Is that really going to be your response? It's like I've come to MacRumors by mistake, but I quit there years ago because they are a horrible website that panders to trolls and promotes people who post shit and cause problems. You are listening to the wrong people when you think you are doing the right things lately, you should know that strongly.
Wait, so let me get this straight...
Your assertion is that when I ask someone to stop who is literally text-book shitposting, that means that I am promoting people who "post shit" and cause problems?
No, pretty much it's all of your decisions lately, but most recently it's the extremely unprofessional conduct of you in this public thread.
This button fiasco is a huge fuck up of monumental proportions, and you keep trying to control it by committing more and more wrong decisions. You need to understand that removing the dislike button was a *bad* move, that's fundamental.
It was a great move.
I used to moderate a large site ( not Apple related) Dislike buttons always annoy people and reduce debate, except those who desire an echo chamber. The cause a gang up on certain posts. They cause people to self edit etc. I dont particularly like like buttons either, but they are useful to say "I agree and dont need to post". If you disagree, post your response. Or if someone else does a good rebuttal of that post, like that.
And clearly in this thread there are people now using the informative button incorrectly.
It's logically inconsistent to argue for the removal of a Dislike button based on this: "...I dont particularly like like buttons either, but they are useful to say "I agree and dont need to post". If you disagree, post your response..."
A more logically consistent argument is, "eliminate all buttons because they are a poor substitute for discourse and debate."
Still see "informative" as a useful button since (used properly) it signifies an unusually helpful post, uncommonly "informative". Generally it would be something like a mention of a fix for a problem users might have, maybe a not-widely known suggestion/hint/time-saver for device users, or perhaps a clearly stated explanation of an otherwise confusing or misunderstood issue that's being reported in the news.
So to me "informative" votes should be noting a particularly worthy post, one well-worth the time to read. Of course selfish motives from a tiny number of members could cause that one to be useless too, which would be a loss IMHO, as well as a waste of time if it's supposed to be saying "we don't like that post" since it simply encourages that post to be read with the presumption there's something of significant importance said in it.
Should posts which do not receive an "Informative" up-vote be presumed to not contain helpful information? Again, it bssically boils down to a wholly subjective determination on the part of the button pusher and limiting the array of responses to only so-called positive ones is manipulative and does not serve the community of posters.
Why in the world must a person who holds a contrary opinion be forced to ignore or type a response, whereas the person who agrees has the option to select from two positives and provide no typed response? It makes no sense. Perhaps every poster should receive a credit of 100 points and they receive more Happy Points if they type out a response, but they lose a point if they only click a button?
If the idea is to keep people coming back to discuss, argue and be exposed to advertising, shouldn't they be incentivized to add more good content to the forums?
Is that really going to be your response? It's like I've come to MacRumors by mistake, but I quit there years ago because they are a horrible website that panders to trolls and promotes people who post shit and cause problems. You are listening to the wrong people when you think you are doing the right things lately, you should know that strongly.
Wait, so let me get this straight...
Your assertion is that when I ask someone to stop who is literally text-book shitposting, that means that I am promoting people who "post shit" and cause problems?
No, pretty much it's all of your decisions lately, but most recently it's the extremely unprofessional conduct of you in this public thread.
This button fiasco is a huge fuck up of monumental proportions, and you keep trying to control it by committing more and more wrong decisions. You need to understand that removing the dislike button was a *bad* move, that's fundamental.
It was a great move.
I used to moderate a large site ( not Apple related) Dislike buttons always annoy people and reduce debate, except those who desire an echo chamber. The cause a gang up on certain posts. They cause people to self edit etc. I dont particularly like like buttons either, but they are useful to say "I agree and dont need to post". If you disagree, post your response. Or if someone else does a good rebuttal of that post, like that.
And clearly in this thread there are people now using the informative button incorrectly.
It's logically inconsistent to argue for the removal of a Dislike button based on this: "...I dont particularly like like buttons either, but they are useful to say "I agree and dont need to post". If you disagree, post your response..."
