"I don't recommend this option"

Design
#11

i think it will be very useful. especially i see it like a full contrary to ‘recommend’. ie it will be nice to have two columns for each rank item, in one column will be number of recommends and pros sorted by number of votes and in other column it will be number of unrecommends and sorted cons

and as @tejon proposed it can be some new sorting of ranking items (while they will have both positive and negative rank) but also it will give some new ways for analysis/sorting of items – for example similar to way how comments sorted in reddit when u’re select to sort them “controversial”

#12

I think this would provide the most useful and accurate data. The downside would be UI complexity from what I initially imagine the UX to be like. The current “core” flow of Slant is “I recommend this option, here is why”. It’s a single button press that’s pretty intuitive, followed by the dropdown that our data shows is very effective getting people to contribute. The rank options UI would require a pretty significant rework of that flow. Not saying we can’t do it, just it would be a big project and would replace the core flow of Slant. Perhaps we could work it in as some sort of advanced voting UI, maybe in the compare view.

That would be so damn useful.

1 Like
#13

After going through a lot of content, I’ve noticed the importance of allowing users to either not recommend options or to let options get buried over time if there isn’t a constant stream of recommendations (something like reddit’s “hot” filter).

I’m thinking about the content a year from now and wondering how new options will compete with well known options that have already gotten a huge amount of support. In order for new options to move to the top, each new product must have more votes than the one before it. The purpose of Slant is to recommend the best. If old options don’t eventually make way for new options as technology progresses, we’ll just be recommending what has been most popular over time - not necessarily the best thing on the market at this moment.

Another way to approach this problem is to rank the best options relative to each other based on concrete qualities shared by each group. Maybe each pro and con could be linked to a more general attribute of the option, and each vote on pros and cons will influence the option’s rating in that attribute. Some of the attributes that options could be compared by could include privacy, battery efficiency, cost, user friendliness, speed, stability, compatibility, and so on.

To summarize:

  • The ability to not recommend an option is important for relevant material
  • Options should be compared on shared attributes instead of random pros and cons.
  • If options are compared based on shared attributes, it will be easier to tell the difference between quality and popularity

There’s still a ton I need to learn about Slant, but these are my thoughts from what I’ve seen. :smiley:

2 Likes
#14

Thoughts on this for the button design?

1 Like
#15

Looks nice, will there be a toast notification that says “not recommend” or something along those lines?

#16

Will the recommend count include downvotes, or will they be strictly used for list ranking?

For an indicator I’d suggest inverting the arrow button (white arrow on red background) and either putting a red slash across the number if it’s recommend count only, or turning the number red if the count will include downvotes.

#17

Do you mean a tooltip? Like something that appears on hover? If so, yes.

We have no idea how people will use this, so we kinda just want to put the button there for now to trigger the "why don’t you like this option’ dropdown to get more cons. Once we take a step back we will figure out if we want to show how many people didn’t rec something or/and use it in the rankings.

Do you think it’s intuitive at all that the count shown is just for recs, and isn;t impacted by downvotes?

#18

I think if there’s a “Recommend” button, the opposite should be a button of equal weight. A downarrow is vague. “Discourage” or “Dissuade”; something like that. To emphasise that it’s not a popularity contest.

I think it’s pretty easy to misinterpret that, unfortunately. Or, at the very least, be uncertain.

#19

“Recommend” and “Disparage” with separate counts?

#20

Eh I had to Google “Disparage” to double check the definition, so lets rule that one out as too clever.

The design constraints are the more difficult ones here than what word to use. The current design somewhat requires the rec button width to be constrained to the image thumbnail width. This is why the don’t rec button was iconised, it’s mainly a space thing as well as we want to make “recommending” a simple/clear primary action and giving equal space to "don’t rec’ takes away from that.

the other option is a "do you rec this? {Yes}/{No} with “3/5 people rec this” but I don’t like the visual feel of it. The current design has a nice & simple primary action that I don’t want to ruin with this feature.

