Who will cast the first stone and at what/whom?
Beware ye residing in non gorilla-glass houses! Remember that thread from last week?
Well @shawnmiller and the dev team are making steady progress on our down-voting field test - word is it could drop in live as early as tomorrow!
the unexpected would be for this to go smoothly, so expect the expected.
Alas, poor Wootbot! ... a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy... reduced to "Kenny" in Southpark.
NOW LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!
by
snapster
asked 10 months ago
I'm going to downvote the netflix deal. First thing! I hope it's soon! :)
Oh, I forgot to mention, I'll also be downvoting ALL of the dailysteals posts. I'm so sick of them creating a work-around for folding
Hope we can downvote questions. Soon????
[Edit] Man, am I DISAPPOINTED! I should have read @snapster's post better. I was trying very hard to figure out where I could vote down some enormously deserving things on the Fresh tab, but NOOOOOOOOOOO...
I have so been looking forward to this. I will be up all night, now, in anticipation.
I only ask that more Likefree.org/TrialPay spam comes around for me to practice on.
[Not really, I hate that crap. Seriously.]
Oh, man, ditto on the daily steal crap, and laalo is right after them. Wahoo!! Bring it ON!
[Edit] Let me see, now, who or what else is there...
@shrdlu: Oh, any of the new Zippys will be getting downvotes on comments (probably the original too) -- please tell me we can downvote comments!
@snapster: Will this apply to questions and deals both? I really hope so. I intend to post a question, and then have everyone vote it down. Let's see how big we can make the negative number!
Hey, can being downvoted affect reputation? That would be so COOL! I could make me have negative rep. Come on, let's do a dry run now!
@shrdlu: I believe so (both), but this is going to go live without much review and we'll iterate from there. I didn't want to slow things down with caution!
@shrdlu: I am slightly frightened at your exuberant outcry of anticipation.
Ah, yes, the Zippys:
I think the Zippy is but a man as I am (well, sort of). The violet smells to him as it doth to me. The element shows to him as it doth to me. All his senses have but human conditions. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man, and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. Therefore, when he sees reason of fears as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are. Yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army. [Shakespeare, Henry V, slightly altered]
Dearest Zippys, be thou afraid. The down voters are approaching. Be steadfast. Stand your ground. We shall smite you with the rod of negativity, and send you into oblivion.
@snapster: I think the down voting button should be named "Pew" in honor of all our favorite spam hunters on staff.
@shrdlu: well done
@shrdlu: as long as no one thinks we're kneeling at the pew!
@snapster: Oh, trust me, no one will get that idea. It'll have the nice Woot! exclamation point, and Pew! is famous around these parts. @thunderthighs and @faughtey have shot many a spammer with their Pew! Pew! Pew! guns.
@snapster: That, too, is a good one. Everyone refers to the Woot Gods; therefore, it is totally appropriate to kneel at the pew!
i feel bad for ohcherri , all the prudes will down vote the hell out of their deals.
I'm giddy with nausea!
I'm ready for the onslaught! Many Woots will be lost, but it is all for the greater good.
Zippy Barada Nikto!
@thedaythezippystoodstill: You're going down, sir.
@capguncowboy: CRAP! Did I leave my video camera on again...
oh man, i'm pumped!
I'm always up for a good stoning.
Wow.
Just... wow.
It's looking like down voting will be ready for a Wednesday deployment around 10am PDT. We'll probably take the site offline for about 30 minutes while we prepare the system to store all those new votes you're going to cast.
@shawnmiller: You hear that Zippys!? You've got until then to enjoy your existence!
@shawnmiller: WHAT! But..but...but what will we do with ourselves for that half an hour?
@theoneill555: Find as many crab deals as possible.
@crycis805: yup, it's all the prudes that have been complaining all this time, noone thinks they are subverting the system to self promote their store like Dailysteals...nope, couldn't be.
rubs hands together menacingly Muahhahahahahaha.
i will cast my first stone at this question. btw, have you guys worked out how many we get?
@theoneill555: What if you took the 30 minutes to tell all your friends about Deals.Woot? And what if your friends told all their friends about Deals.Woot? And what if all those friends told all their friends...
@shawnmiller: Friends!? We don't have friends. Aside from one another.. and you've made sure we won't be able to tell each other anything :)
@shawnmiller: I get it now : Down vote = World Domination. Very sneaky.
@sgoman5674: I thought josefresno wanted frogs
@shawnmiller: I do that already. :)
@crycis805: No need to feel bad, we have lots of fans!
@shawnmiller: pffhh that'll never work! If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook!
can't wait to downvote my favorite target.