A more logically consistent argument is, "eliminate all buttons because they are a poor substitute for discourse and debate."
Still see "informative" as a useful button since (used properly) it signifies an unusually helpful post, uncommonly "informative". Generally it would be something like a mention of a fix for a problem users might have, maybe a not-widely known suggestion/hint/time-saver for device users, or perhaps a clearly stated explanation of an otherwise confusing or misunderstood issue that's being reported in the news.
So to me "informative" votes should be noting a particularly worthy post, one well-worth the time to read. Of course selfish motives from a tiny number of members could cause that one to be useless too, which would be a loss IMHO, as well as a waste of time if it's supposed to be saying "we don't like that post" since it simply encourages that post to be read with the presumption there's something of significant importance said in it.
Should posts which do not receive an "Informative" up-vote be presumed to not contain helpful information? Again, it bssically boils down to a wholly subjective determination on the part of the button pusher and limiting the array of responses to only so-called positive ones is manipulative and does not serve the community of posters.
Why in the world must a person who holds a contrary opinion be forced to ignore or type a response, whereas the person who agrees has the option to select from two positives? It makes no sense. Perhaps every poster should receive a credit of 100 points and they receive more Happy Points if they type out a response, but they lose a point if they only click a button?
If the idea is to keep people coming back to discuss, argue and be exposed to advertising, shouldn't they be incentivized to add more good content to the forums?
So just don't use "like" votes. It's not a requirement.
I absolutely believe you understand the reader-side advantages of an "informative" vote. It's not a feel-good smiley face as you would like to portray it, I suspect in order to support your arguments for a thumb's-down/dislike button. "Informative" is not even specifically and always positive reinforcement. Sure, we all have worthy things to say, and opinions that are perfectly valid but an "informative" vote is supposed to mean a post that could be unusually helpful to others even if it might occasionally be "against the grain". To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained. I am totally certain you know that since you've demonstrated your understanding of issues over and over here in the forums, IMHO contributing more intelligent/thoughtful discussion than a lot of folks display.
To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained, but I didn't do so for you. I'm firmly convinced you already understood it and so your arguments must flow from a different motivation.
Is that really going to be your response? It's like I've come to MacRumors by mistake, but I quit there years ago because they are a horrible website that panders to trolls and promotes people who post shit and cause problems. You are listening to the wrong people when you think you are doing the right things lately, you should know that strongly.
Wait, so let me get this straight...
Your assertion is that when I ask someone to stop who is literally text-book shitposting, that means that I am promoting people who "post shit" and cause problems?
No, pretty much it's all of your decisions lately, but most recently it's the extremely unprofessional conduct of you in this public thread.
This button fiasco is a huge fuck up of monumental proportions, and you keep trying to control it by committing more and more wrong decisions. You need to understand that removing the dislike button was a *bad* move, that's fundamental.
It was a great move.
I used to moderate a large site ( not Apple related) Dislike buttons always annoy people and reduce debate, except those who desire an echo chamber. The cause a gang up on certain posts. They cause people to self edit etc. I dont particularly like like buttons either, but they are useful to say "I agree and dont need to post". If you disagree, post your response. Or if someone else does a good rebuttal of that post, like that.
And clearly in this thread there are people now using the informative button incorrectly.
It's logically inconsistent to argue for the removal of a Dislike button based on this: "...I dont particularly like like buttons either, but they are useful to say "I agree and dont need to post". If you disagree, post your response..."
A more logically consistent argument is, "eliminate all buttons because they are a poor substitute for discourse and debate."
Still see "informative" as a useful button since (used properly) it signifies an unusually helpful post, uncommonly "informative". Generally it would be something like a mention of a fix for a problem users might have, maybe a not-widely known suggestion/hint/time-saver for device users, or perhaps a clearly stated explanation of an otherwise confusing or misunderstood issue that's being reported in the news.
