Voting and Reputation

You will notice that each topic and reply now has voting arrows next to them. I will put up a page explaining voting and reputation in more detail but until then this is briefly how it works.

If you have 50+ reputation points you can vote. Check your profile to see what your rep is.

You get 20 votes per day. Votes do not carry from day to day so you will lose any votes you don't use on that day. A day is a New York day, i.e. Eastern Time.

It costs you 1 reputation point to vote a post down and 0 to vote it up.

A member's reputation will decrease by 5 points if you vote down a post they made. It will increase by 10 if you vote it up.

Votes can be canceled by clicking the arrow again or reversed by clicking the other arrow. You can change your mind for up to 24 hours after you've initially voted and after that the vote is locked.

I've seeded the prolific posters with 100 reputation points to get the ball rolling.

A members reputation will be displayed just below their name and above their avatar next to each post.

The objective of this exercise is to democratically recognize and reward constructive and helpful posts. If you read something that has helped you then vote it up.

I realize that it is difficult for new members to vote if they haven't posted anything to receive reputation for. I therefore encourage you to post your questions and ask for help and advice and if a question is phrased well I encourage those with sufficient reputation to vote up those questions.

Comments welcome. Also if you like this idea then vote this post up. If you think it sucks then vote it down.

Next to a post you should see two new items. I've marked them with red squares. The first is the reputation score of the poster. In this case my score is 139. The second box shows the voting arrows and that this post has a net +1 vote for it.



If you don't see the voting arrows then that could be because you're running Internet Explorer 6 or 7. I've just discovered that this is a problem and not sure when we'll get to fix it.

So, if you want to vote on posts here then I suggest that you upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 or use another browser like Firefox or Chrome. Here are the links to install a browser that will allow you to vote:

Download Internet Explorer 8

Download Firefox

Download Google Chrome

I think this is leading to trouble DT. The normal human emotions of jealousy, neglect and egomania will be intensified with this system I believe. What kind of information are you looking to net out from this and then how will it be used to make the forum a better place......? Lately it seems that we have a challenge with participation and I'm not sure this will fix that...perhaps your stats show otherwise....

Bruce

Thanks for the comment Bruce.

The idea is to encourage the type of behavior that we want on the forum. e.g. If someone posts an outrageous trading claim and refuses to back it with facts then we can vote that post down instead of getting into a flame war of words.

If someone posts something useful then we can recognize them for that by voting up their posts.

To address the issues that you raised we put a cost on down votes and down votes aren't as damaging as up votes are beneficial.

I have seen this work elsewhere extremely effectively.

You might be right and this might be a complete failure. However, we won't know until we try it.

I'm not looking for stats here but instead I'm allowing traders to recognize their peers and give credit where it's due.

Because you can't vote until you have 50 points this prevents one-time posters, spammers and newbies from manipulating the scores. You have to earn the right to vote.

If you or anyone else see evidence of this not working then feel free to post here or PM me and if it doesn't work out we'll remove it.

@Bruce - good example of doing the right thing is what you did in this post:
http://www.mypivots.com/Board/Topic/5207/2/knowing-prices-break#51792
You obviously posted something which was off-topic and then you realized that it was not good for the forum/topic and deleted it. I respect that and voted you up for what you did.

You didn't contribute any knowledge to the forum in that post but I respect your action and I was able to recognize you for it.

Is there a safeguard in place to limit voting up or down more than once by the same person? Can I vote for my own to stroke my ego when I'm having a bad day? It will be interesting to see if we can be objective in our voting and not let our good or bad moods towards the day and other posters influence us.....

Just curious as to where you have seen this concept work on a forum ? Sounds like it will be a fun experiment DT!!

Originally posted by BruceM

Is there a safeguard in place to limit voting up or down more than once by the same person?

Yes - if you click the up/down vote a second time it cancels the vote. Try it!

Can I vote for my own to stroke my ego when I'm having a bad day?

No - it won't allow you - try it. Ego maniacs not allowed

It will be interesting to see if we can be objective in our voting and not let our good or bad moods towards the day and other posters influence us.....

Sure there will be some days when you might vote negatively because you're having a bad day but over a period of time that should even out and have the same impact on everyone. Also, negative voting costs you and has half impact compared to positive voting so it causes voters to think twice before they do so.

I am hoping that negative voting will be used against obvious spammers and charlatans.

I've had a report of nothing happening when someone clicks the arrows in Firefox. Anybody else have this problem? If so, do you have any further info or did you solve it?

It's working for me in Firefox 3.5.5

Maby there should be an elapse time period before a vote can
be made.

This would give traders a chance to think through before voting..

Originally posted by redsixspeed

Maby there should be an elapse time period before a vote can
be made.

This would give traders a chance to think through before voting..

Well first of all you can't vote unless you have 50 reputation points. But I think that what you are talking about is preventing a member from voting on a post just after it's been posted? I'm open to implementing that if you can convince me that it would improve quality and the objective of voting. My thinking is that most people once they've read something aren't going to come back to it later to vote. It's a now or never concept.

Please keep in mind we aren't voting for a president here. The current system is fine. You can't possibly predict how long it will take for someone to make an informed decision, not that it's even remotely necessary in something like this.

Originally posted by phileo

so if i run out of votes, how do i get more ?

You get 20 per day and then they renew. A day is based on Eastern Standard Time so at 1 second past midnight in New York the counter is reset 20. They don't accumulate, any votes you don't use in that day are lost.

If you want to support the site you get 40 votes per day (plus some other stuff) if you become a Premium Member.