Yeah, this is the right answer I think. People can turn off email notification if they don't appreciate that intrusion.

Seconded - excellent answer, Basil.

I would add that certain inane QUESTIONS (and all spam Q's) deserve/earn appropriately non-useful ANSWERS.

"I posted a completely useless and non-helpful answer to the person who asked a hopelessly vague question about gay male acceptance in the US. If this is not a good idea, I will stop."

No. Ask a silly question, get a silly answer. Yours was by far the best. Don't stop.

Thanks. :) I hope that if Charles B feels otherwise he will let me know.

Well, l'm fairly positive you're not one of the people he's referring to.

I'm definitely not thinking of you CSN. I agree that someone who asks a lame question may warrant a fitting response, although I think we all make an effort to give the person the benefit of the doubt.

Yep. Sometimes more than is probably warranted. :)

Thank you, but if I'm not a culprit that makes it more complicated. :) I think that any kind of policy would need to be consistently applied. It's not OK to have a moderator pull someone aside for a wise-ass comment if that's not done consistently. It's unfair to have a two-tier policy: one for funny wiseass comments and one for unfunny wiseass comments. The downvotes mechanism already in place lets the population at large decide what's amusing/helpful and what is not.

This is a great and diplomatic point that dramatically increased my respect for you. l tend to agree.

Also, everything is subjective in text. On a bad day, that can strike even the most levelheaded person the wrong way. Even moderators. With all due respect, Charles.

I like that idea a lot. It might be a bit of a coding headache, but that's just the kind of thing I was looking for. Thanks stinkbug.

I like something like this. If you did calculate a karma value (see my answer), you could also use that to decide if they are throttled, among other things. You could have a nightly job set users' karma rather than calculating it on the fly.

The only problem I see is that it might be hard for someone to work their way out of a karma rut. But maybe they deserve it.

I don't like this answer, because I get downvoted a LOT! Of course, maybe I am the person who gives bad answers that are of the type this question is about. I don't know. :(

l've had the occasional stalker on here whom l've pissed off for some reason or another and has literally gone and downvoted EVERY SINGLE ANSWER l ever posted. l got something like an extra 300 downvotes in a matter of days back when l first joined QL. That's happened to me more than once. lf it happens again, l'll get dinged in this approach through no fault of my own. l'd be cool with the idea otherwise, but there are always extenuating circumstances. Maybe allow for appeals in stalker situations where it's obvious that someone's being harassed?

These are some good issues for us to work out. Thanks.

Malicious down-voting is rare but I'd like to be able to have people report/appeal it so we can reverse it.

If you get down-voted a lot you should probably have a look at why. It's usually because the answer was not helpful, so that's pretty easy to fix for future answers.

I feel like I've created a bit of a witch hunt mentality here and if I have let me apologize. That was not my intention. I have learned a lot from the answers, so thanks for that.

freikja, ideally the system shouldn't allow someone to downvote (or even upvote) 300 answers in a short amount of time. Maybe there could be a limit of x votes per days and then when they reached their limit a little message would pop up when they tried to vote ("sorry, you've voted on 50 answers today, you can vote again tomorrow).

l don't think you've created a witch hunt mentality at all. lt seems that for the most part, the regs here are mellow enough to let most of this stuff slide. lt's a constructive discussion. However...

"If you get down-voted a lot you should probably have a look at why. It's usually because the answer was not helpful, so that's pretty easy to fix for future answers."

Whether or not it's helpful is debatable. First off, when l can't trace my downvotes back to any one particular answer given the amount l might post in one sitting, it's pretty much impossible to then reflect on the answer itself.

Secondly, subjectivity abounds. Let me provide an example. Someone posts a question asking if they should stay with their boyfriend, and their entire post is deserving of a unanimous DTMFA response, but it's clear to everyone reading it that the answer the OP is looking for is a "Yeah, he sounds like a winner, stay with him!". So then anyone who encourages the OP to dump him (no matter how gently) has higher chances of being downvoted. l generally try to be as diplomatic as possible, but l'm also not going refrain from pointing out the hard truth if someone posts a question begging for it either. And as l pointed out elsewhere, a bad day can make all the difference in someone's voting.