So to me "informative" votes should be noting a particularly worthy post, one well-worth the time to read. Of course selfish motives from a tiny number of members could cause that one to be useless too, which would be a loss IMHO, as well as a waste of time if it's supposed to be saying "we don't like that post" since it simply encourages that post to be read with the presumption there's something of significant importance said in it.
Should posts which do not receive an "Informative" up-vote be presumed to not contain helpful information? Again, it bssically boils down to a wholly subjective determination on the part of the button pusher and limiting the array of responses to only so-called positive ones is manipulative and does not serve the community of posters.
Why in the world must a person who holds a contrary opinion be forced to ignore or type a response, whereas the person who agrees has the option to select from two positives? It makes no sense. Perhaps every poster should receive a credit of 100 points and they receive more Happy Points if they type out a response, but they lose a point if they only click a button?
If the idea is to keep people coming back to discuss, argue and be exposed to advertising, shouldn't they be incentivized to add more good content to the forums?
So just don't use "like" votes. It's not a requirement.
I absolutely believe you understand the reader-side advantages of an "informative" vote. It's not a feel-good smiley face as you would like to portray it, I suspect in order to support your arguments for a thumb's-down/dislike button. "Informative" is not even specifically and always positive reinforcement. Sure, we all have worthy things to say, and opinions that are perfectly valid but an "informative" vote is supposed to mean a post that could be unusually helpful to others even if it might occasionally be "against the grain". To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained. I am totally certain you know that since you've demonstrated your understanding of issues over and over here in the forums, IMHO more intelligent/thoughtful discussion than a lot of folks display.
To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained, but I didn't do so for you. I'm firmly convinced you already understood it and so your arguments must flow from a different motivation.
I respect your opinion and appreciate the discussion. If you didn't already know this, I'm saying so now. 👍
Is that really going to be your response? It's like I've come to MacRumors by mistake, but I quit there years ago because they are a horrible website that panders to trolls and promotes people who post shit and cause problems. You are listening to the wrong people when you think you are doing the right things lately, you should know that strongly.
Wait, so let me get this straight...
Your assertion is that when I ask someone to stop who is literally text-book shitposting, that means that I am promoting people who "post shit" and cause problems?
No, pretty much it's all of your decisions lately, but most recently it's the extremely unprofessional conduct of you in this public thread.
This button fiasco is a huge fuck up of monumental proportions, and you keep trying to control it by committing more and more wrong decisions. You need to understand that removing the dislike button was a *bad* move, that's fundamental.
It was a great move.
I used to moderate a large site ( not Apple related) Dislike buttons always annoy people and reduce debate, except those who desire an echo chamber. The cause a gang up on certain posts. They cause people to self edit etc. I dont particularly like like buttons either, but they are useful to say "I agree and dont need to post". If you disagree, post your response. Or if someone else does a good rebuttal of that post, like that.
And clearly in this thread there are people now using the informative button incorrectly.
It's logically inconsistent to argue for the removal of a Dislike button based on this: "...I dont particularly like like buttons either, but they are useful to say "I agree and dont need to post". If you disagree, post your response..."
A more logically consistent argument is, "eliminate all buttons because they are a poor substitute for discourse and debate."
Still see "informative" as a useful button since (used properly) it signifies an unusually helpful post, uncommonly "informative". Generally it would be something like a mention of a fix for a problem users might have, maybe a not-widely known suggestion/hint/time-saver for device users, or perhaps a clearly stated explanation of an otherwise confusing or misunderstood issue that's being reported in the news.
So to me "informative" votes should be noting a particularly worthy post, one well-worth the time to read. Of course selfish motives from a tiny number of members could cause that one to be useless too, which would be a loss IMHO, as well as a waste of time if it's supposed to be saying "we don't like that post" since it simply encourages that post to be read with the presumption there's something of significant importance said in it.
Should posts which do not receive an "Informative" up-vote be presumed to not contain helpful information? Again, it bssically boils down to a wholly subjective determination on the part of the button pusher and limiting the array of responses to only so-called positive ones is manipulative and does not serve the community of posters.
