Rate Up/Down Names

I was just curious if it would be possible to have it somewhere shown of whom rated a comment up or down. It is a little bit of a personal thing, but I'm sure others would like to know, specifically, who rated them down and whether or not it can be seen as constructive criticism or simply some noob with an attitude. This probably isn't possible nor probable, but I figured I would just put the suggestion up.

-Edited 4/1/08 12:15 A.M. EST

The above suggestion will now be seen as annulled and the new idea that has been suggested is a total votes feature by Kindadarii.

I'm almost positive that information is recorded, since each user can only vote on a particular comment once.

But, I don't think this is really necessary. If you have a comment which is rated down (either by a little or by a lot) then the community which bothers to vote thinks that it's not a particularly helpful comment. The worst a single vengeful person can do is lower it by one, which isn't that big of a deal.

However, I think it won't hurt if we could see how many votes a particular comment has had, as it would be easier to see just how the voting community feels on a particular comment -- if it has a relatively small score either direct, but a lot of votes, people are split. But if it's a smaller number of votes, not enough people have seen it or cared to vote on it. Maybe even put it as a % of voters positive or negative instead of a flat rate score.

Part of the "Rating"-based concept of Web 2.0 is that the ratings are anonymous. They're not anonymous from the server end, as you still need an account and generally can only vote once, but from the user aspect they are anonymous and therefore more reliable. If the votes/tag-clouding/ratings are non-anonymous, it generally skews the actual ratings depending on politics and social aspects, and becomes no longer reliable. Both positive and negative.

Now that I think of it and have read your comments I can see how it could become a popularity contest if some well-known individual rates a comment up or down, then someone decides to go with that person's vote instead of making a well thought out decision. From now on, I will just PM the player I want to leave a comment with. I thank you both for your constructive criticism and will annul my suggestion after some afterthought sparked by your comments. Have a nice day and a great life all who read this.

Thank you,
Snomm

Sorry, most of the stuff after "Web 2.0" I just tuned out. The big words didn't help much.

Would the presence of a "total votes" or a percentage of the votes destroy the concept of anonymity under Web 2.0? It may allow a little bit of political or sociological aspect to enter it, sure enough, but without any identities does it really matter?

No, total votes would not break it. But saying who actually voted would. A total votes thing, however, might actually be a nice addition that could come from this suggestion.

I am at least happy that something good could come of this topic even though it was not my idea. I would stand behind the idea of having the total votes because I sometimes wonder that even though some comment is at a positive 6 or a negative 6, how many votes were submitted. As an example, a comment with 99 negatives and 100 positives would equal a positive 1 meaning that many people saw the comment as well as responded to it, but the positive 1 without the total votes would seem as if 1 person voted positive to it. I simply wrote this as a clarification or an example of what having a total votes feature would accommodate, which is knowing how many people read and responded to a comment as well as knowing how reliable the current feedback points really are. Having 100 positive and 80 negative is a lot different than having 20 positive and 0 negative.

Thank you,
Snomm

Totally agreed. Will look into it. =) Thanks.