Some Slight Changes to the Forums
Hello all how about a quick update?
We've also removed the 'dislike' button.
There are a number of reasons for this, but it boils down to the fact it wasn't accomplishing what we hoped it would when we implemented it. Users would often just dislike the posts of any user(s) they were engaged in a debate with, or simply disliked. It was also too frequently used to dogpile reasonable posts when they didn't line up with a segment of the forum's point of view, whether that be a reasonable criticism of Apple, or something political in nature. So it has been removed.
We also merged mobile Feedback forum back into the general Feedback forum, it had 15 threads, it was unnecessary.
Misc. Changes
Editors are all now clearly marked as such, so keep an eye out for them on the forums and say hi every now and again and give feedback. Neil, Mikey, Mike, Dan, Roger, Victor, Christine, Ashley, Max, and Kasper all read the comments, even if they don't post too frequently. We wouldn't be where we are without them, and I just want to say thank you to all of them. Hopefully you guys are enjoying the content they are producing.
Also a quick shout out to our head moderator, Marvin for helping to keep things sane around here.
Your ignore list now has a capacity of 50 users.
We will be back sometime next year to talk about more stuff. As always please feel free to leave feedback here and let us know what we can do to make things better. We are not some empty news regurgitating factory, we are here and we are listening.
Happy Holidays!
Changes to the Like/Dislike System
We've split the reaction buttons out into Like / Funny / Informative, and made them much more prominent. Hopefully that will encourage more users to engage with the system. Currently an informative post is worth more points than a funny or liked post, though that may change if suddenly everything becomes informative.We've also removed the 'dislike' button.
There are a number of reasons for this, but it boils down to the fact it wasn't accomplishing what we hoped it would when we implemented it. Users would often just dislike the posts of any user(s) they were engaged in a debate with, or simply disliked. It was also too frequently used to dogpile reasonable posts when they didn't line up with a segment of the forum's point of view, whether that be a reasonable criticism of Apple, or something political in nature. So it has been removed.
Moderation Policy
I also want to take a minute to remind people of the moderation rules here. We try not to moderate too heavily, but personal attacks, racism, homophobic comments, and general bigotry will get moderated out. In addition we're going to start moderating comments that are essentially off-topic, especially when they're early on in the threads. That doesn't mean we will pull the comment outright if it can be salvaged (we just delete them now), but please keep that in mind before posting. One off-topic post early on can really derail the entire thread, and we have different standards for what we want to show on the main site (first 10 or so) than what we would allow deeper on into a thread.Slight reorganization
We merged the Genius Bar down to a single category. The sub-categories were unnecessary given the amount of use that part of the forums gets. We really like the Genius Bar as a forum though, and we encourage all of you to visit it and help each other out when you can. We may have some cool plans for it in the future...We also merged mobile Feedback forum back into the general Feedback forum, it had 15 threads, it was unnecessary.
Misc. Changes
Editors are all now clearly marked as such, so keep an eye out for them on the forums and say hi every now and again and give feedback. Neil, Mikey, Mike, Dan, Roger, Victor, Christine, Ashley, Max, and Kasper all read the comments, even if they don't post too frequently. We wouldn't be where we are without them, and I just want to say thank you to all of them. Hopefully you guys are enjoying the content they are producing.Also a quick shout out to our head moderator, Marvin for helping to keep things sane around here.
Your ignore list now has a capacity of 50 users.
In Closing...
We want to ensure the forums stay healthy and vibrant for a long time, and 2016 was a good step in that direction (so say the almighty metrics.) AI has been around for 18 years, which is crazy for a website, and we hope to be around for many more.We will be back sometime next year to talk about more stuff. As always please feel free to leave feedback here and let us know what we can do to make things better. We are not some empty news regurgitating factory, we are here and we are listening.
Happy Holidays!
Comments
...sounds like a shield for trolls. Not enthusiastic about this. Why make a negative judgment about people downvoting what they feel are low-value posts? How does that harm the discussion and thus AI's numbers?
The posts I'm referring to there are perfectly reasonable posts. A troll is not simply defined by "they don't agree with me." This applies to all topics, not just Apple related ones. The divide between left and right wing politics on the site is another stark example of people abusing and misusing the dislike button. A lot of veteran users have complained about the dislike buttons behind the scenes, and there were threads complaining about when we implemented it in the first place.
This hurts the forums by discouraging healthy debate, and lowering the barrier of entry towards general negativity. This is especially painful for new users, who maybe aren't used to some of the personalities we have here and are more likely to get piled on. In fact, I have contemplated removing the post counts (in favor of a more generalized rank) as well, because I see some really negative behavior around them, but no decisions have been made on that front yet.
You can still flag threads for moderator attention if they violate rules, or you want to draw our attention to them.
