Clearly you need two recommend slots for each OP.

[arcadian]

One for positives, one for negatives. That way you can judge how popular or unpopular and idea is. If you have 50 positive and 50 negatives, then it's a good debate or controversial idea where DUers are split down the middle, for example. All negatives would mean that DUers don't agree with the post, however, if a post has 225 negatives and no positives, I don't think that will be a deterrent for people not to visit the post, on the contrary, they will want to see what has people so up in arms, so that will have the opposite effect.

[arcadian]

1. Case in point. This thread.

It had 50 +recs. Kidding. Actually it had one rec, but somebody unrecced it.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. I don't understand this new system.

[scheming daemons]

3. Think of it as simply giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to a thread.....

...where in the past, there was no thumbs-down option.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. this thread has a zero rating with 10 votes. does that mean it got 5 positive and 5 negative?

We'll have to use algebra to figure out how folks voted?

[Statistical]

5. How can you see the total # of votes.

If you know total numbers of votes it is

rec - unrec = score
rec + unrec = total
-------------------

r - u = s
r + u = t
------------
2r + u - u = (s + t)
r = (s + t)/2

So IF you know both the score & total number of votes you can figure it out with

rec = (score + total) /2
unrec = rec - score

However I don't think you can see total number of votes.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Need to ceiling() .

[Liberal_in_LA]

11. I saw something earlier today... think it was the total votes

[trotsky]

6. I think they tried that some time ago.

Didn't work so well.

[optimal-tomato]

8. Why's that?

Unless there are coding problems, I don't see how it could have been worse than this system. More information is always better, right?

[trotsky]

9. Well, take a look at the reactions to this system.

Because this system is basically a re-tool of the first attempt. You can imagine how much worse it was with that. Note the great care taken in not indicating HOW MANY people have un-recommended a thread, just that more people have un-recommended than recommended. I believe the greatest sticking point in the first implementation is basically being told how many people think your thread sucks. This new system is more of a "if it's not popular, it's just neutral" sort of method.

[optimal-tomato]

10. Ah, that makes sense.

Fragile egos and such. Thanks for the clarification.