Frankly, this isn't a situation where l need to reflect on my answers. l honestly don't appreciate the patronizing tone there when l'm a grown adult who is quite capable of accepting responsibility for myself if l'm being an asshole. Since l don't like admitting l'm an asshole, l do my best to avoid being one. l gave one answer somewhere that pissed one individual off, who then went and downvoted every contribution l'd made up until that point; l'm still trying to make up for it, and it's like a shitty record that l can't get rid of. So with all due respect, this isn't about me getting "downvoted a lot". lt's about one incident and person in particular who upped my downvotes by something close to 300 -l went from 300 posts *total* with maybe 50 downvotes, to 300 posts *total* and 350 downvotes- in less than a week. The same thing happened to Aislinn, and on a smaller scale, l believe it also happened to Kitschnsync. Since both are funny and for the better part post helpful and wise responses, l don't think this is a problem with us. Speaking for myself, if l thought it were, l'd fix the problem. As it is, l've been busting my ass ever since that incident trying to bring up my votes as much as possible, and it's going to take me probably another year to make good on 300 downvotes in one fell swoop. lt's annoying as hell.

Lastly, no matter how helpful l may be, the subjectivity remains, so l can't fix my future answers unless l'm a mind reader and interested in providing only the answer someone wants, rather than what they might occasionally need. Exceptions here are questions with answers we can easily look up on Google, or things like "What side dish should l make with my mac and cheese?" Harder to do with things like boyfriend questions, but l'll be damned if l'm going to restrict my answers so completely that they fail to reflect my actual opinions on the matter just because someone is feeling especially touchy that day.

Just sayin.

Stinkbug - l'd be down for that.

Charles: gotta agree with Ms Bell here: the haters cling like velcro and the potential for abuse is actually annoyingly real.

Also, some of us save up our Qland time for one long stretch: limiting answers, comments, thumbsup, etc would be an unnecessary penalty for what someone else might consider merely good time mgmt

Also, I'm finding lame questions to be much more of a problem than lame answers. All of a sudden they're everywhere...clogging up the main page and generally provoking a lot of irritation (this is discernible from the answers and comments of generally genial folks who are obviously beginning to lose patience and get snarky).

l agree 99.9%, just want to point out that the questioner shouldn't have to disable emails regarding their own question, and one that may provide answers they need. lt won't stop them from seeing the lame answers anyway. But as you say, l think lame questions are a bigger problem than the answers.

Good to know. I hadn't really identified that, but it is easy for me to be a little more diligent about the question quality. Also if you guys report them when you see them then I'll make sure I keep the quality higher.

Thanks.

As far as email notification. It can be disabled, but it is a high price to pay since it makes you check back at the site all the time to see if there are new answers and that's a pain.

I would really like to see the really horrific questions - the ones that are meaningless, badly spelled, start from a false premise - somehow moderated, before this place turns into Yahoo Answers. *shudder*

I agree as far as the site in concerned, it really not an issue and everything works well. I was just thinking of the email aspect, but I also may be making too big a deal about it.

Quite right. The discussion was useful and I learned some good things. But the bottom line is that it's working fine and if there's anything I need to do it's just gently intervene privately when there is some consistently bad quality. Thanks fnarf.

You BASTARD! Er, oops.

As I mentioned in my comment to Josh Bomb, I'm concerned that people will consider getting the worst answer just a different kind of badge of honor and some people will start collecting them. Thanks for the idea.

You are totally justified in that fear.

That's v. funny. In fact we should have the Gnome facing the wall sitting in a corner.

But here's my problem with the whole anti-mushroom concept. I have a feeling people will want to collect them...

You're so right, Charles. I can see some of the more aggressive Sloggers migrating to QL just to become uber trolls and collect anti-shrooms.

Jon,

I read your first novel, at the time, and again. And there are some really useful points in there and in your latest tome.

Based on my somewhat unscientific analysis, bad answers are not limited to people with bad reputations. Those are generally the easy cases.

