Thread: Has anyone else noticed this?

Two things I really like about this site that are missing from many others are the "Like" and "Thanks" buttons. They give me an opportunity to express my appreciation for posts that are meaningful/useful to me as a reader.

When I post, receiving that appreciation helps me know which posts are meaningful/useful to other readers.

Also when reading a review or other comment, the number of thanks and likes received by the author give me some degree of confidence into whether that reviewer knows what he is talking about. Over time, I have gotten to know which members provide reliable information and which are less so. To someone who is new to the site, these metrics can be invaluable in knowing who to trust.

This all is just so far over my head i wouldnt have any idea on what it would take to straighten out the archives, wiki and search functions. It would be a big bummer to loose all the info in our history so id not want to loose it. But the people here are great at helping others. If someone has a question it gets answered even if it has be answered many times.

With the good people we have i bet we could start from scratch and we would grow again into a great place. So much of the information is in the memories of the oldest of our members. We would prosper. So I think we should just keep on keeping on and hope for the best for now. Who knows what the future will bring for SRP.

Originally Posted by gugi

As all of you noted, the forum is not the software or the technical stuff but all of us, the people - our knowledge and expertise, our willingness to share and help each other. The software is just a tool that makes it easier and we do want better tools.

However, this particular software does not make it easier. I can be done, though. The two German forums, while significantly smaller, have been moderated more stringently since their inception. The result is that there are far less threads, but the ones that exist are narrowly focused. Consequently, these forums are easy, and efficient, to search.

I know that searchability is not very high on the list of every existing user. But we both know that it is very high on the list of every visitor. And converting visitors into contributing members is the only viable strategy for making any niche forum sustainable.

Originally Posted by gugi

Even if the reviews people post are not organized neatly in a dedicated software with appropriate categories and ratings, they are still highly valuable because they expand our common knowledge, and enhance our experience. I sometimes think that more organic reviews, such as what we have now, spread throughout the forum and hard to find are not all that terrible - life itself is quite messy and not neat But then other times I think it would be really spiffy if I could find what I'm looking for the moment it occurs to me

Hard pass, Ivan. Very, very hard pass. Case in point, I just tried to find three of my own post around this subject. I found one (because I knew exactly what I was looking for). It is this one: Putting things into perspective, or why some reviews make me sad. The ones I was actually looking for are now gone: How to write a good review and Review templates.

By any reasonable standards, most reviews being written these days do not fulfil minimum requirements for them to be useful. The lack of templates to make them at least comparable does not help, either. Oh, my two review series "the great (lavender|lime) shootout" are gone, too. Pity. I was about to use them as cautionary tales.

But I think that the following paragraph should still be the gold standard for reviews on this site. Hardly any reviews I read here over the past few years match it.

Originally Posted by RobinK

Do you understand the significance of your review? [...] This is SRP, the leading straight shaving resource on the internet. We are older, bigger, but most importantly more sophisticated than any other straight shaving forum. We retain the most honemeisters, we offer the most accurate and up-to-date information, and despite our size we are able to accommodate the needs and interests of beginners and experts alike. Therefore, our reviews carry a certain weight. Because especially beginners form their buying decisions based upon them.

Originally Posted by RayClem

Two things I really like about this site that are missing from many others are the "Like" and "Thanks" buttons. They give me an opportunity to express my appreciation for posts that are meaningful/useful to me as a reader.

These buttons are mostly meaningless. What one really wants is a web reputation system, commonly referred to as "Karma". Here is a brief explainer. Especially when it comes to reviews, Karma systems can work surprisingly well.

That said, had we implemented the Karma system for vBulletin years ago, that add-on, too, would be broken now.

Originally Posted by RayClem

Two things I really like about this site that are missing from many others are the "Like" and "Thanks" buttons. They give me an opportunity to express my appreciation for posts that are meaningful/useful to me as a reader.

I appreciate saying this. With software as old as ours it does take a bit of effort to keep those working, but I always thought they are very important. To me they seem parallel to say facial expressions when talking face to face - not perfect equivalence but a degree of similarity. So I always thought they are really important in online communication that is missing so many of the other components from in person.
I'm happy to hear that it's not just my personal feeling but others find it very useful as well.

Originally Posted by gugi

I'm happy to hear that it's not just my personal feeling but others find it very useful as well.

Your post/thanks ratio is 4.7. Mine is 3.6. Which means that my posts are considered almost as helpful as yours. Which demonstrates the profound absurdity of this metric. Because while I dutifully perform my job as a site curmodgeon, very little of what I post is actually helpful.

Karma! Karma! Karma!

Well, I can see that a bit of a streamlining of reviews with, for example, template will probably make them more useful and may help the reviewer too, but that's not a low hanging fruit by any means so I don't really worry about it at this point.
I'm sure that you remember the GARS addon that I think did things really well - kept the content as standard forum threads and only added categories ratings and slightly different formatting/presentation. But the person who developed it for Vbulletin 3 said it's not easy to implement the same thing for Vbulletin 4 and others who tried to convert it realized it too. That's just a function of software design - certain choices limit the ability to implement features that are not intended by the developers. In fact as you probably appreciate from security point of view that's a feature not a bug

The thing is that these days people come to any website primarily through a search engine referral. And these search rankings are more and more dependent on the quality of content. To use the same example, a high quality review that is relevant to people's searches will be promoted by Google and Bing whether it's in the form of a forum post or in a specialized software.
Specifically Obie's reviews get quite a bit of referral traffic. But I am not Obie and as hard as the software may try it won't be able to make me write like him So I just accept that my reviews are not as good, but hopefully they are still helpful to others. I try to learn from Obie but that's an entirely different process

Originally Posted by RobinK

Your post/thanks ratio is 4.7. Mine is 3.6. Which means that my posts are considered almost as helpful as yours. Which demonstrates the profound absurdity of this metric. Because while I dutifully perform my job as a site curmodgeon, very little of what I post is actually helpful.

Karma! Karma! Karma!

I don't know, math is math and computers are impartial and objective. I think you should just accept the fact that behind your curmudgeon face you are really a big nice softie

I bet it's the secret Karma at work

Originally Posted by RobinK

Your post/thanks ratio is 4.7. Mine is 3.6. Which means that my posts are considered almost as helpful as yours. Which demonstrates the profound absurdity of this metric. Because while I dutifully perform my job as a site curmodgeon, very little of what I post is actually helpful.

Karma! Karma! Karma!

On the contrary, I have always found your posts informative albeit at times a little contrived.

I'd say keep the like/thanks.
It does add a bit more human element. It's nice to be able to show someone that you "get it" or appreciate their post.
Everything will have its downside though...

* I don't look at overall number of thanks as a foolproof determination of the value of their input.
The truth is that there are some members that get thanked for "less than great" posts because their popularity. Sometimes even garbage posts get thanked by azz lickers.
**And so it seems best to judge each "thanks" and "like" for yourself, on an individual basis for yourself, for your own feedback... BUT with a grain of salt as the very next post that has little value might get a bunch of likes/thanks.
If as a new member you are really wondering if some info is correct, PM some people!
In PMs you can get some surprisingly valuable info. Unguarded info. Info less regulated by the desire to not hurt feelers or look kool!
I'm grateful for those who reply to PMs because of the great info I get, and it's a sign that they are not just kool guys looking for social validation, and that goes a long way toward building friendships and allows me to determine solid info on the threads.

Hey this Karma system (or something similar) sounds great for product reviews. Perhaps it would be better for a review section, to have a more accurate way to determine the value of dedicated reviews???

Good one Mike T.