See who rated your post

[acomiskey]

I think being able to see who has rated your post would help stop the rogue person who rates "1" for no good reason or explanation.

[Kevin Dorrell]

Jon,

I don't think we are going to find a solution that will please all of the people all of the time. I agree that the ratings are an incentive, and as such the system works quite well. There are not many who would offer free support and advice if there were not some form of recognition at the end of it. Maybe the solution is to leave "well enough" alone.

I like your suggestion of a year table as well as an "all time" and "this month" because it shows who is currently active without actually removing points. Maybe it could be a rolling year - "since 1 year ago" so we don't get the abrupt reset every New Year's day. Just a thought.

My suggestion about decaying points exponentially was because I believe that in our industry Moore's law applies to knowledge and skills as well as to hardware, except that it is an exponential decay rather than exponential growth. That is, something I learn today will be worth only half as much in 18 month's time. Not sure about the decay constant, but the idea is there.

Kevin Dorrell

Luxemburg

[Danilo Dy]

Hi,

I don't like the idea of "0" rating even for the original poster - even it doesn't count. We are humans dude, I received "1" and "2" rating from original poster for my perfectly correct answer, people like to antogonise other people to start a word war as this where they are good at (they are not interested on what this forum is for - I think they belong to some organisation with their own rating system on how many people they get irritated on them) - do you like that to happen in this forum?

If "1" and "2" also can be removed that would be nice. If the reply to your post does not solve your problem (does not satisfy you), then don't rate the poster. This is an international forum, we have communication barrier sometime.

Thanks,

Dandy

[Kevin Dorrell]

OK, I concede to the majority!

KJD

[marikakis]

Hello Kevin and all,

I am not to say that a good rating doesn't make me and others feel good. It does and is probably major factor that keeps the forum going and people become somewhat adicted to it. :-) Good ratings help in that direction and serve the purpose of finding ready answers later. I would put less weight to the "search later" factor because my own memory would search for conversations that I was active participant. I may see some rated conversations daily (and rate some myself without posting anything there), but hardly remember them if I have not put effort to think about issue at hand. The "search later" is also comprimised by the subject line chosen from the original poster (not much we can do about that). So, no matter what people say to defend their desire of a good rating for the posts, I would believe more somebody who would say "rate me, 'cause it makes me feel good and makes me keep doing my best to help you and others now and in the future". :-))) A rating every once and then is enough to make most people feel good. I have seen that most people have total points almost equal to the number of their postings. 1 point for every posting on average seems enough for most people (Rob Huffman gets 2, well done Rob! :-).

I am ok with things that make the community members feel good (those are that keep participation high and encourage quality postings) and against anything that will potentially make them feel bad.

Kind Regards,

M.

p.s. Maybe we can do something about the subject line now that I think about it more. Perhaps add some capability to add keywords to the subject line (not change the original, but add something). I do not know how hard something like that is in practice. Maybe subject line composition help to the original poster (make the poster somewhat categorize its problem) or let participants in conversation add something there. And another thing: an indication of how urgent issue is (so, we do not see the "need help" subject line too often :-)

[marikakis]

Hello,

Some idea now about how to improve the ratings, since this is the purpose of discussion and I bit deviated from it.

Instead of seeing who rated our post, each community member could have an accumulative number of the total points that has given to other people. Not exactly where the points went to, but only the total. I believe this would encourage somewhat people that open conversations to rate some of the posts (or else we will not reply to them, hey, this is a joke, but the joke is half truth :-). Of course somebody could hide this information (as some do with their posts and points), while I see no good reason for such an action. If you think that the points you give are justified, why hide them?

Kind Regards,

Maria

[Daniel Bruhn]

Maria,

Please look at our “ratings reminder” program that is highlighted in Idea Center. This program has similarities to what you're proposing.

http://forum.cisco.com/eforum/servlet/NetProf?page=netprof&forum=Idea%20Center&topic=NetPro%20Ideas&CommCmd=MB%3Fcmd%3Ddisplay_location%26location%3D.2cbe7208

Cheers,

Dan Bruhn

NetPro Community Manager

[marikakis]

Hello,

Yes, there are similarities. However, if I understood correctly, the rating reminder consists of messages related to opened conversations by a person and would be shown to the particular person while being logged in to its own account and nobody else would have access to this information. (I personally never forget to rate a post I think is good, but others might just forget or don't know about the ratings, so ok.) However, I consider important the ratings given not only by people who open conversations, but also from other community members. Many may think the ratings should mostly be given by the original poster, but I rather disagree with that. If I read an answer and I agree with it, I rate it to support it and often post nothing to the discussion. The total number of points given to other people would be an indication of the time a person spends to read the posts, support a particular opinion and acknowledge other community members (I consider this as some form of technical reviewing. The more the experience of the reviewer, the more the chances the rating reflects reality). As I said previously, each person could choose not to show this personal counter to others.

