If we are going to change the recommend system I would like to see an "ignore recommend" feature

Bjorn Against

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Jul-10-09 12:26 AM
Original message

If we are going to change the recommend system I would like to see an "ignore recommend" feature

I know there are a million posts on this topic already, but I think there is an important debate going on about the recommend system and the outcome of this debate will have a big impact on the quality of the posts that appear on DU.

This is an important issue and I think it is important that we discuss it rationally and recognize that there is no perfect solution to this issue but there have been important concerns raised on both sides of the debate. First of all it was clear that the old recommend system often made it really easy to push crap up to the top of the Greatest Page. All someone had to do was post "K&R if..." and they would get hundreds of recommendations that would allow them to pass up many really important posts that people put a lot of time and effort into. I think that most people would have to admit that there was a lot of crap on the Greatest Page that did not deserve to be there, it didn't matter which side you were on in a debate there was always an OP somewhere on the Greatest Page that made you embarrassed just to look at it. If there is one thing the unrecommended button will be good for it will be good for removing the crap that someone posted without putting any thought into it.

There is however a very legitimate concern that people are going to abuse the unrecommend feature. There are no doubt going to be some excellent posts that are voted down in mass by people simply because they disagree with what the post says. The number of recommends a post has does make a big difference in how many people read it so it is not a good thing that people can take steps to lessen the impact of posts they disagree with. This is a very serious concern and no one should dismiss it because there are some very important issues out there that are extremely controversial. If all the controversial posts sink because one side sends groups of people to unrecommend the post then we will be missing out on some very important discussions.

I think there are a few potential compromises that can be made to ensure that the recommend/unrecommend system can work without causing controversial posts to sink. First we should consider the idea that if you are willing to recommend something that means you should be willing to put your name behind it. If we could see who was recommending/unreccomending certain posts then perhaps with a bit of programming we could have a new ignore feature that would allow us to ignore the recommends/unrecommends of posters who we feel do not share our views of what constitutes the greatest posts on the site. I don't have anyone on my ignore list because I like to see what the people I disagree with are saying, at the same time however I have no reason to consider what any of these people recommend or don't recommend because I know that they don't represent me. If we could see the people who recommended/unrecommended each thread then we could determine if there are people who don't speak for us and whose recommendations we wanted to ignore. This would mean that the number of votes for each piece would appear differently for each member depending on whose votes they chose to ignore, but it would also mean that it would be more difficult for people to vote articles off our Greatest Page. I know this would require a good amount of programming, but if it is feasible I think it would help the situation a great deal.

Second, there should be a daily limit on recommends/unrecommends. There will be a few people who unrecommend every post they disagree with and recommend every post they agree with whether there is substance to it or not. Limiting recommends/unrecommends to five per day or so would make people think twice before hitting the button and would likely mean they would only vote for the posts they saw true merit in and save their unrecommends for the pure flamebait that does nothing to advance any cause.

We can improve the recommend system on this site, but we are all going to need to work together to find ways to perfect the system in ways that will ensure that we will see the best posts on this site rise to the top even when they are controversial while at the same time allowing people to limit the amount of crap that ends up on the Greatest Page. It is not going to be an easy task to perfect the system, but if DU can talk about changes they would be willing to accept and be able to listen to the concerns others have about those ideas we can probably find some common ground.