Planet Minecraft

I think that the voting up and down system has a loop hole, people will just vote down for the sake of it. so my solution for this would be to make it so you can not anonymously vote up or down but you must have your name next to it and the owner of the project, skin, texture pack etc gets a notification.

[Zeranny]

I don't think that would be a good ideas as it will cause 'hate' in the community, i.e forum topics saying "OMG WHY DID HE DOWNVOTE ME" with it's point somewhere along the lines of "I thought we were friends". Anonymous voting is needed, but mabye have a system that says how many members and non members voted up/down (if non members can vote)

[Zaralith]

There is already a topic about the voting system in the feature request section as far as I remember. Also, I think that commenting is the only thing that does not require login, though that may change. Check out the other thread for the battal info.

[Cyprezz]

Thanks for the suggestion. It will remain anonymous though. Zeranny is right, while it may be interesting to see who likes/dislikes our work, it will inevitably cause drama and influence future votes. Voting is a member-only ability, mainly to help prevent repeat votes.

Incoming wall of text! Read if your interested in the voting system

I do want to discuss the voting system some more.
One issue we've discussed with the current voting system is the imbalance when applied universally across all content types (Projects, Skins, Textures, etc). The imbalance revolves around the obvious fact that a skin is not a project and a project is not a blog post. It is generally easier for someone to submit one type ( skins) over other types (projects, texture packs). Since we get one self vote as soon as our submission goes live, the system seems unfairly favoring quantity over quality. The proposed solution was to remove and prevent self votes.

However, I still have yet to change it. I personally don't think it's broken and no, it's not because I programmed it. I think when we look at it from a technically standpoint it looks unfair but we have to take into account what happens after that initial vote. User feedback and live stats are very powerful over time and ideally give the website a community brain/hivemind and evolving intelligence. Overtime, the accumulated feedback from thousands of interactions is something you can't program only program to allow it to surface. I try to program it to be as unbiased and fair as possible. A simple but direct example is the featured content on the main page; It's chosen by the overall community based on a variety of stats and time, not me. It's unpredictable and since I'm not choosing the featured content, interesting to watch. (I think texture packs are taking it over though but that's a different thread) Getting back to the votes, no voting system will be perfect but here are my thoughts on the the current system and the impact of the initial self vote:

* Different content types do not receive the same attention after they are released. In general, skins rarely receive additional votes from the community while projects and texture packs tend to easily attract votes and have a much longer "life" in the spotlight even when you disregard the update log. The fact that they attract more votes/stats makes sense and it effectively makes them "worth" multiple skins since on average skins rarely see another vote up or down.

* The fact that it's easier to submit a content type also means there is more competition. They have less exposure time on the front page and subsequent pages. They are competing against many alternatives. It is quite the feat to have a skin that stands out.

Self votes:
* It makes sense that you would like your own work and frankly it's nice to start out with "100% like it". If we remove that initial vote, 0% will like your work. It's sort of puts a negative spin on it. For many skins they'll never see it change. No matter how crappy everyone else may think something is, that member took the time to share it with us and deserves an upvote. If it is truly unliked, it will attract down votes.
* Having 1 self vote doesn't affect browsing content by votes/popularity since everything starts on a level playing ground of the 1 vote. A skin doesn't compete with a project when browsing by stats.

[Zaralith]

One suggestion would be to change the way the members page displays votes by only showing them from other people. One thing that bugs me, though I am not sure how valid it is, is that the guy with the most votes and views has more that 100 skins with a few views each. I think that displaying the votes minus self votes and maybe average views would be a better solution on the members page. By average I mean total views divided by number of submissions. It is probably just me, but I feel that this site was originally intended to share projects and things that take a certain amount of effort. I agree that texture packs can fall under this, but I disagree with skins, mostly because people make tons of them, and with the exception of a few artists, they are just variations on a theme, like the creeper skins and texture skins. Anyway, I think that showing average views and maybe views by category might be useful. maybe change the popular feed to show a few projects, a few skins, and a texture and Blog or two instead of just the most popular submissions overall.

TL:DR show votes minus self votes and views as an average, with maybe a link to most viewed individual submission with it. Also, my internet usage from my smart phone in no internet land is pretty much just PMC.

[Cyprezz]

Yah, I agree. Members list could use some tweaks. We'll try out your suggestions.

[Zaralith]

Ok. Glad my suggestions are useful since, while I suspect that not everything in the skin section is original, I don't think taking it out would be good, and the suggestions make it easier for people who host projects to keep from drowning under the other submission types.

I'd suggest to remove the down votes, they bring nothing but negativity ; they are a motivation killer for the author and are often given by hateful/jaleous/biased people.
To illustrate the latter thing, I'll take my own vote against ... I'm sure I wouldn't have sent this down vote if I wasn't in competition with him and jaleous of his popularity. I immediately regretted this vote but there seems to be no way to revoke it.

So what I'd envision instead of the vote system is a single "I like" button.
The likes/views ratio could be used in the popularity formula.

[three_two]

People have opinions, even if they're biased or driven by negativity. I've gone back and forth with the vote system myself but, IMHO the voting system is better even with the haters out there. The upvotes speak to the overall appeal of the project/texture/skin/server/mod and, if you really 'bring it" with whatever you're working on, we seem to have a very positive community where the haters lose and the upvotes win.

Also, Ovocean, you should be able to change your votes. May have been a site error when you tried before.
To test, I just voted down one of my projects then voted it right back up no problem. Let us know if it still doesn't work for you

People have opinions, even if they're biased or driven by negativity.

Ok I don't say that the information is totally uninteresting but let's stand back a bit : what's the (supposed) use of these votes ? It is to help visitors to easily find things that have high chances to interest them. But the biased aspect of a lot of down votes makes the information deceitful. And the number of dowloads, visits, likes, etc, provide enough data to determine popularity.
So, they are quite useless and frustrate the authors... why keeping them ?

Also, Ovocean, you should be able to change your votes. May have been a site error when you tried before.
To test, I just voted down one of my projects then voted it right back up no problem. Let us know if it still doesn't work for you

I don't want to vote up, I want to remove my vote. But thanks !

[Hadowkai]

wait was i being talked about? are my skins really that horrible? goes to cry in a corner. lol.

[Zaralith]

you can remove a vote by reclicking the vote button of the vote issued. (click the downvote button again to make it go away)