@shrdlu: this will indeed apply to questions, and answers, and comments, and sponsored deals. Anything that can currently be voted for will be able to be voted against.
@w00tgurl: you'll get as many down votes as you've cast up votes for in the past 24 hours. We're also going to keep the no takebacks after 5 minute rule.
@shawnmiller: I thought about another question a little bit ago, and there's just no way to say this without seeming adversarial, which is not (in this case) what I mean to be.
How much interference/assistance/participation will there be from staff? I ask this because I've already had a comment deleted earlier, and it made me realize that some of us will be watched more closely than others. Surely it's to be expected that it's going to be rather wild west in some cases, as thing settle in, and people figure out what does or doesn't work.
I admit that I'll probably be more surgical, and random, than most, since (and it's what you'd expect) I'm far more interested in the effects of things than in grinding any particular ax. I certainly intend to post a question with the intent of having people vote it down, just for fun (and because it will be interesting).
So, how much leeway is there? Are staff going to actively participate in this too?
I think it's worth asking...with the introduction of the negative Woot, will there be a BOTTOM 10 on the leader board?
For that matter, should we not delve deeper into the idea of a Bizzaro.Woot? We could really take this negative thing and run with it. I'm down.
Also.. DING DING!
@shrdlu: Staff will partipate and will follow the same set of rules as other members of the site. They'll need to have made a Woot purchase, they'll need to have made corresponding up votes for each down vote, and their votes will be locked after five minutes.
I honestly haven't built any voting backdoors into the system. I'd much rather work on community driven features.
For extra transparency, each user tab will have an additional filter to view the deals/questions they voted against.
I believe you are all being unnecessarily mean to poor @wootbot . He is such a kind bot and I am sorry you all will never get to know his true passions such as fishing and playing Jeopardy programs.
Poor @wootbot is only working hard because Woot makes him post all of those items for sale! It is not his fault and he gets sad when the humans take it out on him.
Have some botty compassion for him today and don't let him get fired.
Thank You.
@shawnmiller: Sounds like it's going to be entertaining and then some. You're already MUCH more interesting than Gplus, and I really like the idea of tabs. I didn't like the idea of being required to comment on why something was being downvoted, because (as we've seen) I might not always have my manners on.
I wish the window were a bit longer for removing a negative vote, but understand that it's better to keep it as standard as possible. I can always tattle and plead my case if I feel that I really regret doing it. I'll probably also try NOT to do any negative votes before I've had enough coffee to be reasonable.
Thanks for the response.
[Gplus held my interest longer than Gravity, but not by much.]
@shawnmiller: It is my understanding that down-voting will be basis a ratio of up vs down. Since we have only been able to up vote so far, when will the counter start of keeping track of what has been up voted by a user to keep the ratio at a balance. Also what is the ratio, 1(up):2(down), 1:5, 1:10 etc.?
@sgoman5674: It's a 24 hour window (I've seen this in an official comment somewhere, but don't remember where), and it's a one to one ratio.
@sgoman5674: Ratio will be 1 down vote for every 1 up vote cast in the past 24 hours. When the feature launches on Wednesday we'll simply "grandfather" your up votes from the previous 24 hours. Go vote your little heart out on Wednesday morning if you want to build up some down votes.
If you're interested in holding onto that black triangle, keep in mind your up votes currently make up a significant part of your overall reputation. You are rewarded for casting up votes early on deals where other members also cast up votes.
We've only starting talking about how to work down voting into the leaderboard, but it will likely work by rewarding the opposite (casting down votes early on deals where other members also cast down votes).
yep - 24 hour window was selected. We want to reserve right to tweak threshold and ratio but it will initially start at 1:1 with the upvote required first.
i.e. Rolling24Hour(Upvotes-Downvotes) > 0 = New Downvote Allowed
Upvotes obviously will be accepted any time. With the Rolling time aspect, I believe it will be possible for you to arrive at a negative sum which requires multiple upvotes to recover from (or passage of more time).
An enjoyment of this model I have is that you can't walk up fresh to the site and vote something down even though that would be a common usage pattern. I hope these prompts to engage lead to sincere fresh-tab deal dives.
edit - thanks shawn; I'll just leave this overlap.
shrdlu, shawnmiller and snapster: Thanks for the answer.
@snapster: If a user has a negative balance how will that affect their rep?
@sgoman5674: We can harm our reps by posting fresh content that goes negatives. Older content that we have out there that gets voted down will have less of an effect. We've chatted about this element - I expect this to be a pretty muted effect.
The live field test of down voting has launched.
FYI: We are currently rebuilding data in the user tabs. We have a couple new filters (voted-for and voted-against).
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