I'd like to share my thoughts a bit more about the voting, now that we've got a few days under our belt. First of all, if I turned the voting on in the Kitchen, I'm sure my negative vote count would shoot up in not too much time. It's not that I'm concerned about getting negative votes--I actually think getting negative votes is a very good thing (it means you're not God and there is room for self-improvement!)--it's just I don't think the nature of that forum lends itself to this. I may change my mind over time, in which case all posts would be fair game, so something to think about when you are posting there anyway!
Another point I want to make. This system doesn't have an "okay, start now" option. So ALL posts from the past are fair game. And anyone new coming into the forum reading through back threads--which we strongly encourage them to do, right?--will be voting on old threads. And if you are voted down on old threads and you've already been adapting to better ways to post, well, you just need to suck it up and move forward like the rest of us.
Now, I'd like to discuss the emotional process of voting itself. I've done the best I could (I think) on coming up with an easy, two-fold criteria for voting. But seriously, it does take a bit of mental gymnastics to do an honest assessment on how a post hits you on a scale of both "helpful AND tactful." And to be honest, not everyone is going to be able to apply that criteria with the same diligence. And even if it's applied with the same due diligence, it is a subjective feeling. So, it's going to be different from person to person even with the same level of intelligence, maturity, etc. And if you are doing what I've asked, that is, rating as many posts as possible, you aren't going to be doing any heavy-duty analysis. You just kind of get into your groove, decide what mental gymnastics you are using and vote accordingly. I guess, if I had to summarize the way I am assessing posts, it's "how did it hit me?" Did I feel good about it or did I say, hmmm. If it's a hmmm, then to me, it could have been better. Send a message. Move on. If it was a fluff post or didn't do anything for me one way or another, I just leave it.
I hope it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but I've voted down a few posts already--giving me currently about a 88% positive and 12% negative voting record. So far, most people (about 75%) are voting positively 90% or more of the time. I guess your voting record will depend on how you view the posts on the forum and how much change you would like to see. I think having a mix of positive and negative is a good thing. But again, if someone chooses to vote negatively all or most of the time, that's their prerogative. Perhaps they are only putting their voting effort into the posts that they have an issue with.
So, let's talk about the notion of popularity. I agree that the whole point of this is not a popularity contest. However, what makes one popular? To a large extent, it's how their overall postings are perceived, because that's pretty much all we have to go on here. So, depending on how you view things, to an extent it may be popularity. And even if there are one or two people who have an issue with one or two others, it's not enough to move a post off of neutral.
The posting system was just upgraded as I was writing this post, so I took a break and did the upgrade. I have the ability now to not allow members to vote on their own posts, but I'm going to leave it. If someone votes negatively, you can cancel out their vote. So, it really takes 6 negative votes to move a post down enough below neutral to be unappreciated. And if it is, it is something to take heed of--if you choose. You can also ignore it.
One of my requests was to have the ability to display the post up and down count along side the total score without having to click into it. That got done. Also, I wanted a distinction between "Not Ranked" and "Neutral." That got done. Hopefully later, he'll add a member post count summary of neutral posts. I guess that was a harder request.
Also, there is a top 10 statistic on the quick link pull-down. But, it's a little meaningless at this point with so few votes. I've asked for better reporting, but that will probably take more time.
So there you go. Sorry this was so long-winded.
