New feature: Vote comments up/down

The beginning of the end.

Vanguardism.

Yep the dictatorship of the geekmods

The discussion on the up/down thing has already been very interesting and productive IMO.

If nothing else, it's highlighted the inherent conservatism of many Libcom posters

Knuckle under and modernise, Revol! Modernise!!!!

Actually, I thought Evie was mostly spot on and she really should post on here more often. Revol, I love most of your politics but you do need an occasional slapdown

basically, this feature will serve as a tool of pseudo-self-empowerment for authoritarian personalities pretending to be revolutionaries

Where is all this talk about turning LibCom into Facebook coming from? Facebook is for stalking people, LibCom is never going to be anything like that.
Most forums I visit have a similar voting system and seem to survive just fine.

Furthermore, people seem to have got the wrong end of the stick when it comes to why there is a voting system. It is not there to mark down ideas you believe to be incorrect. It is there to mark down rude and unhelpful posts, such as, 'fucking stupid', 'bit gay mate'. On the other hand, well written posts that try to explain their ideas using a friendly and accessible style will be 'upped'.

This is why communism will never work. Other people are not as amazing and selfless as me

Maybe just have a 'helpful' and an 'unhelpful' option then? It might not make that much difference, but it'd make it more explicit what the options are there for.

Because 9th Thermidor?

^ Lol, dude, your posts are grand.

bigot!

If anything we should be rejecting the binary and moving beyond that to pure expression.

I voted both ways on this, because I agreed with Serge's point about Evie and I disagreed with his assessment of Revols politics. Seemed fair to me.

I'm in favour of the experiment. It's often hard to tell whether things will work or not until you try them, at least as far as forum mechanics go.

The only potential development I could think of (without getting too Heath Robinson) would be to distinguish between tone and content. I might think there would be interesting content in a post by someone who was being a total dick, or I might appreciate the tone of someone trying to make peace in a fractious thread, even though I found the political content of their position uninspiring.

Also listening to revol wail has given me the best laughs for ages

See? The new system works!

Incidentally, I had to vote you down for sitting on the fence. You either have 100% uncritical support for Serge Forward Thought or you're nothing but an imperialist lackey and running dog who gets voted DOWN

If Revol has been banned for calling out this shit and an admin got a wee bit butthurt cos he was mean to them that's seriously embarrassing. Fuckin state of this place sometimes.

Admin: revol was temp banned for going on a rant about macho posting on an unrelated thread, ignoring two requests not to derail and flaming with it.

this thread is now worse than the meme thread.

And most forums I had been visiting were a fucking shithole because of rep and voting systems and had frequent shitstorms over it, frequent as in at least once a month were kids were crying themselves a river over it.

To be fair, right now I see the voting system put to good use in discussions, but who knows how long it'll stay that way. I'd still want a public poll over this...

You have much to learn, young padawan.

Is that why he's banned. That's pathetic.

why? I didn't see the posts myself, but temp banning for flaming after warnings is perfectly justified.

Strikes me as reactionary though.

Aye cretinous. I stand corrected that it was referring to a different thread, but looking at that thread... I'll take it there.

don't ban revol's account! just ban him from posting. he can communicate with us via ups and downs.

Admin edit - off topic

Steven, I certainly think you should try the up/down votes for a month. I’m all in favor of trying it out. It is, after all, through trial and error that you can find the best results. I am by no means conservative about trying it – if there’s anything workable and constructive libcom can do to improve the site or to make female comrades feel more welcomed, then I’m all for it. I am simply critical of the up/down votes because I have yet to see any good or convincing argument that it would discourage macho posting or bullying very much. Instead, others have argued, to my mind, rightly that it is simplistic, banal, superficial, and akin to a competitive popularity contest and Facebook. Look already at the results and you’ll see that most people vote “down” not based on whether a comment is offensive or discriminatory, but on whether they don’t “like” it or don’t “agree” with it. This is not to say that to some extent it may be put to good use, but it seems like you could overall achieve a better, more workable effect through other means and without this feature.

So I’m not opposed to trying it. However, after you try it for a month, the admins alone may not still be able to get the best idea of whether it works effectively in practice or not, so I think it would be in the interest of users as well to have a public poll to indicate whether they actually think it should be withdrawn, and not just the admins. Couldn’t the people here have at least some say in it? It seems like a generalization to say that “people here have opposed pretty much every suggestion for change we have ever proposed… but have later come to appreciate it.” I personally think libcom has made many new changes for the better and that make it a distinct website, but that does not mean every change will necessarily be helpful or workable. The criticisms here made of the up/down votes, again, seem to be legitimate ones.

'admin: quit flaming Serge, you have been warned'

Admin edit - off topic