The Unrec empowers the moderates of DU's political spectrum.

[pyoom]

No, not the moderates or "centrists" of the larger, national political spectrum. Just DU's moderates. The people in the middle- of DU.

Posters are going to have to start appealing to the reason of the entire board, everyone having a say, yea or nay. Appealing to one faction of the board will no longer be sufficient to rack up large numbers of recommendations and give the impression of board-wide approval.

People are going to have to take more time to think out both their positions and presentation. I think we'll see more politeness, too. Disapproval can now be expressed in silence and without enflaming a thread.

Not to mention that those posts you see on the Greatest Page with 100+ recs are going to be inarguably just that- great.


The timing of this new feature I also think is dead-on. It wasn't as needed and probably wouldn't have been as effective before we took the White House and Congress back. Now, with the power we have, it is more important that we have systems that enable us to self-regulate, to engender introspection- and reason. The Unrec will do just that.

[BurtWorm]

1. Oh blow it up your ass!

Just kidding. ;)

[leftstreet]

2. So you admit the Democrats have a lot of power

Now, with the power we have, it is more important that we have systems that enable us to self-regulate, to engender introspection- and reason. The Unrec will do just that.

Hmmm

[pyoom]

7. Well, I wouldn't say I'm "admitting" anything.

I'm simply saying that we have the White House and pretty good majorities in both houses of Congress. Our actions mean something now.

[leftstreet]

10. Agree. And our inaction will mean the most n/t

[pyoom]

11. You're being pretty vague.

What issue are you talking about?

[leftstreet]

12. LOL. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[TexasObserver]

3. You are absolutely correct in your analysis.

Until now, it's been the tyranny of the Recommends. Now, those who think the topic is lacking can say so, and let others know.

Look at the results. We have many more threads with Unrecommends leading Recommends. This is to be expected. We also have some threads in which Recommends easily outpoll Unrecommends.

What can we infer from this? It works! We get the kind of real assessment of threads that should be designated as recommended reading.

[Luminous Animal]

6. You always had the power. The power of your argument.

Now, you can unrec with no thought at all!

"Why, I don't like that at all! I can't exactly articulate why I don't like that but thank goodness I have this handy dandy feature to express by un-expressible disapproval."

[pyoom]

8. Well, if you can + rec with no thought at all...... nt

[Luminous Animal]

14. Ah, but the difference is...

that with the rec, it invites dissent. If we are to have an un-rec function, then I expect an "un-greatest" page to give the anonymous dissenters scrutiny, as well. I want to be aware of the ideas that might have made the greatest page.

[TexasObserver]

17. Nonsense.

You have a point of view. It's merely your opinion.

[Luminous Animal]

20. You are right. Opinions don't belong on DU.

Oh, there must be a democratic discussion board somewhere on the internet where people can express opinions.

[TexasObserver]

26. Your complaint is bogus. A new feature is added and you're about to faint over it.

I've noticed that those who oppose it most strongly are the ones most guilty of starting threads that don't deserve to be on the Greatest Page.

I've also noticed that most threads are not being recommended, and I think that's a good thing.

[Luminous Animal]

29. Oh, yes. I'm fainting.

Thank you for engaging me in this most brilliant discussion.

Let me paraphrase your opinion.

Your opinion is bogus. A new feature is added and you're about to wank off to it.


Thank you, TexasObserver for your deep and substantive discussion.

[TexasObserver]

32. Good of you to admit it.

You'll probably feel much better after you calm down.

[Luminous Animal]

34. I've fainted. How much calmer can I get?

[optimal-tomato]

13. Exactly.

Imagine a marketplace of ideas. In the past, some stores would be packed with customers, and others completely empty. If you disagreed, you could say so inside the store. The marketplace was clear.

Unrecommend is nothing but vandalism of an empty or contraversial store.

[Luminous Animal]

16. Nice!

[TexasObserver]

18. No, it's voting, and it's DEMOCRATIC. You fear that.

[optimal-tomato]

22. It's not democracy.

In democracies, you can only VOTE FOR someone. You can't VOTE AGAINST them.

You're confusing democracy with having an opinion about everything. It's a common mistake nowadays.

[pyoom]

23. Well, you can vote for and against propositions.

Threads are a lot like propositions.