Why in the world must a person who holds a contrary opinion be forced to ignore or type a response, whereas the person who agrees has the option to select from two positives? It makes no sense. Perhaps every poster should receive a credit of 100 points and they receive more Happy Points if they type out a response, but they lose a point if they only click a button?
If the idea is to keep people coming back to discuss, argue and be exposed to advertising, shouldn't they be incentivized to add more good content to the forums?
So just don't use "like" votes. It's not a requirement.
I absolutely believe you understand the reader-side advantages of an "informative" vote. It's not a feel-good smiley face as you would like to portray it, I suspect in order to support your arguments for a thumb's-down/dislike button. "Informative" is not even specifically and always positive reinforcement. Sure, we all have worthy things to say, and opinions that are perfectly valid but an "informative" vote is supposed to mean a post that could be unusually helpful to others even if it might occasionally be "against the grain". To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained. I am totally certain you know that since you've demonstrated your understanding of issues over and over here in the forums, IMHO more intelligent/thoughtful discussion than a lot of folks display.
To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained, but I didn't do so for you. I'm firmly convinced you already understood it and so your arguments must flow from a different motivation.
I respect your opinion and appreciate the discussion. If you didn't already know this, I'm saying so now. 👍
Thank you. Yes I knew that already and I have mutual respect for positions you hold.
Should posts which do not receive an "Informative" up-vote be presumed to not contain helpful information? Again, it bssically boils down to a wholly subjective determination on the part of the button pusher and limiting the array of responses to only so-called positive ones is manipulative and does not serve the community of posters.
Why in the world must a person who holds a contrary opinion be forced to ignore or type a response, whereas the person who agrees has the option to select from two positives? It makes no sense. Perhaps every poster should receive a credit of 100 points and they receive more Happy Points if they type out a response, but they lose a point if they only click a button?
If the idea is to keep people coming back to discuss, argue and be exposed to advertising, shouldn't they be incentivized to add more good content to the forums?
All these questions have been answered already in this thread. I know it's a big of a slog to go through so here's a TLDR:
1) Because negative feedback is more affecting than positive, and discourages further interaction. One of the reasons the dislike button is so prone to abuse is because of how low friction it is. In our case it created an environment that was hostile to new users, and only served to increase tribalism. Over half of the traffic to these forums comes from new users. It's crucial that we be able to entice some of them to participate if we want to keep them healthy over the long-term, and maybe even grow them.
2) Positive reinforcement is a good feedback mechanism to keep users returning. Reducing the friction there is optimal since there's little downside to the interaction. It's not perfect, but it's a decent way to make newer users stick around longer and post more.
3) Ads don't factor into this at all. We run the forums as a value-add, not a revenue driver. I think we break even on server costs, but not if you factor in the man hours. We're a small team, the time I spend responding to this post means something else currently isn't getting done.
This has all been borne out by the data we have since the change, we're pretty much green across the board. The handful of users in this thread are not representative of the larger trends on the forum. The people abusing the 'funny' button was way smaller than the people abusing the dislike. The people who are now abusing the 'inf' (which seems to be mostly localized) are an even smaller set still. We know who you are, isn't not hard for us to look ; )
We're going to continue to monitor things, but I think this will be my last post on the topic for a while. You guys are encouraged to continue to discuss; I've seen some okay ideas in here. If something gets said that is compelling we will take it under consideration or maybe chime in. We have heard your feedback and responded in what I believe to be a fairly open manner. However, this is starting to devolve into a few users who have really dug their heels into the sand, and I'm not sure anything we say at this point is going to be productive.
When we have more information or updates then I will post here again. Otherwise I'll see you guys on the forums at large.
The efforts to manage 'button abuse' are admirable and I wholeheartedly agree that there was a lot of abuse going.
If people were just mature enough use the buttons correctly it wouldn't be an issue but some, and I think it is only a handful, just think they can hide behind the anonymity of the system and abuse it. The lack of maturity was compounded when the dislike button was removed and those same people just took to hitting 'funny', screwing up the value of the system.
