

Thanks guys for taking the time to explain this system. Much appreciated!

Stars or a percentage doesn't really matter to me. What would matter the most is showing how the ranking was compiled. Maybe if someone could click on the ranking and get an explanation of how they obtained their particular score. Like an article/seed to comment ratio and then have complaints taken into consideration. Transparency would be key.

Calvin, I would suggest sending the individual an email anytime his/her content is reported. Otherwise, the subjectivity can become outright bias.

There would be no need to say who made the report, only an email stating what was done wrong, why it was considered wrong, and the impact on feedback.

Hey, guys and gals.

I just put together a quick poll of everyone's positive feedback percentage, just 'cause I'm curious to see whose is what, and 'cause I thought it'd be interesting to get an overall picture of the community, and so I (and everyone else) can find some high-percentage writers I might've been missing and such.

So, go brag about your percentage (high or low). ;) Thanks.

I prefer the percentages over a visual system. Feedback should be there in the need of reference, but it should become a major presence next to the username, thus making it the equivalent of post-counts in online forum popularity.

Does this thing take into account people who submit tons of stuff and then use their own vote to raise it up? I for one rarely submit stuff which means I never make it onto the "radar", but I do tend to comment at least a few times throughout the day just to point out my own two cents about the topic at hand.

It also wasn't clear to me if comments count as well, or just articles seeded/written.

we've noticed that most people are above 70% or so, so that's good.

Well mine happens to be 98.7%. Check me out.

Two features I'd really love to request*.

First: Some sort of disambiguation between comment feedback and post feedback. I'm more concerned with what sort of reception my posts are getting - but I tend to be a bit more direct in my comments. I view them as somewhat different - and certainly separate.

Second: Some sort of visual representation of a feedback rating attached to each individual comment. We see positive feedback on comments, but no negative feedback until it's deleted or collapsed**. As more people report a comment I'd like to see something change that lets me know how negative the community's reaction as been to it. I think it would keep commenters more aware of their words, and moderators more accountable for their actions.

* I'm a web developer. My company isn't in competition with Newsvine, but we also deal with a user base that makes requests. I know somewhere in the world, Calvin in grinding his teeth and throwing things at his monitor as he reads this.

** What does that mean anyhow? Deleted I get. Collapsed seems almost random.

Everything looks really groovy tonight—especially the ability to reply directly to a commenter—but I'm wondering if kicking in the Positive Feedback scores is the reason why I've noticed some really, really old articles making it back up the vine. Or is something else at work there?

Clearly something in the system still needs to be tweaked because I just checked my rating and it is only a 93.8%. Fix your algorithms Calvin.

If a visual system is adopted, maybe something along the lines of a pie chart where the amount coloured (green?) represents one's percentage. That way it is an easy visual marker, but is still quite specific as to one's rating.

Perhaps if a rating is less than 50% the pie could be half filled and a different colour (orange?).

Looks like it's a mixed bag on the feedback rating (% v. Stars). Personally, I like the %, since I don't have to guess at what that means... it's clearer what that means and you avoid the "What do the stars mean?" questions.

Likewise, I like the new commenting system with threaded comments, and the indicator showing new comments.

Good work, guys! :)

I like the star idea because it makes it clear that this isn't an accurate measure of the quality of someone's posts.

I'd make it so anything less than 50% is zero stars.

I'll combine two comments at once here.

1. On the point of percentage vs. visual representation of a percentage, such as stars: Perhaps it's the geek in me, but I'd rather see an actual number rather than a vague visual representation. There's too much dumbing down of data elsewhere already for my tastes in this world, and "Get Smarter Here" seems a refreshing change. (It also smacks of getting "stars" in kindergarten for pleasing some authority figure with "satisfactory" work. I'd rather not be subject to such as an adult.)
2. On the point of voting for or against agreement with the content of an article or comment: I seem to recall reading that Newsvine would not implement a means of voting "against" an article, only positive feedback ("voting it up the vine") and was pleased to see this, particularly upon pondering the implications for a while.

• I have read some suggestions here about voting on whether one agrees or disagrees with the content of an article and this appears to me to be directly contradictory to the "no voting articles down" policy that I seem to have recently read.
• I presume the diminishing of the "Positive Feedback" score is due to !-flagging of problematic posts or comments?

Before this change was implemented, I did in fact privately ask some individuals what the "N/A" field was that seemed to be universal at that time. It's good to see something appear there finally. My concern is that it not end up becoming an inadvertent form of "Negative Feedback" indicator. I'll trust those more directly involved in the running of the site to keep those principles in mind as they tweak the formulas, lest we wind up with a form of popularity contest here, aka "karma" as seen on other sites. Cliques seem only to be a detriment to a site such as this.

I have a question regarding the algorithm. I would assume that a post author deleting a comment is seen as a negative on the overall score for a user, but is the deletion of duplicate comments taken into consideration? If someone accidentally posts the same comment twice (or more…) on my column, I liable to delete the repeats just to keep things tidy. However, I wouldn't want to hurt their score just for an accident on their part. I admit I don't get tons of comments and don't want to lower the score of the people who stop by.