Video AnswerBash Grand Prize Winner - lexfri!

Well done Lex! Well done to everyone else too. All your videos were great, keep them coming! :)
And as if that's not enough reason for celebration, we've got a whole new fresh blog to comment in!

Woohoo! Thanks Answerbag, and thanks to everyone on the site as well. Congrats to all who participated :)

Congrats Lex! Looks like Davoo can buy his new uke too! Well done all!

Congratulations Lexfri!!!
And more than everything for making the effort to make your own videos, and be so original about it.
Keep them coming. I'll keep Mrs. Astaroth and Astaroth Jr. busy with more videos, now that I learned how to make and edit them. I've found really cool tools. Next time be ready for some serious competition :)

Congrats to Lex and all the winners! Lol I didn't realize I submitted so many video answers!

Is it just me or are you able to rate Alatea's answers like hundreds of times?

I have noticed some odd things in this department. Seems like pudzey has given me a dozen usefuls in a couple of days.(go figure). A101 never seemed to run out of pos. or neg. Maybe it's a glitch.

Well just to test it out I rated Alatea like 25+ times positivily in the last day or so. She was the top contributor before so she has a lot of good answers. I thought Joel mentioned that there was a cap on how many times you could rate someone? I'm able to run out of ratings for LF, carmella, blaylocks, etc.. Auntie Em I wasnt able to rate for like a week and a half. Another weird thing is that I think I was able to rate you more than others too, Darryl. Just yesterday I could have sworn I rated you positively 9 times or so.

Yeah. I think you rated almost all of the uke answers.

I just ran out of ratings for Alatea after 20 more. I think they changed the formula somehow. Maybe the more answer you submit, the more you can be rated? But LF, Carmella, the johns, auntie em and others submit many answers also but I run out of ratings very quickly for them.

www3.telus.net/RO/comment.wav

I am still having problems with photo's from davoo and Bob Blaylock. And Bob, don't tell me to get a "real" web browser.:) I think a lot of people visiting the site probably use IE. Answerbag should be geared for the masses.

How close was the Microsoft Ipod video from coming in 1st place? How many more votes were needed?

I use IE and when something doesn't work I run Netscape. IE works for me most of the time, but hey, nothing is perfect. So, when those times aren't perfect, it would be beneficial to use an alternative.

Shultz: "How close was the Microsoft Ipod video from coming in 1st place? How many more votes were needed?"

I'd kind of like to know also.. you know, for closure. lol

I generally use a mac and I've used Safari and Firefox. Both browser can view the pictures and videos that have been posted her fine. I would test it with my internet explorer, but I deleted that piece of software junk from my mac hehe ;)

Just loaded netscape. Can see everything now, scroll on my touchpad doen't work while using it. Gotta work out some bugs I guess.

Darryl,

What is your main browser? IE?

Yeah, that or on rare occasions, I let the msn go on.

There's a very odd issue involving IE and certain kinds of embedded content. I barely have the faintest vestige of understanding it, but it apparently stems from some bizarre patent infringement suit that was successfully brought against Microsoft, which ended up requiring Microsoft to cripple certain abilities in IE to handle embedded content.

Anyway, that's one of the very least among many much better reasons never to use IE.

What are these much better reasons?

It seems a bit slower on my computer, and I've never encountered other problems with IE.

BTW, I meant Firefox seems a bit slower as opposed to IE.

Of course, it would help if Answerbag allowed still pictures to be embeded the correct way, using straight <img> tags, rather than through an embedded shockwave player.

oregon wrote:

> What are these much better reasons [not to use IE]?

Probably the very best reason is that IE is a gaping security hole that practicaly invites miscreants to feed malware through it into your computer.

I recently had occasion to explain this point in somewhat more detail in an answer I posted at http://www.answerbag.com/a_view.php/78679

"There's a very odd issue involving IE and certain kinds of embedded content. I barely have the faintest vestige of understanding it, but it apparently stems from some bizarre patent infringement suit that was successfully brought against Microsoft, which ended up requiring Microsoft to cripple certain abilities in IE to handle embedded content."

Bob, we can see INSIDE your head by looking at your avatar, but you never cease to amaze me with the wealth of misc. knowledge stored inside your head.

Joel /Mods Some guy spamming his site in two questions.
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/68186
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/68187
and he did it sooooo smoothly. :)

I've been off IE for about 5 years, but I recently tried IE7 (beta 3) for a whole day... I was surprised at how good it looked -- much much easier on the old eyes, then both ff and opera... I really didn't have a complaint after a whole day of using it... I don't have motivation to switch right now, but IE6 people are going to be in for a big treat when they upgrade.

/p

It was to do with Java, Bob.

I use IE and I've never had a problem seeing any of the pics ???

Tried to rate everyone up on the spam questions but I'm all out of rep for Daryl and Scubabob, sorry!

Wow just look at this ridiculousness:
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/68194

Lol, I love the way he's run all the words into each other to make it fit. It took me a while to decipher it but I think I figured it out in the end. He's obviously fairly young (I hope!)

Well let's hope not too young considering the content of the question. =|

True! He could be older I guess. Like I always say, there's no age limit on stupidity!

PS scubabob, I'm a girl! :-)

I want to again suggest categories like I used to before our switch to 2.0.

On http://www.answerbag.com/c_view/59, we could certainly use the "USB Flash" category.

Any idea why Answerbag won't let us suggest categories anymore? Or did they forget to add that feature on 2.0?

Joel said category suggestion will be back. They are still playing catchup though because theres a huge backlog of stuff they still have to take care of.

I'm almost ashamed to admit my ignorance, but what's a browser? And how do I change mine? Can you change it like you change search engines?

BTW maybe if you email Joel he'll keep your category suggestions on file 'til they have time to do them.

Carmella wrote:

> I'm almost ashamed to admit my ignorance, but what's
> a browser? And how do I change mine? Can you change
> it like you change search engines?

The program you run on your computer to access web sites is called a "web browser". It's the program you're using right now, to read this content on Answerbag.

Some of the most common web browsers are Internet Explorer (included with Windows), Netscape Navigator, and FireFox.

Thanks Bob.

I think I must have IE.

Wow, the mods have been approving and rejecting questions faster than ever lately, in the past few days, the majority of my questions have been reviewed. It seems the backlog might be clearing ever so slightly...

Thanks Carmella, we've upped the potency of our mods' coffee lately ;)

And congrats to all the Video AnswerBash winners--I can't tell you how much of my time all those great vidclips have happily devoured.

P.S. The coupon spammer has been contained, thanks as always for the report.

hey its AB-Rich, haven't seen you in a while!

Darryl, regardnig why you can't see the images that Davoo nd Bob are embedding...well, the reason is that they hacked our "Video Answers" function in order to show images, so they're doing something with our system that was never intended, therefore we didn't test it on various browsers. :) We will be including a "real" Image Answers function soon, so fear not!

I'll look into the ratings limits inconsistencies, but considering the impending re-vamp of the whole system, we probably won't spend too much time on it. Unfortunately, it's very hard to reproduce this behavior, so it's very hard to confirm that our fixes have worked.

Joel or Rich - What will you do about completely unjustified low ratings - for example, I screwed up and stuck my comment on two answers - in an answer box, instead of a comments box. Those "answers" - which I asked the staff to remove, but was ignored every time I asked - have garnered a total of six "useless" ratings.

I know I screwed up, but for some reason, I have trouble telling the answers box from the comments box. Maybe others do as well. The ratings were of course, from some jerk taking advantage of the anonymous ratings system - which sucks in my opinion. Whatever - what are you going to do about that kind of crap? I'm sick of getting my answers and everyone else's get the sneaky treatment. It's flocked up.

Also, are you going to fix the "slipperiness" in the drop down ratings thing? I just got a "useless" but it's from someone I "know" who made a complimentary comment, and I doubt this person is two-faced when rating and commenting. I'd bet it was a simple mistake, but how will you fix that?

Too many Answerbaggers are paying the price for all these "improvements" and it doesn't look like you care if bad ratings are unjustified or not. I'd like some details on the major ratings system overhaul you keep writing about, and I'd also like to know specifically if low ratings will still be anonymous. Too many good answers are getting slammed by bored little girls, like Pudzey101 and Sarah Anderson. The summer is one I'll remember as the Summer That Boredom Ran Amok on Answerbag. It's getting really, really tiresome.

