An idea to revolutionize the Forums

I would be very happy if you guys introduced an Upvote/Downvote button like Reddit. You don't have to order the comments based on popularity or anything like that, that would destroy the forums. But a simple positive/negative number next to each post indicating how good or bad people think they are can go a long way in deterring some of the stupid/abusive posts. It also encourages people to post good comments/content in the forums improving its quality.

Maybe you can also replace the current points system with a system that displays the number of Upvotes/Downvotes a person gets on his submissions. So if he gets 10 upvotes on a comment, he gets 10 points on his profile page, similarly 10 downvotes on a post correspond to -10 points. I'm sure this will radically change the forums and deter all the Rematch/Can I become a GM posters.

Here's how a post looks on Reddit, notice a number next to each comment? It would be great if that is introduced here.

Hello?

You have my support

Are there any downsides to this that I'm missing?

could make the page too crowded, depending on how it's done.

It only works well if there are enough regular members willing to upvote content to completely off-set the troll posters. Or make it so that if you don't have a positive value you can't upvote or downvote any content. Even then, that could be gamed, just a little harder.

Something like this?

The only way is to make multiple accounts.

Or a bunch of like-minded friends

User_Handle                                                                             [U][D]           25   24   59 min ago #10

Could be hard work for the developers and keeping like/dislike totals could slow down the site.
There is also the technical issue of just updating the scoring and not the whole page.
I think it is a great idea. 

Does it work, nah some folks would chase a very big negative vote as a part of their trolling.

You have been here long enough to know that there will be some that will vote +, or - simply because they want to, regardless of the quality of the post.  I do like the idea though...

Aren't some posts just null?  I mean some posts are just comments or asides that really don't merit an up or down vote. We wouldn't have to vote on every post, right?

Thats what i was talking about.  You will have a troll post something completely stupid, and all the other trolls will vote it up.  Like i said, i like the idea, it just wont work.

Indeed, good idea but in the end in real mass voting by a group of people focusing on that thread can lead to the exact opposite then what was expected. In reddit it works but sometimes and this is annoying even reddit-mods are redirecting the public opinion by misleading up/down votes.

Now if you want to dedicate staff to do nothing but review all comments positive, and negative, and review and make adjustments then it will work.  

It sounds alright if you kept an eye on it

Some good ideas in here, nimzomalaysian. Thanks for the suggestions!

This only works if you clean house first and then put the clamps on sockpuppets for a while, so that the voting gets established without shenanigans.  Also, you would need to have a high minimum threshold for voting...say, 6 months since account creation and X posts made and/or Y games played/votechess votes made in the past month before voting (basically several signs of high activity), to avoid people voting with second accounts (this makes it onerous for trolls to maintain several sockpuppets all with voting status).

Another good measure is to have a cumulative voting checksum, and using the data to weed out voters that are all voting identically in blocks...cross-reference with group memberships to ferret out trolling enclaves.

Then you need to only allow "net positive" voting...in other words you can't downvote more than you upvote; this helps prevent negative people/groups from only trying to mute/silence others.

According to your theory, the idiots will downvote everyone else - who then will be unable to use this as they are downvoted.  So only  idiots will be able to use it.

Thanks man, good to know that you guys are listening.