The Whiteboard

Yannis Rizos

1:36 AM

Finally! I have more downvotes than upvotes! Yay!

Rachel

3:01 AM

@YannisRizos I wouldn't call that a good thing.... what does that say about our question quality??

Yannis Rizos

3:19 AM

@Rachel It doesn't say anything at all about our question quality, I'm just a random dude downvoting what I don't like (and unlike most, I downvote answers all the time). I went from about 800 downvotes to 1.4K now that downvotes on deleted posts are counted, while I didn't notice any difference on my upvotes... Good instincts I guess :P

And I consider my 1:1 up/down vote ratio pretty healthy, as I honestly consider half of our content crap. Don't expect anyone to agree with my definition of crap content, though... ;)

Rachel

3:58 AM

Hrrrm I think it's bad. A site isn't going to grow if questions get equally up and downvoted. You won't be able to sort the good stuff from the crap. P.SE was like wildfire when it first started because of some really active users and lots and lots of votes.

If people think they'll get upvotes, they'll stay active. If they think they'll just get downvotes, they'll leave for another site

Brant

@Jae Oh, so that's why I suddenly got a bunch of Vox Populi badges.

GalmWing

Yea, for example, I have just recently joined askUbuntu and it's motivating to get upvotes. But anyways, just a few persons downvoting a lot doesn't really change the balance, or does it?

Rachel

Just saying, moderators are supposed to lead by example, and I think that's a bad example to set

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel Are you actually suggesting bribing users to stay around? I'll continue downvote crap content as I see it. If people take that personally that's their problem, not mine.

@Rachel Down/up voting is an individual process... It has absolutely nothing to do with moderation activities or responsibilities.

Rachel

@YannisRizos Absolutely not, but you don't have to treat P.SE like meta. Just because you don't like an answer doesn't mean it's not a good answer. P.SE is subjective, and there is more than one way to solve problems

And if everyone had more down votes than upvotes, this site probably wouldn't be doing very well at all

Yannis Rizos

4:09 AM

@Rachel "Absolutely not, but you don't have to treat P.SE like meta. Just because you don't like an answer doesn't mean it's not a good answer" Where did you get that from?

Rachel

"I'm just a random dude downvoting what I don't like "

Yannis Rizos

50 mins ago, by Yannis Rizos

And I consider my 1:1 up/down vote ratio pretty healthy, as I honestly consider half of our content crap. Don't expect anyone to agree with my definition of crap content, though... ;)

I don't like what I don't find useful.

@Rachel On the contrary, if people downvoted it would be quite easier to weed out bad content and a) improve it, b) delete it...

and the site would be doing even better than it's doing now...

Rachel

P.SE is subjective. Your opinion of bad content is not everyone elses opinion of bad content. You should downvote when an question or answer is wrong, or bad. I do not consider good off-topic questions to be bad. If that's the case, then vote to close or migrate.

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel So I'm guessing you somehow reviewed my downvotes and you know exactly what I downvote?

Good off topic questions? Extremely rare...

They exist, but they are extremely rare...

Rachel

@YannisRizos Nope, but I remember the early days when this site was active, interesting, exciting, etc and it was easy to find good questions, answers, and information that I could use to grow as a programmer. Part of that was because people voted! They voted up questions that were interesting or that they thought were good questions to ask other programmers, and reserved their downvotes for bad/wrong questions/answers.

I'm just saying, if everyone had more downvotes than upvotes, this site would probably be dead

Yannis Rizos

4:20 AM

@Rachel Just remember, the good old days are not what we are striving for...

Rachel

@YannisRizos I won't argue you on that point because I've accepted the fact that my point of view is not shared by the moderation team, however I don't want to see this site run to the ground

There's a difference between constructive feedback and negative feedback, and I feel downvoting is negative feedback. It should be used in the cases you want to submit negative feedback, not when you want to submit constructive feedback.

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel That's your own personal interpretation of the peer review system employed at Stack Exchange. Since I strongly believe that voting is an individual process, I won't waste any time discussing it...

@Rachel Actually most people seem to enjoy the direction of the site, not just the moderation team... Heh, I was elected, and I'm amongst the most aggressive down voters and close voters around... A vocal minority may disagree with how we handle things, but however vocal still a very small minority...

Rachel

I actually voted for you myself (3rd choice) because you do good work with the tag cleanup. MarkTrapp is a great moderator on meta, but I strongly disagree with him on the way he closes questions.

And I will disagree that we are a small group.... p.se has driven many of us away

I'm off to bed, but wanted to let you know of an opposing opinion to having more downvotes than upvotes :)

Yannis Rizos

Goodnight... Always awkward when I say that to a girl at 6:30AM :)

Rachel

4:25 PM

@YannisRizos Pffft should say it with pride, not embarrassment! But it was somewhere around midnight my time, and I get up around 7a for work

Josh K

9:14 PM

@slott Please take further discussion to this chat please.

I would be very interested in seeing the 100's of questions where people misuse punctuation marks. Neither myself nor the dozens of programmers I've worked with seemed to have an issue with it either.

Could you also point out where I said curly braces were not optional in a language design? You seem to be harping pretty hard on this point, and I would like to bring whitespace into the discussion to provide the counter point that not only can you avoid punctuation and braces but you can avoid all letters too in the design of a language. Still doesn't make it a good idea.

I'm also going to archive our comment thread discussion as I believe it's served it's purpose.

S.Lott

9:39 PM

@JoshK You removed the "The extra curly braces aren't really all that helpful. But people like them. " Since you removed the, I take that to mean that curly braces are mandatory. What other meaning can I attribute to your action? You removed something that sure seemed factual to me. Now you're claiming something else? The point was that braces are -- by definition -- optional. Period. You wanted facts. Then you removed this factual statement. Why?

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@JoshK Do I need to go on? 100's are trivially available. If you want them, I can write a PyCurl program to get them for you. Would that help raise the point to the necessary threshold of "Fact"?

Josh K

11:12 PM

@SLott “extra curly braces aren't really all that helpful” is your personal opinion about braces. Taking PHP as an example language, curly braces for block delimitation are required, not “aren't really all that helpful”. To continue the example to another language like Python, “extra curly braces” are in fact not helpful because the language uses another method for delimiting scope.

I would also point out that the example questions you've listed are obvious straw man arguments. Dumb people ask dumb questions, it is not an indicator of the community as a whole. Maybe limit the questions to only include people that have >10k rep and show an active pattern.

I removed the “extra curly braces....like them.” line because it's your subjective opinion about braces, not a fact concerning braces. It's opinion.

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