Jodie44...

you can edit the answer you made, and out the text -- that doesn't solve the problem, but will make it look more like a mistake that it was.

/p

Yea, peter, I know what you're saying, and thanks for the advice. What's the point, really, though? Mean-spirited people will downgrade anything, since they can do so anonymously. I never thought I'd see Answerbag like this. I appreciate your help:)

Peter, on a completely different note, sounds like you're impressed with IE7. No problems? I'm always leery of betas, but your recommendation seems good to me.

Yes, Beta 3 -- I was very impressed -- no -- I had no problems -- I think this beta is very stable, and probably, also a little preview of what's ahead with vista's look and feel. I tried it because there are some irritating glitches in Firefox that I just got tired of experiencing the other day -- none of those glitches turned up in IE7.

I can't remember how I found it now -- I think I started IE6, and chose "check for updates" in the help menu.

for what it's worth/p

I keep accidentally hitting my mouse wheel when I'm rating people. I'm trying to keep an eye on it but I apologise if I rated anyone down.

Go Jodie! I'm totally with you on your comments. The old ratings system, where you clicked on those circle things, as opposed to a slippery drop down menu was a lot better. At least you were more sure that the person who rated you was certain about which rating they gave you.
Again though, the 'new ratings system' will soon be introduced, call me cynical but as Bob so famously said, the more they fix things, the more broken they get.

The current ratings system is badly broken. Joel; says there's a whole new ratings system in the works. I think it'd make sense, rather than begging for time to be spent patching up the old system, to simply let them put their time into finishing up the new system and putting it into effect. Joel did say it should be out in August, right? Did he say August of which year?

Scubabob, I was reading an old answer you gave recommending Mozilla Firefox as a browser. I installed it. I can now see everything on AB and all other functions are fine. Thanx.

How could I install a new browser, without mucking up my whole computer?

Mozilla was almost self installing, and didn't change anything so far. All I had to do was bring my e-mail into the taskbar, and turn on my instant messaging separately.

Carmella,

I would also recommend firefox. If I am not using Safari on my mac I am using firefox. Here is the download page for it.

http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Nitanitro, I know what you mean. I try to watch it, too, but the dang thing slips. Now I'm glad I took those screenshots of all four pages of the "Useless Ratings Given" leaderboard on Tuesday, Aug 1. At the time, I didn't know why I did it, just a hunch it might be useful as a comparison. What can I say - it was 6:30am and I'd just woken up, sort of. I think I'll check and see if I've dinged more than I think.

BTW, I would never expect anyone else to do this, but I'm -- what else? Bored. Besides, it's for a good cause. If anyone wants copies of the screenshots, let me know. Emailing files sounds like a good cure for boredom.

Carmella, you give great answers and thanks for answering while ago.
I was trying to remember the old ratings format, and I can't, but now that you mention it, dots rings a bell. Geez, I think too many dots have rung my bell too many times lately, lol.

Hey, should I call Dr. Laura and ask her to join answerbag? Or would she hog the psychology Q's? I know you're a big fan. If you've already contacted her, I don't want to be pushy. Just curious. And bored. Let's not forget that one. (grin)

Peter, I'm gonna give IE7 a whirl. I'd been mulling it over before your post, so don't worry -- if it melts my hard drive, I won't run over to Kinko's for the anonymous pc experience and then show up and downgrade all your good answers. You're safe from me. (another grin) Thanks! I swear, it's the people that make Answerbag wonderful, not the technology. Well -- except the computer/internet thing. You know what I mean.

Carmella, one other note. I now have 4 browsers on my computer, IE, MSN Exlorer , Netscape and Mozilla. Clicking on any one of them brings me straight to my home page with no problems, except that Netscape seems to disable the scroll on my touchpad.

Oh, and if you aren't familiar with tabbed browsing, definitely try out that feature. It makes browsing the internet 100x easier.

Jodie, thanks for always commenting and rating answers (and for the compliment!). It's responses like yours that inspire people to continue using AB, when other strange people are taking pleasure spamming us all. BTW, I think your answers are great too! :)
When you mentioned Dr Laura, was that directed at me or someone else?!

Bob - good points you made, and good to remember. I'm not sure I know which August, though. You crack me up, especially when you respond to questions literally. I hate to see those replies get downgraded. After all, you're answering the question asked. Keeps me on my toes, not that I can manage to stay there for long.

Darryl and davoo, are you sure (as you can be) that the firefox website won't fry my computer? How will I switch between IE and firefox when it's downloaded? And will the firefox wipe anything off my computer?
This is so weird, taking advice on serious matters off random strangers!
I've absolutely no knowledge whatsoever on how computer program thingies work, but I did once set up a website on a vetinary surgery that never really existed for a project.

In didn't wipe anything from my computer. To switch back to IE I just close browser, and click IE icon on my desktop.

Forgot, I installed and was back online in less than 5 minutes.

Carmella,

Yup, it is safe. Just download the install file to your desktop then click on it to install the browser. Once it is done installing there should be a new firefox icon. Double click it and enjoy your new internet browser! Firefox will probably ask you if you want to import your bookmarks or settings from internet explorer.. just go ahead and do that. From then on you can just continue to use firefox instead of Internet Explorer. Whichever one you think is better.

Personally I would use Firefox, but this IE7 that everyone is talking about sounds pretty good. Stick with firefox for now.

Bob, BTW, my UPS driver started squawking about 9/11 and conspiracy theories and I thought about you and how you'd prolly roll your eyes and laugh. I didn't say much, just nodded when it seemed polite. He got all worked up over it and said he'd bring me a video. I said, "Oh, no rush...take your time". Hey - I know you'll want to see it, too, LOL, so I'll take good care of it until I can send it to you, via UPS of course.

One final note Carmella, I am not a computer guy by any stretch of the imagination. I was worried about it too. Mozilla even transfers all your cookies and passwords for you. It was really easy.

Carmella, that was for you, being the good doctor's newest fan and all.(hee-hee)

I'm going to try it now. If you don't see me for a while you know it didn't work! Here goes *fingers crossed*...

Davoomac, have you ever looked into iCab? It's my browser of choice. Macintosh-only. http://www.icab.de/ Only grudgingly do I ever use any other browser.

WAHEY!
I can see pictures, Thanks for the 'heads up' everyone! Especially the web address Dav.
(I'm not sure if I just used heads up in the right context. It's an American, I think, word I learnt on here).
The firefox layout is a bit different to IE though, kind of difficult to adjust to. I don't care as long as I can see pictures!
Best of all, you guys don't have to be deprived of my company on AB!

And Jodie, I think we should get the Dr. on here, you know, I think she could contribute such a lot to the site. She's probably one of the few users who wouldn't cause any problems at all...
I say we write to her until she gives in. Failing that, I'll change my username so you can all pretend you're in Dr. Laura's captivating prescence.

Way to go Carmella. I will forgive you for calling us strangers. I like to think of you guys as extended family. :) In the last two months I've spent more time with AB users than anybody else!

Yup! we are one big, happy dysfunctional family! =D

Bob,
I've seen it before but I've never tried it. What is it that you like about it? I will definitely give it a try. Also, did you pay for icab pro?


Carmella,

How do we contact Dr. Laura?

I'll go with the extended family thing Darryl, I suppose all you guys, except the trolls, do to me! Thanks for valuing us all so highly.
Anyone got any suggestions for the best image answers? I've got a lot of catching up to do! Plus, I feel like one of the elite few now!

BTW, what I should have said was I've never met you in my entire life, am never likely to, unless AB has a birthday party we're all invited to, as its most cherished members. And I wouldn't know you if I fell over you in the street (which isn't likely given that we live in totally different parts of the world!).

Bob,
Looking at the icab interface.. at first glance it looks very simple, clean, and customizable. Would you say that is the case? Also, have you used Safari, Firefox, Camino, and Opera?

Carmella You woldn't recognize Darryl? His face is on his avatar for everyone to see! ;)
Mine too hehe.

As far as 'best image' answers. I highly recommend going through my answers or Bob Blaylock's (seeing as how we have been using images in our answers the most)

Davoo,

Need advice?: Call Dr. Laura at 1-800-DR-LAURA

Got A Comment?: Fax her at: 818-461-5140

Or you can write her at:
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
P.O. Box 8120
Van Nuys, CA 91409

All faxes, e-mails, letters, and on-air calls become the property of The Dr. Laura Schlessinger Program.

