jSnively

SpamSandwich said:

I do like the addition of "Funny" and "Informative", even though both are essentially just variations of "Like".

If "Dislike" is permanently removed how about adding some variation(s) that likewise allow readers to express an opinion without forcing them to type out a potentially explosive or controversial reply? Maybe "Offensive" or "Spam" or "Wut?" buttons?

If we get to the point where we revisit the dislike button, we will take a look at exactly how to break that out into a less generic button as well. Putting in those options right now would have the same effect as not removing it.

If you're going to report spam, please use the flag link, as that will actually trigger an alert in the administration panel, whereas the reaction buttons don't. I can look into moving that Flag link so it's better presented as well (this has always bugged me), it's burred a bit deeper than I would like in the software.

gatorguy said:

Nice to see evidence of the mods keeping topics on track today. My apologies for my own distraction in one of them but I think this might just work to make the forums a better place to exchange ideas and opinions. Thanks!

We just want keep things on topic. Editing bait-y language and removing pointless and/or trollish posts seems to be the best approach. If you get moderated don't necessarily assume you did something wrong, sometimes posts get killed because they responded to another post which we removed, or sometimes we just foresee them causing more problems than they're worth.

I don't have the time to send PMs to everyone about why their post was edited or removed, but you can always PM me and I will try to respond to as many as I can.

mac_128 said:

Wait, so I can either like a post, or find it informative, but I can't do both, much less like a post I find informative and funny? 

Choose whatever best fits how you feel about the post.

williamlondon said:

[...]

Frankly, I find your dismissal of our concerns and comments to be alarming. Removing the dislike button is a huge red flag for many of us here as we've been through it before. The numbers argument actually works against you, loyalty flees more quickly on smaller sites when trolls inhabit your forums because it doesn't take many to outnumber loyal users (which has been the case of late, hence a big part of the source of our concern). As for the "more" comment concerning loyalty among readers here, don't believe for a second that when MR started going downhill there weren't people fighting to keep it good. Personally, I stayed years longer than I should have, fighting all along the way. I won't make that mistake again and overstay my welcome.

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.

pscooter63 said:

Okay, if you're going to take away the Dislike button, could you give us a bigger Ignore hopper in return?

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.)

And just like that, It is now 50 : )

tallest skil said:

jSnively said:
If you really disagree with a post, then reply to it!

I both agree with you on principle and hate the decision anyway.

No worries, we're going to try it this way for a while and see how it goes. We can always bring it back if we really need to.

StrangeDays said:

Yeah, not thrilled. The troll count on AI has been rising, usually from new members and especially after apple events when they come out of the workwork to bash apple. Downvoting them was a good way for the community to collectively express our opinion on that.

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.

StrangeDays said:

I'd much rather see the forum finally implement a way to enable a reader to click back to the source post when reading a quoted reply. The old forum did this, as does MR. It's useful since it allows one to navigate and reply to an old message seen only in a quote. I would recommend using the quoted-username as the URL for their source post, instead of going to their profile. 

This is something we can look into.

tallest skil said:

Currently an informative post is worth more points

Are we talking Whose Line Is It Anyway points, or…?

There's a cumulative 'score' associated with people's forum accounts. Points are awarded for getting likes, funnies, and inf marks on posts, as well as for any badges that may get awarded. The "Good Post" badge, for example, gets awarded the first time a single comment from a user passes x likes. So yeah... only slightly more structured than Whose Line is it Anyway points ; )

StrangeDays said:

On removing Dislike - "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"

...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 : )

Hello all how about a quick update?

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!