It's pretty democratic. ;)

[optimal-tomato]

31. Threads are a lot like propositions, eh?

So thread titles should be confusing, and the text itself should be long, boring, and not thoroughly examine the issue at hand?Propositions are the most effective way to pass bad legislation in America today. And besides, shouldn't a discussion board be more like a forum for debate, not a solitary voting booth?

I'll withdraw my "can't vote against" comment, but reiterate my "having opinions about everything" comment. Unrec is not inherently a bad thing, but this system discourages people from expressing their differences of opinion, opting instead to just vote nay.

[Fumesucker]

48. Propositions have worked *sooooo* well for California, eh? n/t

[TexasObserver]

27. Yes, it is democracy. Most votes are on ideas, not people.

YOU don't understand democracy. It's voting about all manner of things, not just people. You're confusing REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY with DEMOCRACY.

Please educate yourself on this topic.

[optimal-tomato]

33. I'll concede the point, as I did above.

I've never been fond of direct democracy and didn't consider it initially.

But I'll restate my basic position. This is a discussion forum, not a voting booth. In debates, the crowd doesn't hold up score cards after every answer (unless you're on CNN). Unrec, as it is now, discourages people from stating their opinion and voting down what they don't like, disagree with, or aren't even interested in.

[Luminous Animal]

24. So, DU is a democray now?

Fantastic! So we get to vote on the rules, the tombstones, the advertising, who moderates, whether or not a thread gets locked... We get to see the books?!

Yay!

[TexasObserver]

28. You get to vote on anything the DU admins allow you to vote on.

It's a private site that has rules and within those rules, you may vote democratically on those things they say you can.

It's not really that hard to understand.

[Luminous Animal]

30. So, it's not a democracy then? Make up your mind, sir!

[TexasObserver]

44. Clearly, you can't understand it, this simple concept of limited democracy.

[TexasObserver]

15. Get back to me when you have something of substance.

[obliviously]

4. Stops to clean discolored nose. N/T

[LostInAnomie]

5. I agree totally.

It's about time that the entirety of DU had a little control over our Greatest page.

[napoleon_in_rags]

9. As a computer math nerd, I've always wondered how you could have 16 dimensions of proven...

...compatibility on DU, rather than rec and unrec. So for instance, picture GD:Primaries when its down to two candidates. When you notice that the same posts consistently are rec'd and unrec'd by the same groups of (obviously disagreeing) people, You can use this to arrange DUer's along a statistical axis, which in the case of GD:Primaries would have been Obama/Hillary supporters, based on their recommendations and de-recommendations. You could then have a "My greatest" page for each, where they can see posts most rec'd by people who share their voting preferences.

The trick is to have not 1 but like 16 axises, and to have them statistically derived rather than having a human set meaning (Like Hillary v Obama) AND to have it all run in computationally feasible time for a high traffic site. Its a broadly applicable problem though, and a good solution would have ramifications in marketing and so forth...Or just be a hell of a good college paper.

[pyoom]

19. Very interesting, what you're talking about.

Or, you could just have two separate boards- one that plays to Hillary supporters, one Obama supporters.

I think part of the reason DU wouldn't do something like that is it's important to prevent splintering. You don't want people with different viewpoints to not be exposed to each other. But a system that allows factioning to increase exposure for a viewpoint doesn't work well either.

[napoleon_in_rags]

25. That's true. I also think there are a lot of people here who value opposing opinions

And that means they may not break into statistically significant groups at all, which renders the whole thing kind of random and pointless. It still interests me as a broad question though, because it has applications in things like e-commerce where I know for a fact I DON'T want to see the specials of the person who's expressed positive interest in sports bras and civil war memorabilia. ;)

[billyoc]

21. I believe that all of those custom queries would bring the server down.

I just don't think you could do it with any reasonable amount of hardware when the site is busy, and when it's not busy, who cares? :hi:

[napoleon_in_rags]

36. It really depends on how its implemented.

I think I remember having a a separate computer, that analyzed the recs for the previous day, then positioned the active users (users active in the last 48 hours, users not active in that time would be reset to null so its time sensitive otherwise too much data) I think multi-dimensional "tables" exist, with linear time performance, such as Hilbert Tree and R* tree(?) so if the active user set was small enough, (people recing in the last 48 hours) it would be doable. But common databases like MySQL don't support the multidimensional indexes, so that's not really feasible without gettin strange. You could always get creative through, and figure out some way to layer log time index lookups from MySQL.