Found at http://www.drlaura.com/main/

You know, everyone seems to think I'm an expert on Dr Laura, I'm complimented but extremely bemused.
I've never listened to her in my life, and up until a couple of weeks ago didn't know who she was. Now I've got a native American asking how to contact her! LOL!

PS, Every American AB user phone up her show next time it's on and tell her to join AB. That's if she doesn't think the Internet's evil or something! Do it anyway... Please!

Dav, that photo of darryl might be old, and not very representative of him. Really, walking down a main street in America, or England, am I likely to see one face and think, 'Wow, there's Darryl/Dav/Joel/Rich/Nick?'. Put me in a room with you all and I'd probably know who you all were then. ;)

Carmella here are some of the answers where I attached an image:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/68134
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/65258
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/32098
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67991
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67946
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67042
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67824
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67837
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67776
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67227
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/66467

Some of them you can really see where an image can enhance the answer. Some I just added for fun =)

That is a reasonably current photo of me. Was taken in Oct. 2005

OK, I give in!
I can't see darryl's picture properly though, it's so small, and I don't have the greatest sight. I tried to enlarge the picture but it just ended up very fuzzy and pixelated.

davoomac wrote:

> Looking at the icab interface.. at first glance it looks very
> simple, clean, and customizable. Would you say that is the
> case?

That's a fair statement. The thing I most like about iCab is that, being rather paranoid about certain things, I really don't like letting just any random web site have use of cookies, Java, Javascript, and various other dodgy technologies. iCab lets me configure on a site-by-site basis just which sites are allowed to do what to me.

> Also, have you used Safari, Firefox, Camino, and Opera?

I am stuck back at MacOS X 10.2.8 which is the latest version that will readily run on my beige Power Mac G3. The latest version of safari that will run under it is 1.0.3, which I find to be very unimpressive. I'm aware that Safari has likely evolved considerably since then, but I haven't been able to try it.

I did recently download and install Firefox, which is now one of the browsers I will try when I hit the occasional site that doesn't want to behave under iCab. I also have Netscape 7.2, Internet Explorer 5.2.1, and Lynx 2.8.5.

Anybody who wants to, e-mail me and I'll send bigger pic. Maybe we can get to know each other a bit.

Suddenly when we start talking about Dr Laura, fabulous reappears with her/his million and one questions on the Dr. I smell a rat the size of a car.

Well, the blog is available to everyone. We're just lucky most of them haven't found it.

No probs Darryl. It does kick IE 7's butt.

Does this person http://www.answerbag.com/profile.php remind anybody else of beverly of hills?

Wow. It's almost been 24 hours since the latest blog entry posted and we're almost at 100 comments!

Again AB Staff, could we please be given the option to edit our blog response posts so we don't lengthen the response thread with one-liners anymore? It's more or less typical for humans to post something, realize they should've added another sentence (for a myriad of reasons), and add it in one way or another. If we could just be able to add new text to posts already submitted, it would decrease the volume of these response posts considerably.

Another feature I must suggest- a "Topic Review" mini-window immediately below the comment entry field, as seen in many other forums Internet-wide. This is so we don't have to forget who/what we were replying to/about and jump to a different window every 5 minutes (or less, for those whose memory abilities are past their prime) to see what previous post/user we were replying to.

Now so that I don't post a solely off-topic blog response- what mail delivery service does AB use to send the prize checks, and why does it take 2-4 weeks to arrive?

Re: Post 84-

I really hope it's not her. Did she act similar in a lot of ways? (I didn't notice any of that from beverlyofhills.)

I don't know how old the anon (account # 77314) really is but s/he keeps blatantly and openly changing his/her age in different questions.

Come to think of it, maybe s/he's asking all sorts of questions on anyone else's behalf. S/he might already know the answer to his/her own questions but asks them for anyone else who doesn't. For example, I already had a general idea of what the phrase "doesn't do it justice" means; I asked the question here --> http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/35640 so that anybody who -doesn't- know what it means may find the question and read the answer posted by Jodie44.

It was the changing of age and identity that made me think of it. Though she might be asking questions for friends, that was what BofH claimed as well.

The funny thing is that the trolls or malicious users don't really post here in the blog. Even when we basically accused A101 and BOH of being the same person, he didn't bother to defend himself at all. It's not like we are just going to forget right?

Wow...I go out for dinner and a movie, and this place explodes. :)

Schultz:

1. Editing blog posts...we could add something where you can edit blog comments shortly after posting, like the other comments on the site. I'll get it into the queue, but there are some ohter major things we need to take care of first. ;)

2. "Topic Review" - if you hit "respond" next to the post you want to respond to, it will actually show you the text of the post so you'll have some context. Is that adequate or were you looking for something more?

3. As for mailing out the checks, the delay is actually because we want to send them all out at once, and we still don't have addresses for all the winners. Yes, we're *still* waiting for some of the winners to respond so we can send them cash. I guess they just don't need the money...

Jodie

1. Unjustified low ratings: the new system in August will limit the number of low ratings that new users can give. Only users who have received good ratings will be able to give negative ratings.

2. The ratings mechanism will be completely different - the pulldown will be gone.

3. When we forced comments for negative ratings, it simply caused "ratings wars". People who received negative ratings turned around and gave multiple negative ratings in retaliation, so we switched to anonymous ratings. I had some members thank me for the change, but others have had issues with it. I believe that limiting negative ratings to users who have received good ratings (as mentioned in point 1) will improve the situation.

4. I do certainly care that some negative ratings are not deserved, but making them not anonymous won't help - we've seen what happens in that instance, and it's not better. I mentioned one of the things we'll be doing about it already, but the whole system will be different soon. One of the unfortunate necessities of a system that allows negative ratings is that you can never positively guarantee that they are given for the right reasons. There are two options: remove the option of negative ratings, or tune the system as best you can.

Our philosophy here is that negative ratings are a deterrent for most users, and keep completely spurious answers from flooding the site. They also help us identify troublemaking users through their low ratings - if negative ratings weren't possible, people could post all they want as long as it wasn't profane or spam, and we'd have no way to identify them or change their behavior.

Ratings systems are always, *always*, a topic of debate on any site on which they are implemented. Slashdot, Digg, you name it. No rating system is perfect because ultimately they rely on people using them as they were intended, and there's just no way to guarantee that.

That said, we will always try to keep tuning our system to improve it, and you'll see that the next system will have a very different method of identifying the most productive members of the community. Of course I care about the system - I think about AB's various systems constantly (much to my girlfriend's display). The new system will take a whole new approach, and should also allow us to tune the system more easily if/when necessary. We've put a lot of thought into this new one, but I also assure you that we'll continue to tweak until it's as smooth as possible.

Good night all,
Joel

Morning Joel (it is here anyway)

Like you said, the rating system will never be perfect but I think it will be better when you get rid of the drop down menu. I always worry that I'm going to give some a spam rating by accident!

Personally I'm not *that* fussy about what ratings people give me. 90% of users give decent honest ratings. There are only a couple of trolls and frankly they can just bugger off. The only time bad ratings annoy me is when people rate me down because they don't agree with my opinion but I guess nothing can be done about that.

When it's bizzare times in the US, like 1.20am, Joel always seems to write the most informative and heartfelt sounding blogs. Thanks Joel!
I guess being on your website in the early hours of the morning sort of shows that you care. Most people work 9-5 and don't have to think all that much about work whilst they're at home. :)

Will the ratings caps be changed? Or will they be pretty similar to how they are now?
I know you mentioned the negative ratings system, but will we be allowed to give more positive and negative ratings than we can now, provided we ourselves have the ratings?
Or will it be that those without the ratings will be able to give less than we all can now?

I can't remember whether I've asked this before, I may well have done, but will we be able to put paragraphs into our 'about me' sections of our profile at some point? Or are we already supposed to be able to, but there's a bug?

BTW editing blog posts sounds good. :)

Can somebody review weedguys answers? I'm finding (his) references to drugs and sex slightly tiresome, and off the point of the questions entirely. I think it'd be better if we kept those subjects to their relavant categories.
http://www.answerbag.com/user/sub_review.php

Whilst I know we've had worse, I just think that it's a bit unnecessary, especially when he's advocating the use of illegal drugs.

Um, OK, it gets worse, lots worse.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/66726

I don't think he does any serious answers at all. Some of his answers have been pretty funny but most of them are total crap *rolleyes* this is why you shouldn't do drugs!!