Based on J Snively's posts in this thread I find nothing that justifies personal criticism of him/her. I might not agree with absolutely everything said but everything has been explained (often multiple times), a lot of perspective has been given, a huge amount of patience shown and the bottom line is that they are trying to tackle what was/is a real problem while attempting to let people have their say as openly as possible. After all it's a discussion forum.
I think the only way to manage the problem is by removing anonymity but that may be beyond the possibilities of the forum software, or perhaps overkill, if the people abusing the buttons really are just a handful.
Should posts which do not receive an "Informative" up-vote be presumed to not contain helpful information? Again, it bssically boils down to a wholly subjective determination on the part of the button pusher and limiting the array of responses to only so-called positive ones is manipulative and does not serve the community of posters.
Why in the world must a person who holds a contrary opinion be forced to ignore or type a response, whereas the person who agrees has the option to select from two positives? It makes no sense. Perhaps every poster should receive a credit of 100 points and they receive more Happy Points if they type out a response, but they lose a point if they only click a button?
If the idea is to keep people coming back to discuss, argue and be exposed to advertising, shouldn't they be incentivized to add more good content to the forums?
So just don't use "like" votes. It's not a requirement.
I absolutely believe you understand the reader-side advantages of an "informative" vote. It's not a feel-good smiley face as you would like to portray it,
...
To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained, but I didn't do so for you. I'm firmly convinced you already understood it and so your arguments must flow from a different motivation.
It isn't useful because as far as I know you can't find just the "informative" posts.
I see that the rating systems have been reduced to just Like and Informative, Funny is now gone too and I began to like that one since I got feedback people took some of my comments as being funny which it was intended to be and nothing more. I was beginning to worry too many people lost their sense of humor since it was obviously some, including my comments were intended to be funny and people were going off the deep end and miss the humor. People when you begin attaching the funny people in the world, you need to do some sole searching. Humor is like are it is in the eyes of the beholder and because you do not get it does not mean you rip the artwork off the walk.
I personally did not take offence when someone marked my comments as dislike. Most times I would go back and look at those comments and see what I may have said they did not like. Most times it was because they did not seem to agree with me. However, I did not grow up in the cupcake generation where everyone wins and providing anything but positive feedback is seen as bad.
Folk, I hope those who think negative feedback is bad, you need to realize there are lots of people in the world who are very successful because someone berated them and told them they would not be successful. Steve Job use to berate people in hope they would step up and do great things. Yeah some people can not being told they are wrong but do we all want to live in a world here less than average is acceptable. If Job was not as tough as he was on people do you all think we would have these great products. Jobs was not about making people feel good but about making great products.
Regarding your closure of this thread, specifically the last post therein… That’s why I keep saying to AUTOMATICALLY have all political articles link straight into Political Outsider so that discussion CAN be had. Either that or just don’t write any articles that could remotely be considered political. Because what else is the point?
Regarding your closure of this thread, specifically the last post therein… That’s why I keep saying to AUTOMATICALLY have all political articles link straight into Political Outsider so that discussion CAN be had. Either that or just don’t write any articles that could remotely be considered political. Because what else is the point?
The news story is relevant to people who care about apple news; What's not relevant is the bickering, in-fighting, and name calling about the politics. There were some good constructive posts in there about the realities of moving a production center like that to the US, those are great comments and it pains me that I have to close the thread because we have posters that can't behave when the word Trump appears.
Moving the forum doesn't stop those comments (which, btw are against the rules to being with) from being on our main site, right in the face of people who don't want or need them. We are not a political outlet, people don't come here for that and allowing them reflects poorly on us as an organization. Moving the posts just doesn't solve that problem. The reason I suggest you go to the political thread is so you can talk about it outside of the context of the news cycle.
The news is relevant to Apple though, and we will continue to post news that's relevant to Apple. I've considered discussing with the news team the possibility of just turning off comments on any thread we think will end up too politically charged, but I hate to have to do that. That sucks.