Quick Edit:
If you really disagree with a post, then reply to it! We want people talking about and discussing topics, not everything is cut and dry : )
True forum disruption comes from the one-hit-wonder trolls, and users like sog who for months has been dropping hundreds of off-topic rants and derailing every single article. It was absurd and reaching critical mass -- thanks to his poor like ratio and heavy dislikes he finally backed off.
I just hope this change doesn't create a safe space for trolls, every opinion is equal, etc.
One of the assumptions we made when the feature was originally added was exactly that; Users would fall in line because they cared about that ratio and their scores. After a year of having it live and looking at the data, it turns out that is just incorrect. It didn't stop anyone who wanted to from trolling or making low quality posts. However, it did stop lower frequency and newer posters from wanting to participate.
It's important to us that we are welcoming to new users and that there is an easy path to join the community here. That's the only way we will continue to grow. If that means a little more work cleaning out one-post troll accounts then so be it. If you see one then don't feed them, report them. Down voting had no effect on those users to begin with.
Please be aware though, just because you report something doesn't necessarily mean we will agree that it needs to be removed. We have a reputation here of a being a cavalcade of "Apple fanboys", but this site has been around during some really low Apple lows, crazy high highs, and even lived through Steve Jobs suing us. Not everything is amazing at Apple all of the time, and that's okay. We all love Apple at our core, but we're not so thin-skinned we can't take a rational, well-considered criticism when it's warranted.
This is something we can look into.
On a positive note, the moderation policy sounds good.
I've personally seen numerous perfectly valid and largely factual posts from new members get downvoted over and over simply because they didn't sound sufficiently pro-Apple-y. If they note they've experienced some particular problem, which would be a good logical reason they would have involved themselves with an Appleinsider story for the first time, they get attacked as being either A) Liar or B)Troll, or C)Both and are immediately put on the defensive, served notice by the IMO very-often otherwise silent minority that they aren't wanted here. Their veracity of their posts isn't disputed as much as their honesty is questioned.
Without new members who bring unique insights and experiences with them the forum dies a slow death. Cheerleading is nice and all, but really serves no purpose other than as a feel-good show of support. There's plenty of good in Apple-land and we see stories of it daily, but forum members should be able to mention things that might concern them or bring up competing companies or features that they'd like to see Apple invest in without being attacked as a "troll".
So while it was not the forums intent a probably small number of current members used downvoting as part of a popularity contest instead of validation of a posts honesty and/or facts. Since ownership has clearly said they don't envision the site as a "calvacade of fan-boys" the un-welcoming and abused downvoting used to discourage many new members needs to go, and moderating post-content more aggressively to keep conversations on-topic will help ensure members both old and new comment on articles rather than each other.
So yeah, I get it. If the new changes don't work like the admins/editors hope then changes can be made again. It's not cut in stone. It should be clear to all of us tho that things can't continue as they have if the site wants to continue successfully. Downvoting never did serve the purpose it was intended to, and too many threads get derailed early on and become near impossible to engage with.
It is the same kind of safe-space protect-my-feelings regressive hippie nonsense that has gone on with Disqus and other failed jokes on the internet.
This place just got a lot less interesting, now that forum and the ratings for comments NO LONGER reflect the feelings of the community at all.
Aren't you advocating for just the thing you are ridiculing?
If you read jSnively's explanation for the changes AI is trying to avoid being a place where only the most pro-Apple news and discussions are welcome and all other opinions no matter how valid are not to be tolerated, downvoted into oblivion by what I personally think is probably a relatively small percentage of members accounting for the majority of those votes.
I typed out two lengthy posts justifying it. We are not creating a 'safe space', the rules still apply. If you like a post, then there's still a simple interaction mechanism for that. Valuable posts and posters will still be identifiable via the like, funny, and informative buttons. We want to encourage discussion, and simply hitting what devolved into the "grumpy-man button" did nothing to foster it, and at worst actively discouraged it.
That is beyond the scope of what we're looking to accomplish with this small update, but it is something that we will continue to keep our eye on.
Also, there's still a noticeable lag anytime one clicks these buttons. The ajax calls for them aren't as asynchronous as they could be, it's like the local browser is waiting to hear back from AI before rendering the UI of having clicked, making it feel slow. MR and Disqus have no delay, they render the action immediately.
Five was never really enough to begin with, but the Dislike counter compensated as a pseudo-cathartic-validation of sorts.
(This is coming from someone who once railed against the Dislike button, but came to see its usefulness over time.)
I'm not dismissing anything, in fact i have made multiple lengthy posts explaining the rationale behind the decision. You're making up a problem that doesn't exist, and then shedding crocodile tears as though it is happening. We are happy to listen to feedback, but I'm not going to run around in circles. Like i said to Tallest Skil, we can always revert the change if, once we have a good chunk of data, we find that things were better with it than without it. The data we collected over the past year says that will not be the case.
And just like that, It is now 50 : )