Posted 24 June 2010 - 07:09 AM
I've said some of this in the "what do you think..." thread, but I'll mention it again here.
I really like the ability to uprate posts. Helps to recognize and encourage good contributions to a discussion. I'm thinking mostly about science/medicine related discussions that revolve around the combination of evidence and anecdote, but I imagine it could work equally well in more opinion-oriented discussions.
The downrate function, I like a lot less. So far, I've only seen it used to say "I disagree with this." While this isn't categorically different than using it to uprate a post you simply "like," somehow I believe that damaging someone's reputation should be done with more consideration. I personally would only downrate a post if I thought it was a horrible contribution to a discussion in some way, or really bad etiquette.
This is compounded by the fact that reputation is displayed so prominently on every post. I'm usually perfectly capable of examining posts on their own merits (even from users I don't really "like"), but being forced to see a giant red icon with a negative number (even if it does say "neutral" in little white text) really biases my opinion about what's being said, before I even read it.
A couple things might be considered. First, removing the downrating ability. I thing being able to recognize and draw attention to good posts (and the users who make them) is a valuable feature in itself, and misinformation is usually highlighted as such anyway. I really don't want to be worrying about losing reputation points just because I know someone is going to disagree with me (this has happened a couple of times with the star rating in almost purely factual arguments). I'm trying to remember it's not that important, but the fact that it's the most visible element of every post makes it hard not to think about.
Along these lines, displaying reputation less prominently might be a good idea. Maybe in the same font as the other info below the avatar, or even in the dropdown box/profile page, like the star rating. Or maybe even without the colored boxes...with the soft-color theme of the new format, it really stands out.
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