I see that the rating systems have been reduced to just Like and Informative, Funny is now gone too and I began to like that one since I got feedback people took some of my comments as being funny which it was intended to be and nothing more. I was beginning to worry too many people lost their sense of humor since it was obviously some, including my comments were intended to be funny and people were going off the deep end and miss the humor. People when you begin attaching the funny people in the world, you need to do some sole searching. Humor is like are it is in the eyes of the beholder and because you do not get it does not mean you rip the artwork off the walk.
I personally did not take offence when someone marked my comments as dislike. Most times I would go back and look at those comments and see what I may have said they did not like. Most times it was because they did not seem to agree with me. However, I did not grow up in the cupcake generation where everyone wins and providing anything but positive feedback is seen as bad.
Folk, I hope those who think negative feedback is bad, you need to realize there are lots of people in the world who are very successful because someone berated them and told them they would not be successful. Steve Job use to berate people in hope they would step up and do great things. Yeah some people can not being told they are wrong but do we all want to live in a world here less than average is acceptable. If Job was not as tough as he was on people do you all think we would have these great products. Jobs was not about making people feel good but about making great products.
These are great reflections. I personally liked Funny, not because it was being misused as an outright "dislike"... but because there were so many contexts to the word itself. Aside from the obvious, there's also sarcastic "funny" (which I brought up initially in this thread), and then there's "strange" funny ("there's something funny going on here").
Having a button that could be used in so many ways was kind of a creative, out-of-the-box move. Who cares if anyone knew what you really meant with that vote; it was almost like your own private joke. I was sad to see the experiment end before it even hit puberty.
Is Informative the new dislike? I am starting to see people click on informative button on those "trollish" comments that are not informative at all.
I did some digging last week into a handful of posts I thought were maybe suspect, but upon investigation it turned out there's actually just people using the buttons who don't post much. Accounts didn't seem particularly suspect suspect either; sane email, no shared/overlapping IPs with other users, general recognized consumer-grade providers, no proxies or weird countries, etc. It just serves as a reminder that what one person considers 'troll' is often not from another person's perspective.
That said, there are a few users who insist on throwing their own little rebellion. If you have any posts in particular you want to bring to my attention please don't hesitate to do so. You can either post them here or just PM me.
Oh, I guess this is the place to ask: Is it possible for you guys to unblock just the portion of Unicode that deals with emoji so that we can use them in the text field?
The emoticons afforded by Quiller’s software aren’t standard unicode characters; they’re custom images which ALWAYS, without fail, break if you need to edit your post or are quoting someone else’s. Never mind that they don’t offer nearly the range of options that we as Apple users are used to seeing. I totally get that the software developers want to be as secure as possible against code injection, but it feels weird for an Apple forum to display Unicode emoji correctly in e-mail notifications of posts, but as blank characters in the posts themselves!
I also don’t know why I’m advocating for this, as I don’t use them very often and don’t support the pictographication of English… Still, I’ve seen others ask about it before.
Oh, I guess this is the place to ask: Is it possible for you guys to unblock just the portion of Unicode that deals with emoji so that we can use them in the text field?
The emoticons afforded by Quiller’s software aren’t standard unicode characters; they’re custom images which ALWAYS, without fail, break if you need to edit your post or are quoting someone else’s. Never mind that they don’t offer nearly the range of options that we as Apple users are used to seeing. I totally get that the software developers want to be as secure as possible against code injection, but it feels weird for an Apple forum to display Unicode emoji correctly in e-mail notifications of posts, but as blank characters in the posts themselves!
I also don’t know why I’m advocating for this, as I don’t use them very often and don’t support the pictographication of English… Still, I’ve seen others ask about it before.
Yeah, it's possible Some should work right now, though it would be a limited subset. We need to convert the comments and discussions tables from mysql's utf8 to utf8mb4 for full support. That will require taking the forums down for an hour or two to do the conversion. It's not just about the character encoding either, we also will need to
switch to a font that supports them, and do some software updating. Personally I'm a big fan of the thinking face emoji.