I think he used to do a few good answers, from what I remember of his profile, but now they're just all spam/offensive.

agreed. He's a bit like the Jesus guy who was here a few weeks back- y'know the one who slotted "Jesus" into every answer whether it was relevant or not. If he'd done it once or twice, in questions that weren't that serious anyway, it would've been pretty funny - but he took it way too far. Funny answers are fair enough, but you've got to give it a rest sometime, especially when someone really needs some serious advice.

And it is getting a bit boring now, he could at least vary the theme a bit...

The Jesus one made me smile, weedguy doesn't.
Particularly when he's taking to samshing in kitten's heads. I know he's probably only doing it to provoke a reaction rather than because he means it, but still, it's offensive and disturbing.

weedguy has gone from normal user to troll.

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/66568

check out his answer this time.

Thanks, weedguy's nastier answers have been purged. And we will get to reviewing the backlog of answers that have been reported as unfairly rated--our admin tools haven't quite caught up to our new user tools yet, but we'll get there ;)

alright rich!

So all those feedbacks we sent in to you guys got stuck in a queue? Will you reviewing and removing only unfair 'spam/offensive' ratings or also undeserved 'not useful' ratings?

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/66989

Seems like he went on some kind of rampage. Either he just posted this one or you missed it rich.

So does that mean I have to send a link to feedback of every single undeserved spam rating I've received in order to get it removed? Oh no...

They've been 'purged'? You haven't scratched the surface. :)

Here's the one on the snowman and the sex change: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/61814

As of 11:19am (7:19pm GMT for Carmella and the UK) on Sunday, it's still there.

Guys,

You do not need to notify us of undeserved Spam/Offensive ratings. We will review them all once we get through the queue (we are developing some new tools for this to make the work faster.)

As for spurious "not useful" ratings, I'm afraid we can't do a whole lot about that. I believe I've covered this before, but it doesn't make sense for us (the admins) to start making judgement calls on answers, deciding which are correct and which are not - the whole point of the system is that you guys decide what's useful and what isn't.

What we will do, with the new system, is make it harder for people to give negative ratings, so hopefully the accuracy rate of negative ratings will improve because people can't just hand them out willy-nilly (I love that phrase.)

And I went through and took care of the rest of weedguy's answers. Some people...

Thanks Jodie for the time zone interpretation!

Thank goodness for the fact we don't have to send links of our undeserved ratings to feedback. I think Rich's reference to the backlog of reported unfairly rated answers feedback (or something like that), just made it sound as though we did. :)

I despair.
http://www.answerbag.com/profile.php

Joel,

Thanks for answering. I hope you'll give some consideration to removing ratings made on comments mistakenly stuck in an answer box. I know you don't want to interfere with answer/ratings process, and I don't belame you, but if the format had not been changed to make it too easy to see the answer box as the comments box, this wouldn't be an issue.

Joel,

In post #89, you said: "...Of course I care about the system - I think about AB's various systems constantly..."

With all due respect, that's the problem.

Jodie, perhaps I missed something...you'd rather I not think about AB's systems before changing them?

And I'm happy to remove any comments that were mistakenly posted as answers or vice versa for the time being. We will do some work to make those visually different, as well.

Btw, I know all you guys are pretty serious about AB, and I very much value your contributions and thoughts on how to improve it. If any of you would like to contact me personally to address issues that don't necessarily need to be in a public forum here, you can find me on Yahoo IM at joeledowns, or ICQ at 1826637. If you try to add me to your list, please be sure to let me know who you are so I accept the invitation. ;)

Joel,

Sorry I was unclear. What I meant was --

Seems as though you all (that's the overall you, not the Joel person you) are so caught up in fixing, improving, tweaking, or whatever - the systems part of Answerbag - that the people part has been shoved aside, out of the way. No replies to feedback. Trolls running amok, unchallenged, the way Beverly of Hills and several other creations of one bored user did recently. No one from the staff seemed to care. The apparent apathy was a little disconcerting. I realize you're busy. But it seems like all your energy and attention at Answerbag goes into the system and improvements. The other 5% into responding to questions here in the blog. That's not very helpful to new users, or old ones who think feedback is a viable medium of communciation.

I understand ya'll are working hard to improve the site for people. I don't think you're into tweaking for the sake of tweaking. I just think you focused on the improvement itself and have forgotten the reasons for upgrading to begin with.

If I'm wrong (gee, that's never happened before) I will be more than happy to apologize. I mean it. I would MUCH rather be wrong here than right. I'd be real happy if you said, "Jodie, you really need more sleep. Your perception is way screwy. Get a grip, girl. Go have a few drinks. Take a break. Sit back and chill." I'd feel like a fool, but, you know, I've got experience. I can deal with that easier than finding out Answerbag is turning into a machine and taking you with it. You wouldn't even know it was happening - that's the scary part. (Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers) (Well, maybe not exactly like that. A pod would be an ugly avatar, you know)

Ah, I see what you mean now, and I understand your point. What I would like to point out is that the "fixing, improving, and tweaking" is usually a result of things that you guys have asked for. For instance, the tweaks we've done to the ratings system in the past few months were not inspirations I had out of the blue - they were addressing specific things that you guys were complaining about in the system. Now, as it happens, you guys have other issues with the system, so we'll keep tuning.

The vast majority of the issues you guys have brought up here in the past couple months since the redesign have been addressed, so I do feel like we're at least making an effort to cater to your needs (and Bob, we will eventually get those special characters worked out...). Where we may feel less responsive is when the changes requested will have major implications around the site. This includes significant changes to the ratings system (things like taking away negative ratings, which was suggested) - these are things that totally change how ratings get calculated, and we can't just roll them out without putting some serious thought into the consequences.

I do apologize about the Feedback queue. There were some technical glitches with the Feedback queue, but that's really no excuse. Everything is sorted out now, so I've asked Rich to spend some extra time to catch up with this and the spam/offensive queue.

I'm not sure I agree that I don't spend enough time here on the blog. While I can't be on it all day, I do take the time to respond to virtually all questions or issues that are directed to me, even if it's late. Check the last few blogs - I don't let things go too far without pitching in my two cents. ;) Many of you have taken to emailing me directly; I'm happy to hear from any of you guys directly because you are all so familiar with the site, and I think you'll find that I respond pretty quickly to direct email.

Regarding "trolls," I'm also not sure I agree, but then it depends on your definition of a troll. For instance there were several people here who wanted action taken against users who posted a lot of "silly" questions. But, there's really nothing in our Terms of Service or new question guidelines to prevent that, so I decided to let it go for now. What we will do, however, is put a limit on how many questions someone can post in a certain time period to keep people from flooding the site with good or bad questions - moderation is the key, so to speak.

Several other "trolls" were brought to my attention recently, and I pulled down a couple hundred posts between them, and shut down several accounts, so we're definitely taking action. Please keep in mind that it may take us a few hours to respond to these gremlins depending on how the schedules work out between the moderators, but we will definitely get to them.

I admit I do get caught up in the new development because I do feel it is critical to making this site meet the vision I have for it. I've had all these grand plans for AB for the last 3 years, and only now am I able to see them come to fruition now that I have InfoSearch's backing. I will try to keep in closer touch with you guys, and that's also why I shared my IM info above.

Again, thank you guys for sharing your thoughts and suggestions here, and I promise I will continue to address your concerns as often and quickly as possible.

Cheers,
Joel

Thanks, Joel, for your comments.

I really see Jodie's point of view on this, but I also understand everything you've said.

The only thing I've never been quite clear on is this. From previous questions/answers on AB employees and their jobs (I'm pretty sure you've seen 1 or 2 of them), I know that most of the employees seem to have other jobs, namely Rich and the Mod's (but that was before Infosearch).
I know you all have limited time, apart from AB you guys also have to fit in time when you're not working. :)

But, you talk of them Mod's having tools, and how their tools 'need improving'. Why? Surely if they have an inbox of mail it isn't that difficult to look through, and email the sender back, explaining their concern will be looked into, if they had one.
Likewise, if you click on a profile and see which questions haven't been reviewed yet, surely it doesn't take really amazing tools and lot's of time to select 'approved' or 'rejected'.

I wouldn't mind, but it isn't as if the mod's mail you back when it's been rejected. They do sometimes, but rarely.
Even this though, is the least of the problems at the moment. Honestly, if you were a government, I think everybody on here would have caused a civil war by now!

