Re:Upvote the Gray! Downvote the Orange! Vive la Révolution!
by robg on Thursday February 05, 2009 @06:32AM
(#467598)
Right, I agree. Content matters. But without some really powerful content analysis, points may be the best that can be done.
Isn't there something useful in having some feedback measure of things you've contributed? If anything, without points, I'd worry that the devaluation of comments would get much worse. At least now there is some valuation.
Re:Upvote the Gray! Downvote the Orange! Vive la Révolution!
by allyt on Thursday February 05, 2009 @06:41AM
(#467613)
I don't think his idea is to remove points completely - they would still determine where the comment gets placed on a page, they just wouldn't be displayed as prominently.
This would really change the UX of the site, actually - I find myself scanning over just points/names after having read the first few posts in a long thread.
Ok, that's an attempt at humor, which I understand is risky in and of itself. But seriously, orange or not is really not relevant, what you have to say is. The more visible distinctions there are between users the more people will be given an incentive to try to game the system.
My 'alternative' would be the exact opposite, remove all distinctions between users in the layout, including the visibility of the 'points', use the points system out of sight to give/remove functionality and to influence the order in which comments and submissions are sorted.