1 Like
#21

Is there some way we can get a dwonvote/disparage threshold that once it’s hit a mods or a team of mods can decide to remove the option all together? As I am running into a lot of spam in this question http://www.slant.co/topics/1194/~what-are-the-best-android-games-without-in-app-purchases-paywalls. There are quite a few games on there that were obviously posted by the dev and are just poor games that do not belong on a list of “best”. If there is no set up option to remove them at some point then these lists will have the potential to be filled with spam at the bottom.

1 Like
#22

That will be part of the flagging system.

1 Like
#23

For the “masses”, an option to “Not recommend” wouldn’t be a good idea. Facebook doesn’t have a “Dislike” button, TED.com only has upvotes for comments etc.

For the smarter among us, the option would be highly useful. StackOverflow and the SE family of sites is the prime example.

1 Like
#24

We actually implemented the “do not recommend” did you notice it on the site?

#25

If it’s the red down arrow, then yes! Feel free to close the topic if policy suggests so.

#26

I still think there’s something to be said about @dandv’s input. (argh, for some reason while trying to auto complete @dan and pressing enter, post was submitted! discourse bug!)

Although youtube does have a dislike and it works quite well… And I’d argue facebook is a bad reference for “data reference”. It’s terrible to snoop any information there.

Anyway, no idea if it’s already working like this, but I also wanted to mention I loved the whole @johnlbevan input there:

The ranking could be mixed up with the kudos system (such as from uservoice). For each topic you’d have limited kudos to rank things up. Maybe 10 kudos you could spread among the options. It would make the system simpler to implement, less heavy to use on big topics and thus probably more meaningful as it could aggregate more data from people who wouldn’t rank otherwise.

1 Like
#27

We need to rework the entire voting/ranking system at some point soon… the current one is pretty broken as new options don’'t supersede older ones (iphone 6 vs 5). I’ll revisit this thread when it’s time to fix it and revive the debate.

2 Likes
#28

How do you propose to start this discussion? I think this topic alone touches on many important points and I’ve seen other discussions that have made good points that are relative to this exact revision topic.

Also, I feel that there are other points to be made for this as well, which probably already exists elsewhere in separate topics. I have also hinted on having ideas on feature suggestions and such to include on the pro/con pages.

Since a ranking system is an important element for a site like this. There should be more additions to the structure, for example when adding a new question / topic (as well as a pro / con), I suggest adding some documentation in regards to the format of the style of writing, structure where specific content belongs (description being 3rd person, comments being open for opinions), how to use source (including the optional quote of the source dialog), and many more areas to add.

Although this may seem a bit overboard to add, there are good ways to add all this without adding any bloat or confusion, such as expandable and collapsible (accordion style) sections for each sub section of what I listed for example.

So back to my main and first question, since it can involve several parts for this topic overall, how would propose to being a new discussion thread on this particular topic? Perhaps, create a parent section and having sub set sections for each of the topics to include or not include to?

#29

I think you’re referring to guidance when contributing content. It’s a good feature but off topic for this thread :slight_smile: feel free to create a new topic tagged with feature suggestions.

#30

That is exactly what I tried to address, but was not nearly enough or well enough as to getting the point across as in clarifying that it’s related to both the topic on hand as well off-topic, but also being something of multiple topics. At the same time not having to discuss that aspect too much to where I’m losing any value to the point that matters specifically to only this topic.
In fact, it’s something that has been on my mind and struggled with during these past weeks as in how and where to introduce the bigger picture of the stuff I want to propose. The problem is that although it covers multiple topics, each part has some sort of relation to each other which conflicts with the idea of creating a whole new topic itself or worse by separating each part to where it fits in each topic already existing. In other words, I’m trying to avoid creating a new topic that has a lot of overlap already being discussed while trying to be able to say each part in one place to where the overlap issue is where keeping the option of being able to overlap and can be referred to something such as a meta-topic which is simply a section of where each topic contains overlapping discussion and will never be off-topic.

I want to finish by adding an apology for any confusion and will be my last post where I attempt in adding more unnecessary points that are off topic as it is unconventional simply because it doesn’t work well in the end.