I'd really like to thank you for the action you took against weedguy. I wasn't expecting such a 'thourough' (if that's the word), response, and was slightly disheartened after Rich said he'd 'purged' them.

Btw, I love that you said '...you guys are all pretty serious about AB.'
I'll take that you mean we're all actually obsessed, scarily so! :)

Joel it's great to hear more about what's going on behind the scenes. Thank you for your response! It is exciting to know that there are alot of new things in store for AB. You guys have done a great job!

One question, why does everyone use yahoo IM? is that the most popular nowadays? anyway if anyone wants to contact me, basically all my accounts are davoomac. Aim: davoomac ,Yahoo: davoomac@yahoo.com, gtalk davoomac, msn: davoomac@gmail.com boy, ain't i creative? =)

Dav,
I don't ordinarily use yahoo IM. I set up a new account with them because I wanted to use a different 'company' to the one I use for the people I know well. yahoo IM seemed like the way to go for some reason...

Joel,
I forgot to add in my previous blog, can't you do what Shultz suggested and have a page where it says what features you're currently working on, a brief description of what they are, and a sort of marker for how far they've progressed (eg. 45% finished)?
I thought this was a great idea.

Oh for God's sake these ridiculous spam/offensive ratings are seriously getting on my nerves now. I mean wtf? does this guy just not like certain people or what? If he doesn't like an answer what's wrong with the plain old "not useful"?

If not the requirement to leave a comment with a bad rating could it at least be made visible who is responsible for the rating so that other users can be aware that the person is just- well- whatever.....

Maybe its a Monty Python thing

Spamspamspamspamspamspamspam

Sorry I really needed to vent that!

I keep getting the most odd 'not useful' ratings, the one to my 'where in the world are you from?' question totally stumped me! I don't know why anyone would rate that 'not useful', it's just weird!

It's stupid , I agree. I'm at the point now, I'm not going to answer another question, just comment. What's the point? At least they can't hammer you on that question and need to hunt you down to nail other ones you've answered. I saw yesterday that someone else rated you down on a question asking for a vague answer. If opening a can of whoop@ss ever gets to be on the menu list,I'm all for it.

nitanitro: Apparently my answer to 'where are you from' wasn't useful either.
Maybe they wanted our full cosmic address, ie. our street name and number, then our area, city, country, planet, galaxy... you get my point?
They can get lost, they're not having mine! Possibly map coordinates would have satisfied them?
I think LF's got it about right. I think that basically it's a troll who's desperately in need of a life. :)

Yep, it's a troll who's read this and noticed that their spam ratings will get deleted, so they are now giving us not useful ratings instead lol. Someone needs to meet some girls or something....

Davoomac- one of my answers? Which one was that?

Just another thought,

Joel, why did you decide to give us an IM address for you? How do you feel this will benefit us (the users)/you/answerbag in general?

And what type of issues do you mean, when you say 'don't necessarily need to be discussed...here?'

Thanks.

nitantro wrote: keep getting the most odd 'not useful' ratings, the one to my 'where in the world are you from?' question totally stumped me! I don't know why anyone would rate that 'not useful', it's just weird!


Maybe they just didn't believe you?!

It was funny when we had "incorrect" as a rating and people rated you incorrect for "what do you think" questions. I mean, did they think I was lying or what?

I have no idea... It just seems such a weird thing to rate as 'not useful', I mean none of the answers are that useful exactly, but they all answered the question! When does school start again?

Carmella wrote:

> I forgot to add in my previous blog, can't you do what
> Shultz suggested and have a page where it says what
> features you're currently working on, a brief description
> of what they are, and a sort of marker for how far
> they've progressed (eg. 45% finished)?
> I thought this was a great idea.

I'd also like to see such information, about what's being done, and how much progress is being made. It'd certainly make me feel better about the persistently-broken state Answerbag has been in ever since they rolled out the new version.

However, I can understand why Joel and others might not want to do so.

It's often happened that I've been intensely involved in some task I was performing for an employer or someone else, and I've been asked to explain what I am doing, how I am doing it, and how much progress I'm making. Sometimes, I've just had to say to whomever is asking for such an explanation, "I can either do this work, or I can explain it. I can't do both at the same time. Do you want an explanation, or do you want the work done?"

I have a feeling that's about where Joel and the others are right now. Their efforts to fix Answerbag are consuming a huge amount of their attention; and any significant effort at keeping us up on what is going on will only take attention away from the actual work they are trying to do.

Bob:
In response to your last blog, I see your point. As I was writing my post you refer to, I was thinking along the same lines.

It is frustrating and somewhat defeating the object of the point if Joel & Co spend large chunks of time they don't seem to have telling us how much progress is being made with a feature, than actually getting on and doing it.

I just thought that perhaps, because there are several AB employees of, that perhaps one of them could do it.

Of course, there's also the problem that a feature such as the one Schultz suggested would put an undue amount of stress on the AB workers. if a feature was stuck at (45% completed) for several weeks, then Joel might find himself with a rather full inbox, and a rather large influx of people IM'ing him!

So yeah, it's one of the features that somebody has thought up that I'd understand if Joel doesn't do.

And I've just read back my blog and realised it makes absolutely no grammatical sense. I think I'm tired...!

A few random thoughts about a rating system:

First, I think that the feature for identifying inappropriate content ought to be separate from the rating system; and it ought to be available for all kinds of content, questions, answers, comments, terms, definitions, whatever. Some simple way of alerting the admins that there is content that calls for their attention

--

Concerning an effect of the ratings limits: I'm controversal and brash and a smart-ass, and sometimes I p!$$ people off. I often gives answers that people seem to like; and I also often give answers that people don't like so much. I get all sorts of ratings, positive and negative. It seems that there are few people who only ever give me negative ratings, or who only ever give me positive ratings, and it seems that I am able to continue getting rating from most people.

My brother is a much more polite, refined sort of person than I am. He consistently gives good answers, that are seldom controversial, and which unquestionably merit positive ratings. I've noticed that his more recent answers seldom get any ratings. I suspect that the reason for this is that nearly everyone who pays any attention to him has already hit the limit of the number of good ratings that they can give him; so he continues to post good answers, and nobody can any more rate them accordingly.

I'd like to argue, once again, for simply removing any limits to the ratings that one user may give another, beyond the obvious limit of only one rating per answer. As long as sock puppetry can be kept to a minimum, one person giving a slew of inappropriate ratings should easily be overcome by a significant number of appropriate ratings given by others. I think the current limits, as well as any limits that could be imposed upon ratings, have much more the effect of suppressing appropriate ratings that would help the whole system work better, than they do of reducing inappropriate and abusive ratings.

If someone posts a thousands very good answers, I truly believe I ought to be allowed to give a thousand good ratings to that person--one for each answer. If someone posts a thousand really bad answers, I think I ought to be able to give that person a thousand bad ratings; again, one for each answer.

And certainly, if someone posts a thousand answers that are offensive, spam, or otherwise not consistent with the policies of this site, I ought to be able to flag every one of them for AB staff attention.

--

I would much rather see numbers than the A, B, C, D, F grade scale. Numbers mean more to me. It also has never made sense to me that a bad answer is 50%, with 0% being for the "Spam/Offensive" rating. As I said before, I think the "Spam/Offensive" flag ought to be taken out of the rating system, and made a separate feature. It doesn't make sense to include it in the overall rating percentage, because any answer that gets such a rating is supposed to either be removed or have that rating removed from it, depending on what the admin who responds to that flag decides about the appropriateness of that content.

--

I figure that the rating percentage ought to correspond to some estimate of how likely the answer is to be true. If an answer is definitely false, then it ought to be 0%, not 50%. 50% should indicate that one is not sure--or cannot be sure--whether the answer is true or false, and that there's about an equal chance of either; or perhaps that about half of the answer is true and half of it is false. Of course, 100% ought to mean (and currently does) that as far as can be estimated based on the ratings so far received, the answer is almost certainly true and useful.

--

Some answers are statements of opinion rather than fact. Perhaps there might be a way to make a distinction between opinion and alleged fact, and handle them differently ratings-wise. It does seem appropriate to give a negative rating to an opinion with which you disagree, but it seems that this ought to be treated differently than a negative rating you'd give to an answer that was factually incorrect. I imagine there's a very big, messy can of worms that would need to be opened and sorted out before much can be sone with this idea.

