See who voted for your blog or comment?

True Kiron, there is a risk of bias. But bias enters into nearly all systems of voting, just look at politics. With blogs, I've seen many examples of say 5 people voting a 4 and 5 (assumed by the 4.x rating) only to see it dive to 3.x with a phantom 2 rating (using simply math). Worse still is the phantom vote stalker, who posts say a 2 before anyone else comments, and I have witnessed hesitation in comments kicking off probably because the first comment poster doesn't want to see that it was their post that was so lowly voted. In those cases they may (including me) have shown bias by rating a blog post a 5 when actually a 4 would have been voted, just to mitigate the perceived trolling of that phantom voter of 2. A few times when I have been the first to comment, I have seen a 2 vote. Then I comment and I almost always vote a 4. But if I did, it would end up a 3, and only my comment would appear, so it would make the author think I voted a 3. That is even worse than bias, it is false representation. Even worse is the other way around, when I'm the first to comment and vote a 4, only to see the vote some time later become a 3, obviously because someone voted a 2. And when I see this happening, the phantom voter (could be plural) never comments. I have even changed my vote up to cater for this as you may have noticed in the past. I think all of this would virtually disappear if the votes were unmasked, or at the very least have the down/up vote, so that the worst damage a phantom can do is 1 down vote, not change the entire average vote to make it look like the post was a lot worse than it actually was. To your point, yes some people may not vote, but I feel that those who do, would really want to vote, and give their true vote, which gives a lot more credibility to the total average vote for that post.

I think a baby step towards this is to show everyone who voted (the way LinkedIn shows who Liked your updates) but not show how they voted.

Then, the community product owner could use the feedback on that change to decide whether to take the next step...

Kiron

Wonderful analysis, Sante. I've voted for your response now. Being transparent :-)

We are talking about the rates in the blogs. :)

I prefer thumbs up/down, and the number of each. I prefer don't see who did it, however I prefer that the rating will not give a badge, because is encouraging to do it before fully read the blog or article.

The stars system is very subjective, for example in the last conference I received three 1 star qualification (that decrease a lot my conference qualification) one of the attendees that rate me with 1 star at least added a comment ("The room was full and I can't go into" - This person or didnt' unterstand the rules about how to rate the speakers or wantend to "punish me" for something that was outside of my role.

The others that voted with 1 star no comments added...what did it mean? How I can improve?

Maybe now you are thinking...was only 3 bad qualifications, but from 40 attendees only 12 gave feedback, then the impact was huge in my overall qualification.

Same happen with the blog entries in this forum, what does it mean 1 star vs 2...and 4 vs 5, Am I having grammar issues? Is the topic not interested for you? Or did you only stop by blog to win another badge?


I highly appreciate feedback in conference, blog entries...and at least my experience with "stars" don't give me the info that I'm looking for. I took more attention to the comments, that generally are more helpful.

I think a baby step towards this is to show everyone who voted (the way LinkedIn shows who Liked your updates) but not show how they voted.

Then, the community product owner could use the feedback on that change to decide whether to take the next step...

Kiron