Kind Regards,

Maria

[Daniel Bruhn]

Hi Maria,

I apologize for misunderstanding your suggestion. This idea has been discussed by our team in the past. Many years back I came across a site that did something similar. It gave points and badges out to people based off how many posts they rated. My main concern with this is will it diminish the value of the rating system. People might just start rating posts without reading them to acquire a higher designation. Thoughts?

Cheers,

Dan Bruhn

NetPro Community Manager

[Danilo Dy]

Hi Dan,

When a reply to Original Poster (Thread Starter) question solve his/her problem, the Original Poster usually rate the reply but forgot to tick the Red Check Mark (or intentionally) and without posting any "Thank you I rated you 5 points but you don't solve my problem".

Is it possible that if the Original Poster didn't tick the Red Check Mark, to have an alternative mark whenever he/she rate those replies to her/his question automatically? Maybe Silver Check Mark?

- This will tell us if the Original Poster rated our reply or somebody else.

- This will tell us that our reply makes sense to Original Poster (though it may not have solve his/her problem)

Thanks,

Dandy

[l.mourits]

Very nice and interesting ideas and discussion regarding the rating system. While reading I understood most positions and arguments.

As a frequent poster/visitor I like to add my 2 cents.

I am not in favor of being able to see who rated your post (allthough I agree that there have been instances where I wished to know as well, LOL).

As stated by others our human nature is to use this to find out who provided feedback, why and when, and use that info it to our best interest. This could be easily abused. Also, I am not in favor of zero ratings.

What I do agree though is that it would help a poster to better understand why someone rated 1 or 2, or perhaps even 3, in order to be able to improve postings or update with additional info (this would keep discussions alive and improve the overall quality).

So why not just force a user to give reasoning when rating with 1 or 2? Without reasoning only allow to rate with 3 or higher. That should be easy to implement as well.

And now that we are discussing rating anyway, I have always wondered why it is impossible to rate the initial post on a thread. This kinda makes me think the netpro forum is a place for questioning only, while I appreciate post that just provide great info, best practices et cetera as well. Sometimes an initial post is just great and you can not even rate it :-/

Hope it helps, and happy to see a lot of the frequent posters chime in on this one ;-)

Leo

[scottmac]

It's been a while since I wandered through this area ...

In the meantime, I've seen (at least twice) a situation where someone (I think it was Rick Burts)gave a perfectly acceptable answer, and got rated a "1," apparently because the OP was thinking "You're Number One!!" (i.e., "1" was the top rating).

I know there are specific labels right next to each number, but either due to interpretation issues, or the person was in a hurry ... didn't catch the right label.

Maybe come up with some icons for the numbers too? Like a big happy face for 5 and an "awsh!t" face for a 1 ... something like that... or get rid of the "1" and keep the rest.

I still believe that negative points would be a Bad Thing (but lose the one to remove the which is better a one or a five? confusion)

As a possible solution to an OP's lack of response when a good solution has been posted, maybe have a different color check mark that can be selected by a non-OP that is certain that the solution is a good one ... maybe with a tag (or a link)like "ScottMac says this really works!"

Putting a name on that provides a known source to establish the credibility and to prevent "back scratching" ( you rate my posts and I'll rate yours). It would offer some guidance that a solution is known-good, but unacknowledged by the OP.

OR, to make it somewhat more personal, once you cross into the blue star zone (or higher), you get a personal stamp of approval (Rob gets a Maple Leaf, for example) and a solution could collect badges by known, well-established responders.

Just set aside some table space at the top of the post for the badge gallery.

Oh well, nap time's over, time to go to bed.

Again, my thanks to all the contributers, a lot of great information is posted every day. It's like an Ultra-short Reader's Digest version of keeping up with the tech stuff.

Scott