Bob, I agree with many of your points, especially those made about Glenn.

I think that we need to wait until we see the new ratings system. Maybe that will address some of your points. But Joel said they cahnged the old ratings system, because we pointed out things we wanted to be changed. As it happens, there are some things we now think don't work with the current system. So they're 'tweaking' it again.

I guess when the new system comes out, if there are things that some users don't think work, they'll consider 'tweaking' it again.

I guess you can use the feedback forms to 'flag' those answers/questions that ypu think are spam/offensive and should be removed. Though I'm aware of the problems we've all experienced with feedback lately.
Try IM'ing Joel with any major complaints.

On a positive note, I've had replies to some feedback i sublitted 9a while ago), but still, it seems the team are getting on top of things. Fingers crossed.

It seems at the moment that Joel's being fed to the lions, metaphorically speaking. It's a hazard of the job, and I'm as guilty as anyone, I think everybody's raising valid concerns and suggestions.

I don't know though, maybe if we laid off a bit things would get done quicker. I feel for Joel, Rich and the mod's right now.
It must be horrible ans quite disconcerting to hold down jobs, try to socialise, fit AB in and then just get a lot of criticism for all the time and effort you're throwing at the site.

Actually, I think I can speak for Joel and the other mods and say that even with all the work of transition, we'd much rather have a thriving blog with suggestions from all you good folks than a "shh! Joel's working!" environment. So thanks and keep 'em comin... ;)

Good to know! :)

I don't think AB is that broken -- there are a lot more users -- and a lot less conflict -- and the "activist" community AB seems to be developing these days catches the miscreants very quickly... that's the only way it will work -- there's not enough AB Joel's to keep an eye on every single interaction on AB.

re: ratings...
I don't get why there is so much attention given to the ratings matter -- most anybody who's been here long enough to survive writing 100's of answers is in the A league -- isn't that enough? Anybody that's really interested in a question, is going to read many answers. And well written ones usually stay close to the top.

Even if it's attacked by a troll -- a good answer will get more good ratings over time.

Many ratings are simply glorified popularity contests anyway.

I wonder how many people rate an answer as useful, even if they don't agree with it, but just because it's a good treatment of a subject? I see it occasionally -- but most of the time, it's the writer's intent that people rate. I'll bet most of us filter the answers we see according to the belief systems we hold. I know I do.

I recently saw someone rate an answer as useful because the writer claimed it to be fact that 1) there is a God, 2) God gives us a soul, and 3) you know where this is heading...

Answers like that are popularity contests for belief systems and nothing more. They have nothing to do with being useful. Is there anybody (especially in the USA) that hasn't heard that answer? So why is it useful? And why is the writer being rewarded in ratings for spouting off widely heard (and believed!) propaganda?

I've also seen an answer containing a reference to a political propaganda website given a useful rating. Anyone used to watching American television will find it hard to differentiate propaganda from fact... 1/2 of Americans still believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, even though The President of the United States himself has repeatedly admitted the "error in fact".

I'm particularly concerned to see propaganda websites being passed off as useful here on AB, since so many Americans (the largest user base) can't recognize it when they see it. A rating system can't possibly deal with apparent subtlety like that.

So, in my opinion, the rating system should just reflect "trusted" contributors. I think the changes made so far in the rating system are great -- I like that answers need several ratings before they qualify as rated -- and where we're headed is good too -- I for one support a semi-meritocracy.

We will probably still have popularity contests here on AB, but I admit -- I often find them entertaining.

/p

Okay, a lot to respond to again... :)

The mod tools aren't quite as easy as they sound, but yes, they aren't rocket science either. Part of the issue is that due to the high volume of both Feedback and Spam/Offensive ratings, the old tools were inadequate to handle the volume - it just took too long to review masses of material. So we had to create bulk editing tools to speed things up. Just think of it like being able to read and respond to 50 emails on a single page - it isn't trivial. ;)

Davoomac: I personally like Yahoo IM because I can turn off all the extra buttons and flashing lights and such, and because it doesn't start playing video when I start up my computer, like AIM.

Carmella: the "project management" page would be pretty cool, but I don't always even have that information myself...hehe. Occasionally we'll get close to launching something, but then we find some bugs, and it has to wait a week, so I hate to get people's hopes up and then not deliver when I say I will. When it comes to software development, progress numbers like "45%" are very slippery. ;) Usually the last 10% of the feature takes 50% of the time. Bob also made a valid point that it takes a lot of time to keep a list like that up to date, and that's time I don't get to spend working on development. Also, there are certain things we work on (usually the big projects) that I don't want to provide too much detail on just in case our good friends at Yahoo! Answers are watching - they've been known to "adapt" some of our ideas in the past, so I'd rather not give them a head start.

That said, I have tried to give you guys hints as to what is coming, and I'll continue to give you updates when possible when we release bugfixes.

And I gave out my IM in case anyone has issues they'd rather not discuss here. Sometimes people would rather discuss the problem and have a dialogue, rather than just throw a problem out there. I'm open to this because it lets us discuss possible solutions together, and it helps me to dig down to the root of the problem which may not always be obvious when someone says "the rating system sucks!"

Lady Fuscia: I see that you have received some spam ratings, but they aren't in our queue. Clearly, there's an issue - we're looking into it now.

That's all I have for now, guys - as Rich said, we definitely prefer having a lively blog with a bunch of conscientious users. Who help the site a pleasant place to be. The blog has never been this active, and honestly, neither has the site, so I believe these are both steps in the right direction. With growth comes new challenges, and we'll continue to address them as best we can. That's part of the fun!

Joel

Good job Lex....love your answers

LF: Regarding your spam/offensive ratings, we've cleared all of them already. Do you see one still?

Joel: Here's an answer of mine that was just rejected, is this what you mean? 1. Name origins & Meanings What do you think 2 good and cute names would be for twin girls?
My neighbor named her twins Nadia and Olga, for her two favorite gymnasts Aug 4, 2006 Rejected - Profane/Suggestive/Abusive

Thanks

Joel,

I know I got a few spam/offensives. Heres one of them that wasn't taken care of:
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67881

Lyn - that was clearly either a human error or perhaps a goof in the system. I'll figure out which.

Davoo - that rating has actually been rejected already, it just isn't tallying properly for that answer. Again, I'll get it fixed. :)

Joel, this guy is doing nothing more than advertising. http://www.answerbag.com/profile.php Answered his own question with his ad.

This person is doing almost the exact same thing as the person that Darryl mentioned. They are both spamming the same website.
http://www.answerbag.com/profile.php

Joel: I think my spams have been removed- it can be difficult to tell sometimes, if an answer has say 3 or 4 ratings and a resulting percentage.

Say if you give an answer and it gets four ratings and two comments and a percentage rating of say 75% how do you tell:
- whether the comments correspond with the ratings, and if so which ones. (e.g. If I write a comment on someone's answer without rating it, then someone else comes and rates it spam, it looks like the bad rating was mine)
-whether 4 people voted the answer somewhat useful, or two voted it useful and two voted it not useful, or any other combination of ratings. I think this is important - as I'd be more inclined to trust an answer that 2 people voted 100% and 2 voted 50% than one which was only considered somewhat useful by four people, at least in terms of the knowledge they have about the subject. If we could see which comment goes with which rating (if any) it might also make ratings a bit more meaningful as we would be able to judge the knowledge of the person doing the rating and how "qualified" they were to judge that answer. For example, I think I've seen some very good, interesting answers rated down by people who clearly (from the comments left) eitherknew next to nothing about the subject and had based their rating on some kind of urban myth or popular assumption that was clearly wrong (admittedly some of the better answers do what Glenn Blaylock tends to do and respond to these kind of comments with an explanation of why they are in error, which I actually find quite useful) or they based their rating on the fact that the persons religious, political or moral affiliations conflicted with their own.