It's something we can look into if people want it.
Oh, I guess this is the place to ask: Is it possible for you guys to unblock just the portion of Unicode that deals with emoji so that we can use them in the text field?
The emoticons afforded by Quiller’s software aren’t standard unicode characters; they’re custom images which ALWAYS, without fail, break if you need to edit your post or are quoting someone else’s. Never mind that they don’t offer nearly the range of options that we as Apple users are used to seeing. I totally get that the software developers want to be as secure as possible against code injection, but it feels weird for an Apple forum to display Unicode emoji correctly in e-mail notifications of posts, but as blank characters in the posts themselves!
I also don’t know why I’m advocating for this, as I don’t use them very often and don’t support the pictographication of English… Still, I’ve seen others ask about it before.
Yeah, it's possible Some should work right now, though it would be a limited subset. We need to convert the comments and discussions tables from mysql's utf8 to utf8mb4 for full support. That will require taking the forums down for an hour or two to do the conversion. It's not just about the character encoding either, we also will need to
switch to a font that supports them, and do some software updating. Personally I'm a big fan of the thinking face emoji.
It's something we can look into if people want it.
Comments
Why in the world must a person who holds a contrary opinion be forced to ignore or type a response, whereas the person who agrees has the option to select from two positives and provide no typed response? It makes no sense. Perhaps every poster should receive a credit of 100 points and they receive more Happy Points if they type out a response, but they lose a point if they only click a button?
If the idea is to keep people coming back to discuss, argue and be exposed to advertising, shouldn't they be incentivized to add more good content to the forums?
I absolutely believe you understand the reader-side advantages of an "informative" vote. It's not a feel-good smiley face as you would like to portray it, I suspect in order to support your arguments for a thumb's-down/dislike button. "Informative" is not even specifically and always positive reinforcement. Sure, we all have worthy things to say, and opinions that are perfectly valid but an "informative" vote is supposed to mean a post that could be unusually helpful to others even if it might occasionally be "against the grain". To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained. I am totally certain you know that since you've demonstrated your understanding of issues over and over here in the forums, IMHO contributing more intelligent/thoughtful discussion than a lot of folks display.
To me it's silly that it even needs to be explained, but I didn't do so for you. I'm firmly convinced you already understood it and so your arguments must flow from a different motivation.
1) Because negative feedback is more affecting than positive, and discourages further interaction. One of the reasons the dislike button is so prone to abuse is because of how low friction it is. In our case it created an environment that was hostile to new users, and only served to increase tribalism. Over half of the traffic to these forums comes from new users. It's crucial that we be able to entice some of them to participate if we want to keep them healthy over the long-term, and maybe even grow them.
2) Positive reinforcement is a good feedback mechanism to keep users returning. Reducing the friction there is optimal since there's little downside to the interaction. It's not perfect, but it's a decent way to make newer users stick around longer and post more.
3) Ads don't factor into this at all. We run the forums as a value-add, not a revenue driver. I think we break even on server costs, but not if you factor in the man hours. We're a small team, the time I spend responding to this post means something else currently isn't getting done.
This has all been borne out by the data we have since the change, we're pretty much green across the board. The handful of users in this thread are not representative of the larger trends on the forum. The people abusing the 'funny' button was way smaller than the people abusing the dislike. The people who are now abusing the 'inf' (which seems to be mostly localized) are an even smaller set still. We know who you are, isn't not hard for us to look ; )
We're going to continue to monitor things, but I think this will be my last post on the topic for a while. You guys are encouraged to continue to discuss; I've seen some okay ideas in here. If something gets said that is compelling we will take it under consideration or maybe chime in. We have heard your feedback and responded in what I believe to be a fairly open manner. However, this is starting to devolve into a few users who have really dug their heels into the sand, and I'm not sure anything we say at this point is going to be productive.
