Mark,

Thank you again for your thoughtful response, but may I respectfully disagree with you on this (I do agree with you on most other stuff - especially your thoughts on public campaign financing).

Here's my main objective for rating individual posts:

Letting thoughtful, consice comments rise to the top (i.e. yours and several other folks I've mentioned) and the dumb ones to sink to the bottom (particularly ones with initials "E.S." They're just blather that clutters up the site and belongs at the bottom of each thread, not the top).

Quality versus quantity. It puts everything in contex. Moveon.org already has this kind of system in place (their site is dormant from now until the elections to "save bandwidth" (?)). Moveon's problem has been getting people to vote instead of just posting (I would suggest a 10-vote minimum requirement before each and every post).

This site just keeps getting bigger and bigger and is losing cohesiveness by the day. I have no freakin' idea what we stand for. People are repeating other posts (and themselves! - sorry I am guilty as well) because there is no convergence mechanism.

We're basically running around chasing our tails.

Respectfully yours,
Erik

I find it helpful to rate BOTH the topic and the comment...but the rating must presented in an easily understood manner. A "Five Stars" graphic seems universal.

I've seen some sites attempt this with nonsensical (+) and (-) symbols or 2/11 numbers which look like type-o's.

So far this site doesn't seem to get too much flaming banter, but with a little momentum the wing nuts will be all over this, ultimately destroying topic threads with personal attack flameouts turning everyone off topic. A rating system for topic AND comment would be helpful in this regard.

I always assumed the scoring was for the topic and general direction, rather than individual posts. Seems sort of useless if this isn't the case...

Mark Greene
Texas Democrat in the Middle

The web is filled with software geniuses writing code that enable people to communicate and collaborate on a variety of "virtual" projects.

In the meantime, we're sitting here banging two rocks together...

One interesting place I stumbled on is FudForum.org

This is a fully integrated internet discussion platform that includes moderating, voting, a search engine, private messaging, and "ignore user" feature, etc. etc.

Why reinvent the wheel? It's already out there...

***

It's OUR turn to re-invent America!
Visit the Unity '08 Platform Focus project. No programming experience necessary!!

http://unitysupporters.com/wiki/?title=UnityWiki:Community_Portal

I have seen that work but it can be a bit divisive as some individuals start dissing each other's posts and it becomes more of viewpoint thing than whether or not the person has interesting ideas.

The other option is for people to have an "ignore" filter. This, I imagine, entails a lot of server space as every list gets filtered by every user. I can see where I would find the 'ignore' filter handy for a few prolific posters, and I imagine I would end up on some reader's 'ignore' lists.

I find it a little handy to see the approval ratings of the various threads. I was surprised to read in the posts here that people take it as a rating on the individual posts. I always saw it as another way of rating whether the particular topic should be part of a unity08 platform. If I sense it is a divisive partisan topic or if it seems couched in a partisan way, I give it the old thumbs down; if it seems to be an important topic that seems relevent to what I perceive the unity08 is about, I vote up.

I think it also tells me something about how the few (I would say the number of posters here is not very encouraging so far, for a national movement) posters see this movement headed. I hope it will lead to more responsive and responsible government, but if the posters pick up on some other agenda, it is useful for me to know that, and look elsewhere.

So your votes count for me. They help me decide whether to keep reading this site, or not.

Respectfully Submitted,

Sketch

I would say that the primary pragmatic impact of the Score is to guide people in their determination of what topics to bother reading. High score means "more likely to be interesting".

In the meantime, it might be worth mentioning that the Unity Supporters Web Forum has "most recent post last" threads (leading to actual conversations rather than "sequential pronouncements"), it has almost 1000 posts, and it's 67th user just signed up today... and he's the campaign manager of the very first Unity Candidate (whose name is Harry Welty and who is running for Minnesota's 8th House district to be exact about things).

You can read the conversation about his discovery in this Unity Supporters thread.

-Jennifer

Dear Web Team,

When will voting on individual comments will be activated? It has been a mere two weeks since your response, but this site is in desperate need of focus and context.

Where should we look for you to "keep us posted"? This thread?

Thanks in advance.

There are guidelines for usage of the rating system posted on the Shoutbox home page.

There's also a high probability that you'll be able to rate individual comments in the near future. We'll keep you posted.

Dude - You're right on target. The fact is, the scores are hardly being used. Here is a not-so-random sampling of some topic's scores and number of comments.

Score / Comments
2 / 41
11 / 68
0 / 58
0 / 2
1 / 2
5 / 28
2 / 44
2 / 19
1 / 21
1 / 3
1 / 3

I agree with you that people WILL vote on individual postings - which will give this site some coherence and moderation. This dovetails beautifully into your your "Difficulty with being Civil" thread. This site is like a convention hall filling up with people - fast. If we had post-by-post voting, sensible, thoughtful solutions (and there are tons in here) would rise to the top. Without voting, people will (and are) typing ENTIRE ENTRIES IN CAPS. And, there you are - back to polarization.

Check out the "Brave New Blogging World" piece by CBS in the Unity "On our Radar" section. I quote:

"How many people are actually reading these things? I decided to conduct a survey on the streets of NYC.

"No. My friend has a blog, but I never read it."
Another man said, "No, I do not."
And another woman: "No, not really."
And so on."

People will read and respect a site where the cream rises to the top. Where good ideas get cheered and polarizing or negative ideas get ignored.

With voting, this site can be a true people's movement. Without it, it's a place for a bunch of hacks that stay up 'till 3 A.M. flaming each other.