I am aware that we can't stop this kind of ratings behaviour- and personally I think we can cope with the odd unfair not useful rating- I don't think its the mods place to decide what constitutes a fair or unfair rating. Like others have said - it tends to even out ove rtime anyway- however, I would like to be able to spot the unfair ratings. If someone's rating me down because they've taken a dislike to me, or because they disagree with my personal beliefs, they can go ahead if they must, but I'd prefer it if other users could openly observe that. (e.g. it would become obvious that one particular user had rated me not useful 25 times for no good reason) I think this would be more useful than curbing the amounts of ratings allowed- we could judge for ourselves whether ratings seemed fair or not, and decide which users opinions weren't worth Jack Chick (to borrow a phrase from Bob..)
After all, the point of the ratings system is supposed to be to help users to judge the best answers- and its usefulness depends not only on the knowledge and intelligence of the answerers, but on the knowledge and integrity of the people who rate them.
With the ratings caps, there's still nothing to stop someone handing me a whole bunch of unfair bad ratings until they run out of them. It limits the possibility of going on a huge ratings rampage against one particular user but it does not control the fairnmess of the ratings they do give- and to be fair some users really are that bad!

Going back to the reason that Joel has given us as to why they switched to anonymous ratings.. If we knew who rated people down it might spark a "revenge rating" or even a ratings war. Other users can see how each person is rating each other but what are they supposed to do about it right?

Yes, I do like the anonymous ratings, and there is always the option to leave a comment.

Although anonymous ratings are good in that they prevent ratings wars. I must admit I always want to know who has been giving me a bunch of undeserved 'not useful' ratings. Ratings don't bother me all that much.. It is just annoying to me when I spend 5-10 minutes answer a question with research and links and get rewarded we a big fat "F" rating in return.

True, it is slightly annoying but you gotta learn to laugh at it. No reasonable person would rate a decent answer as spam or not useful so you know it is either a) one of us doing it by accident or b) some who has nothing better to do. And if someone *really* has nothing better to do than give people bad ratings on Answerbag- isn't that kind of funny? I can think of a kajillion better ways to entertain myself!

I don't know what the solution is. I can kind of see the advantage of anonymous ratings. But it feels a bit like that at the moment the ratings are so completely meaningless in terms of judging the quality and reliability of an answer we may as well just not bother having them at all.

Congratulations to Darryl as he is on the leaderboards! He has 275 ratings!! wowowow

Thanks Joel

Yeah, going back a few post to one of LF's, I agree with some of what she said.
I know we're getting a new ratings system soon, so it doesn't matter too much but it's awful when you don't rate somebody's answer, but leave a comment instead, and then somebody else comes along and gives them a negative rating. It looks as thoughh it was me.
That said, if ratings aren't anonymous then it does encourage 'tit for tat' ratings.
Just thought I'd add my thoughts there!

Lyn,

Apologies, that was my mistake--but it does illustrate some of our tool quirkiness. When an answer is rated as spam/offensive, it appears in a queue for moderator review. You'd think good answers would require an Approved action, but ours is designed such that we don't Approve a good answer, we Reject an inaccurate Spam/Offensive rating. So approving your answer rejected it ;)

I've just noticed that weed guy and herschey squirter are one and the same (check out the email address), so keep an eye out!

LF: Your comments about the ratings system are valid, and I would like to make them more transparent. However, I don't think we'll get to this in the short term because we will be coding the new system soon, so any work we do on the current rating system is likely to be thrown away. I will try to address your issues with the new ratings system as best I can.

nitanitro, could you provide a link to hersheys profile please?
Btw, weedguys email doesn't seem to be displayed on his profile, so how did you know they both had the same address?

Just answered my own post, it doesn't matter!
Technically though nitanitro, they do have different email adresses, so it can't be proved they're the same user. I don't think any of us are fooled though...

Is it just me, or does anyone else, on seeing the umpeenth question of the form "Is xxxxxxxxxxxx a hunksicle or is it just me I mean when i talk about him I get the goose bumps HE IS AS HOT AS A HOT TAMOLLI!!! (sic) Do you agree?" (where xxxxxxxxxxxx is some popular celebrity) feel a strong urge to post an entirely unfair answer insulting xxxxxxxxxxxx, casting aspersions in the rudest possible way on xxxxxxxxxxxx's character, integrity, sexual habits, or whatever?

No, it's not just you! I try to be more patient with younger members, we were all teenagers once after all, but all the Johnny Depp questions are beginning to grate...

I feel the same. I'd find it easier to accept what they're doing if they'd only use crorrect grammer, punctuation, case etc.
I hate the questions such as the example you just used in your post, Bob.
Yoho's one on J. Depp's blood pressure made me laugh though.

Yeah, that was classic!

I looked just now and I couldn't find hersheysquirter anymore. Also weedguy's email address wasn't on his profile.

Dav,

hersheys profile http://www.answerbag.com/profile.php

The reason why you couldn't find it is because hersheys user name is hershey_squirter_ (note the underscores).
You have to type the name into the search box exactly, or it won't find any matches. I guess this defeats the object of the search facility somewhat, but whatever!

Weedguy doesn't display his email address, but this is hershey's; weed_guy6@yahoo.com

So it seems that it possibly is the same person, though technically it isn't. it's just weedguy/hershey has (possibly) made multiple accounts in a form that we will all recognise, but can't prove.

It's impossible to create multiple accounts from one email address apparently. At least, if you manage to, there's something seriously wrong!

lol wow are you serious? I find that hilarious. well, thanks for the clarification! He doesn't seem to be trolling though right?

No, he doesn't seem to be trolling. They could be completely different people. For some reason that doesn't ring true, maybe I'm getting cynical...

Why is it that your post 160 is bold?

I've absolutely no idea dav, I thought I was imagining it! Probs just some sort of AB fault. remeber ages ago when it happened and LF pointed it out? I think that must have just happened again. if I find a way to do it deliberately I'll let you know!

I would just like to share this with my friends here at answerbag. After 8 long months of recovering from a severely broken leg, my doctor has realeased me to go back to work (light duty) as of tomorrow (Aug. 9). WOOOOHOOOO! I get to be a person again!! :)

I just did a view source... The bold is there because there is a <b r /> after the url in that post. That <b whatever> is html for start embolden text. For a line break, there is no space between the b and the r. Though -- Carmella -- you don't strike me as the type to be embedding html in your posts???? Maybe it's an ab glitch??

Congrats Darryl! light duty work.. what do you do?
does that mean you wont be on AB as much?

Yeah it must be a glitch..I wonder what would cause it to add coding.

Just to clarify for you Dave, I do custom woodworking and trim in new construction. Some of this involves beams, logs and very heavy doors. Looks like it's door trim and baseboards for a while! :)

This was rated SPam/Offensive just recently for no reason:
http://www.answerbag.com/a_view.php/80252

peter b wrote:

> I just did a view source... The bold is there because
> there is a <b r /> after the url in that post.
> That <b whatever> is html for start embolden text.
> For a line break, there is no space between the b
> and the r. Though -- Carmella -- you don't strike
> me as the type to be embedding html in your
> posts???? Maybe it's an ab glitch??

There is some odd glitch in Answerbag, that occasionally causes spaces to be inserted where they don't belong. I've seen this before in a few other places, recently, though I'm afraid I cannot now remember any specific example.

In the case of Carmella's partly-bolded post in this blog, here's what seems to have happened:

AB uses the tag <br /> to produce line breaks. This is the modern XHTML form of the earlier <br> tag, as XHTML requires every tag either to have a matching cloing tag (i.e. <br> </br>) or else to include a closing slash in the first tag ( <br/> ). That's a bit more explanation that is really necessary, but what is happening here is that one of these randomn spaces of which I speak has fallen inside of one of these tags in Carmella's post, turning what ought to be <br /> into <b r /> (with that spurious space falling between the "b" and the "r"). This means that instead of being a properly formed <br> tag, it has been corrupted into a badly-formed <b> tag, so instead of making a line break, it starts a bold section.

Why are only the most prominent users the target of the bad ratings? I'm on AB often, but I guess not as much other users. I guess I don't post many answers or something, but I never get spam ratings.

re: broken br tag...
I was thinking that broken br tag might have gotten botched from a copy/paste operation.

Oregon, re: who gets all the bad ratings...

I'm wondering if it's relative??? I think I scratched my head over a ratings maybe once a week, but if I wrote 2x as many answers, maybe I'd be scratching my head twice a week??? I don't have time to test this theory. Also, the more answers you write, the more times a rating pull down menu slip up could occur.

I just reviewed all the new spam/offensive ratings, and removed the spurious ones. Just so you know, you guys don't need to alert us to them here anymore - the queue works just fine, and we're all caught up. :)

Joel

Joel,

So if it still looks like there is a spam rating, the system simply didn't update the scores? On the one I pointed out, It is still counting that extra spam rating.

dave

I forget. Did you mention when rating and comment notifications would be up and running?