Whatever it is though, the secret is going to be in not trying to represent relations between many users and many ancient posts in real time. Its about a small matrix recent rec'ers as they relate to other recent rec'ers.

[defendandprotect]

35. This is another "shut up" tactic as far as I can see . . . people who don't want criticism

of Obama and Dems to be noticed . . .

If a thread can get sufficient recommendations to be on the Greatest Page . . .
it should be there -- and no one should be able to substract from those legitimate
recommends!

[leftstreet]

38. That's a good way of putting it

"and no one should be able to substract from those legitimate recommends!"

Imagine if we tallied national election results by subtracting votes from candidates.

Obama +3
McCain <0

:rofl:

[Cerridwen]

37. Ahhhhh, I see. So it was a moderate who unrecced a post I put

up about the controversial topic of whether or not anyone else was experiencing DU timeouts. I see. That explains it.

Someone was afraid my controversial question was going to make it to the Greatest Page and make DU look as though it was technologically challenged and we wouldn't dare do that so a moderate DUer decided to make sure DU looked all moderaty and such.

Yes. That makes far more sense than;

a) some ijit is unreccing just because he/she can
b) someone thinks all my threads need to be unrecced, because they're my posts
c) nothing belongs in GD but General Discussion which doesn't include such specific discussion as how's your DU connection and load time?
d) some ijit is unreccing just because he/she can
or e) some ijit has more time on their hands than sense and is unreccing just because he/she can

Well. That explains it then. I'm sure the rec/unrec feature will never be abused.

I feel sooooo much better now. I'll try not to post such controversial topics in the future. Can't make the moderates to uncomfortable with such controversial topics as connect and load times.

[leftstreet]

39. Your post was so controversial, I thought about unrec-ing it

But I walked around the room, had a cup of tea, then decided that if the Freepers were going to make fun of us for our load times, if some snot columnist at HuffPo chose to deride us for our connection speeds, then DAMMIT bring it on!

:rofl:

[Cerridwen]

40. LOL

:rofl:

Well, it's still around somewhere; in case you change your mind. :D

[pyoom]

41. You were actually expecting a DU timeout thread to go to the Greatest page?

You looked at the recommendations for it?

[Fumesucker]

49. You should have your snarkdar looked at..

It is obviously malfunctioning. :evilgrin:

[Orangepeel]

50. I didn't see your thread. Was it great? n/t

[notesdev]

42. Can't wait for the un-greatest page -nt

[pyoom]

43. LOL nt

[omega minimo]

46. Where is the Less Than Group?

[omega minimo]

45. It's an illusion of power for detractors and a matter of a handful of Un/Recs difference

except for all the ones that go sliding down the Less Than chute and disappear.................................

[Laelth]

47. I think we're seeing a lot more rudeness.

When people know they're in the majority, they feel free to be particularly rude and vicious to those of us whom they know hold the minority opinion on a given subject. I've seen several new threads downright attacking the people who believe the unrec function is a bad idea. Once they know they're in the majority, their worst instincts come out, and they become quite mean.

I knew I hated high school for a reason. This is it.

:dem:

-Laelth

[omega minimo]

55. We already have

And who died and made the OP Skinner?

"Appealing to one faction of the board will no longer be sufficient to rack up large numbers of recommendations and give the impression of board-wide approval."

Where the fuck are these presumptive pronouncements coming from? As if 140,000+ have some grand consensus and the negative button pushers are the new hall monitors.

[UTUSN]

51. No, just ANY organized group n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

52. Thanks for sharing the wisdom that can only come of years of participation.

:eyes:

[mmonk]

53. You mean like the "news"?

[pyoom]

54. By the way, those who disagree- it's okay to unrec.

Not that I actually need to say it- there've already been quite a number of unrecs to this thread.

I did think it would be interesting to point out what could only be hypocrisy where people are at once decrying the unrec as a tool of some kind of censorship and making good use of it.

Not to worry, though. I don't feel "silenced."

[Name removed]

56. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TexasObserver]

57. Don't attack the post count. That's not cool.

[lumberjack_jeff]

58. It isn't an attack, it's an observation.

a 25 post count and a hidden profile entitles him/her to push the "this doesn't conform to DU consensus button" because a post isn't moderate enough.

God forbid we entertain any immoderate views.