I think you've got something here in terms of Karma etc. There are a few places that have implemented that kind of approach - although it's usually so over engineered that no one knows what's happening. It's hard to strike a balance that is sufficiently transparent, but these are the right concepts.

My inclination is to go with Kip's approach initially and throw in a dash of Stinkbug's posting limitation.

So a moderator would first privately communicate the issue and then, if necessary put a temporary posting limitation on the offender.

I think it's rare enough that it can be managed through moderation for now. So I'll keep my eye on it and take it from there.

Thanks for all the effort you put into thinking this through. It's much appreciated.

"There are a few places that have implemented that kind of approach - although it's usually so over engineered that no one knows what's happening."

I couldn't agree more (see: Everything2). Definitely keep it simple.

Karma/reputation systems often seem more like a lab experiment than something actually useful, and they tend to get meta (see: meta-moderation). I'm not really sure what would work best, honestly, but I think the direction is sound.

If I had to pick my favorite idea, it would be auto-hiding answers that have collected an excessively low reputation, perhaps -3 or less, or something proportional to the total votes on that answer or on all answers on the question page.

I agree with the auto-hiding of answers, that's a great suggestion and probably easy to implement too (although absolute vs. relative could be an issue). Great. Thanks.

Of course the biggest problem is not the answer on the site which is easy to ignore, it's the fact that people get emailed the answer.

We could put a delay on the email to wait for the communities input, but I don't like the idea of delaying answers.

"Maybe people--without commenting--want to give a reason why they downvoted (rude / not useful / non-answer / wrong), then have that visible. Allowing people that are logged in to post anonymous comments might also increase contructive negative feedback."

l think this is a great idea, and actually an alternative to auto-hiding answers. Usually if l downvote and have a pretty strong opinion about why (or simply want to explain why), l will add a note in the comments. But if an answer draws several downvotes, and l have a counter-argument or question about it, l want the option of responding to it.

Frankly, l think an obsession with mushrooms is irrelevant to the discussion. The only person that leaps to mind regarding shroom obsession would be Kitschnsync, whose original caption was "Gimme shroom", but l think that was meant to be funny, rather than an actual obsession with them. Otherwise, l don't see it.

Anonymous comments on answers is an interesting idea. I'll see if we can do something like that.

I'm not worried about shroom obsession and have to admit to having a bit of it myself occasionally. I would be worried about anti-shroom collection so I don't think we'll go that way.

"Anonymous comments on answers is an interesting idea. I'll see if we can do something like that."

lt would also prevent the backlash of someone stalking and downvoting you just because you tried to give some constructive criticism and they decided to have a hissy fit over it.

Wow. Did you actually delete the rest of the responses that happened here and then not bother responding?

Nope. I didn't see any other responses here. There are quite a few on the other threads that are related so that might be the confusion. My lack of response at this point is really because we are trying to absorb the various ideas that have been suggested into a coherent approach that will not detract from the current approach.

There have been a lot of good ideas and we've been glad to have them. Our first steps have been to be a little more diligent about moderation of both questions and answers. We have also added the capability to use someone's reputation in filtering/promoting contributions - although we have not implemented anything using that just yet.

I'm also trying to figure out a way to throttle rampant voting and to be able to reverse malicious voting.

So, I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I disappeared. I haven't. And nothing has been deleted, that's for sure.

Thanks for the follow up.

No, it's not a related discussion. You commented about my downvotes, and l responded and mentioned Aislinn and Kitschnsync as others who suffered from downvoting assholes. Do you remember that?

l appreciate the measures you're taking to control malicious voting.

Are you referring to the thread under Stinkbug's answer above?

Yep. Apologies.

also, I worry that some "lame answers" are actually literally good answers, just poorly written / misunderstood.
An example might be the recent Q about troubles sleeping on the other side of the bed. I suggested 'flip the mattress', -one of my shorter answers without a doubt-
Flipping is a legit answer: (especially if you have a foam mattress) - but I'm not quite sure if anyone took me seriously. (It works!)

Er, so again, current system = flawed but we love it. Trying to perfect it with minute adjustments = perhaps more opportunities for failure.