When we have more information or updates then I will post here again. Otherwise I'll see you guys on the forums at large.
If people were just mature enough use the buttons correctly it wouldn't be an issue but some, and I think it is only a handful, just think they can hide behind the anonymity of the system and abuse it. The lack of maturity was compounded when the dislike button was removed and those same people just took to hitting 'funny', screwing up the value of the system.
Based on J Snively's posts in this thread I find nothing that justifies personal criticism of him/her. I might not agree with absolutely everything said but everything has been explained (often multiple times), a lot of perspective has been given, a huge amount of patience shown and the bottom line is that they are trying to tackle what was/is a real problem while attempting to let people have their say as openly as possible. After all it's a discussion forum.
I think the only way to manage the problem is by removing anonymity but that may be beyond the possibilities of the forum software, or perhaps overkill, if the people abusing the buttons really are just a handful.
So it is just a smiley face.
I see that the rating systems have been reduced to just Like and Informative, Funny is now gone too and I began to like that one since I got feedback people took some of my comments as being funny which it was intended to be and nothing more. I was beginning to worry too many people lost their sense of humor since it was obviously some, including my comments were intended to be funny and people were going off the deep end and miss the humor. People when you begin attaching the funny people in the world, you need to do some sole searching. Humor is like are it is in the eyes of the beholder and because you do not get it does not mean you rip the artwork off the walk.
I personally did not take offence when someone marked my comments as dislike. Most times I would go back and look at those comments and see what I may have said they did not like. Most times it was because they did not seem to agree with me. However, I did not grow up in the cupcake generation where everyone wins and providing anything but positive feedback is seen as bad.
Folk, I hope those who think negative feedback is bad, you need to realize there are lots of people in the world who are very successful because someone berated them and told them they would not be successful. Steve Job use to berate people in hope they would step up and do great things. Yeah some people can not being told they are wrong but do we all want to live in a world here less than average is acceptable. If Job was not as tough as he was on people do you all think we would have these great products. Jobs was not about making people feel good but about making great products.
Moving the forum doesn't stop those comments (which, btw are against the rules to being with) from being on our main site, right in the face of people who don't want or need them. We are not a political outlet, people don't come here for that and allowing them reflects poorly on us as an organization. Moving the posts just doesn't solve that problem. The reason I suggest you go to the political thread is so you can talk about it outside of the context of the news cycle.
The news is relevant to Apple though, and we will continue to post news that's relevant to Apple. I've considered discussing with the news team the possibility of just turning off comments on any thread we think will end up too politically charged, but I hate to have to do that. That sucks.
Having a button that could be used in so many ways was kind of a creative, out-of-the-box move. Who cares if anyone knew what you really meant with that vote; it was almost like your own private joke. I was sad to see the experiment end before it even hit puberty.
That said, there are a few users who insist on throwing their own little rebellion. If you have any posts in particular you want to bring to my attention please don't hesitate to do so. You can either post them here or just PM me.
As long as it comes with a response!
The emoticons afforded by Quiller’s software aren’t standard unicode characters; they’re custom images which ALWAYS, without fail, break if you need to edit your post or are quoting someone else’s. Never mind that they don’t offer nearly the range of options that we as Apple users are used to seeing. I totally get that the software developers want to be as secure as possible against code injection, but it feels weird for an Apple forum to display Unicode emoji correctly in e-mail notifications of posts, but as blank characters in the posts themselves!
I also don’t know why I’m advocating for this, as I don’t use them very often and don’t support the pictographication of English… Still, I’ve seen others ask about it before.
Some should work right now, though it would be a limited subset. We need to convert the comments and discussions tables from mysql's utf8 to utf8mb4 for full support. That will require taking the forums down for an hour or two to do the conversion. It's not just about the character encoding either, we also will need to switch to a font that supports them, and do some software updating. Personally I'm a big fan of the thinking face emoji.
It's something we can look into if people want it.
Post formatting doesn't work on iPad AFAICS.
Blocked users are still visible on iPad.
I can't edit posts.