I'm so happy for you Darryl, just don't forget to come and check into AB once in a while!

Um, as for my emboldened paragraph, I didn't purposely embed anything into it. Though I think you guys have pretty much got the gist of my knowledge of the intracisies of computers from my browser crisis... so I don't suppose that's much of a surprise...

Does it mean if we purposely embed the code then we can switch between bold and not bold?

No, they disabled html in the blog <b> bold

Does anyone else find meepit's skyrocketing to the top of the "most non-useful ratings given" list a little weird? Check it:

Nonuseful ratings list:
http://www.answerbag.com/stats.php
profile:
http://www.answerbag.com/profile.php

Might explain my continual slip into the commode lately. I'm expecting it with school out anyway. I guess I could take the time to notify the AB staff, but this place isn't exactly my life and I can think of other things to concentrate on, other than trolling kids or "cookie monsters" with a burr up their skirt.

DAvoo - your spam/not useful rating has been corrected in the database, but the site isn't reflecting it correctly yet. Rest assured the record will be set straight soon. :)

How is sonylover on the leaderboard, when he's answered two questions, both of which (answers) were rejected?

And guys, I'd be nice if you could refrain from hacking our Video Answers to post images - it doesn't work in IE, so it's not helping 80% of our audience. Real support for image answers is targeted for release next Thursday. :)

Carmella - excellent question! I'll look into that asap...

Carmella - apparently "sony lover" received those 14 positive ratings before his answers were rejected. We'll get that Experts module updated to reflect his current ratings.

I don't get it, I'm using IE and I can see all of the pictures that have been posted.

Thanks Joel, I just think/thought that when an answer's rejected, all ratings for it should/did become void.
It doesn't seem fair for somebody to have to live with non useful ratings for an answer that other users can't access unless they have a direct link to the page.
Likewise it doesn't seem fair that a user should benefit from positive ratings for answers that don't stick to the guidelines. which is presumably why the answer was rejected in the first place.

Indeed, it is not fair, and that's why we're working on it. ;) That is not how the system is supposed to work.

Hey Joel,

Wow! I stay away for a week or so (my job often sends me away to another city for computer training a week at a time--I should be a computer expert by now :-) and I can't keep up with the blog!

Anyway, I just want to say that I think this is a good idea that you plan to do

> Unjustified low ratings: the new system in August will limit
> the number of low ratings that new users can give. Only users
> who have received good ratings will be able to give negative
> ratings.

In other words, people have to EARN the right to judge other people harshly; newbies and trolls can't go around blaylocking answers by people that they don't like. But please still keep the caps on the number of ratings that any given person can give to any other given person.

Welcome back, Hungry Guy. I replied to one of your earlier posts in the last blog. Something about how it bothered you to know that some mean-spirited chick was from Ireland. Ooooh, sorry! I never associated this person with you at all, so I hope you didn't think my comment had some ulterior motive:) You're the last person I'd call "mean". This was a bored little teenaged girl, that's all.

davoomac, the video on cats and smiling - I can't play it:( I mean, there's no "Play" arrow appearing on my screen. I can play other videos though. Maybe that's because someone rated it as offensive, as you said in an earlier post? It's hard to imagine any answer to that question could be offensive. Anyway, I'd loved to see it since I asked the question:)

Jodie

I posted pictures instead of videos. Thats probably the reason why you can't see it. Are you running Internet Explorer? Joel mentioned that for many people who use Internet Explorer aren't able to view our "hacked" pictures. I personally have used Firefox on windows and Mac and I also use Safari.

Joel and AB users:

I have also attached other things to answer other than videos and pictures:

On this one I attached a reindeer flash game to answer the question. Does it work?
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/69057

On this one I attached a flash file that allows you to play 'stairway to heaven' backwards. I felt that would be the best help for the person asking the question. Does this one work?
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/67776

Just wondering if people with other browsers were able to see these since alot of people couldn't see pictures I posted.

Hey davoomac,

I tried out both the flash applications with IE, and they worked. Nice use of the video answer feature!

BTW, I noticed Video Answer is some sort of trademark of answerbag. What are some other trademarks?

Responding to your earlier post, I too think it's weird that meepit gives so many non-useful ratings. I was reading her profile, and she seemed proud of the fact that she was second in the leaderboards.

Has anyone else noticed usernames changing when they post comments? I've seen James Mcclisters name change to an email address a number of times, and I've seen John Pennington's change to twinkler. Is this a glitch?

I have seen this too. It happens most often after I enter "add a comment" mode. It is a strange thing for sure.

I know. Where do they get twinkler from? It's not to be found in his profile.

yup I commented that to james on one of his answers but I don't think I got a reply.

This is an answer that demonstrates the John Pennington/twinkler problem: http://www.answerbag.com/a_view.php/80959 -- try to comment on BFFF.

> Welcome back, Hungry Guy

Hiya, Jodie!

Don't fret, I knew that you were talking about someone else. It just surprised me that there was a mean-spirited person from Ireland. Luckily, Ireland doesn't have too many of those type of folk :-)

Peter,

What's the John Pennington problem? I didn't see anything in that answer about him. I've noticed that his answers can be a little preachy sometimes, but I've never seen him to be arrogant or mean-spirited like some religious folk can be...

HG; there isn't a problem with John's answers. Sometimes when he adds a comment, or on his profile, his name appears as 'twinkler', that's the problem!
It happens with a few users, James mclister being one of them, except it's his email address that appears instead of his name sometimes.

Right... it's some kind of glitch... on that question I cited, you can see John Pennington's name change to twinkler when you click on "Comment on this answer".
/p

davomac,

Thanks for the info! I am running an IE-based browser called Deepnet, mainly for its tabbed browsing capabilities. I also have opera on my pc so I'll check it out.

peter b,

I tried to follow the link you cited in your comment on Glenn's answer abt. war and got amazon's 404 page thing - "not a functioning addy on our site" I copied and pasted, but nada. Could you check it out? I was interested. Boy, if I'd known what a controversy the question was going to spark, well -- I'd have asked sooner. (Nah, just kidding.) Whew!

Joel, have a look at my comment to http://www.answerbag.com/a_view.php/34693 where I try to give a URL. No matter how I edit that comment, when it gets displayed, a spurious space is inserted bewteen "Minus" and "Two", breaking the URL. Maybe it will happen here as well.

http://www.answerbag.com/a_view.php/34693

Not having yet looked at th eproblem Jodie just reported, I wonder if the same thing is happening there as well.

I meant to include this URL in my previous post, to see if it would get broken if posted in here as well: http://www.impulse.net/~thebob/Answerbag/SqrtMinusTwo.jpg

Here, it got broken across a line break. Apparently, the blog is not handling that correctly. Let's see how it comes out if I put it on a line by itself:

http://www.impulse.net/~thebob/Answerbag/SqrtMinus Two.jpg

Broken, broken broken. There are no spaces in that URL, as I entered it. But it seems that I cannot enter it anywhere on Answerbag, and not have spaces get inserted improperly into it when it gets displayed.

Jodie... yes... it's the same space problem that Bob Blaylock is talking about... if you go back to Glenn Blaylock's answer, cut and paste the link again -- you will see a space between the 4 and the 9 -- remove that space like so: http://www.amazon.com/.../104-9499540-2336754

I wish we had a forum to shoot that question/answer over to... it's hard to respond in a comment.

Test

http://www.impulse.net/~thebob/Answerbag/sqrtminustwo.jpg

http://www.impulse.net/~thebob/Answerbag/SqrtMinusTwo.jpg

hmm -- well -- that's interesting -- that URL got munged in the blog, as well so ignore it... the book is called "The Grand Chessboard" by Brzezinski -- that should be enough info to find it amazon... it's out of print -- you'll have to get it at the library or wait for a used one to turn up.

I'll get the guys on that breaking URL issue - thanks for letting me know, guys. :)

Btw, if anyone's interested in stopping by, I've started a blog at http://joeldowns.com./ Have a good night!

Ruhh rohhh, the Boss is spamming on his own site. Tsk tsk tsk. :)

Can you make links clickable from the blog response posts please? This would be more convenient.

Also and again, whoever posts these blog entries ought to post new ones as soon as the latest one exceeds 100 response posts.

Shultz, do you keep requesting new blogs because it is taking to long to load?

Anyone find this a little fishy?
http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/69502

Doesn't this remind you of something that happened before?