To the opendesktop.org site admins: Trolls and Abusers

To the opendesktop.org site admins

Guys, i’d suggest to disable negative ratings (i.e. thumbs down), not having an option to “dislike” made facebook what it is today (it was the first, and still one of the very few websites, which disallows negative reviews)

Or, alternatively, allow negative rating only for people with a certain credit (this is how e.g. stackexchange,com works), e.g. in your current rating scheme they must have published (at least) a product which ranks 80% or higher, so that it will be really hard for them to create a fake product page, then register a bunch of free email address, and then just vote themselves up in order to get the privilege.

Take a look at the latest themes published/updated today (Jan 13 1028), they all received a “grateful” thumbs down from this ‘xfcegure’ moron who’s profile lists 0 (zero) contributions on opendesktop,org. Allowing such people to rank is extremely disengaging for us the content creators, and i think the opendesktop,org site admins should do something to stop these morons to fool around and just p*ss on our voluntary, and many times hard, work.

PS
This is my contribution, gratefully rewarded by this moron with thumbs down: https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1191436/

Hi gyll,

thanks for the insights.
We are indeed thinking about a fair and transparent Rating mechanism that doesn’t allow for easy abuse, but it could take another few weeks.
Fair Ratings is one of the hardest topics anywhere on the internet, so even Amazon, Hotel-sites, Yelp, etc. are still affected one way or the other.
We hope to find a solution that allows for transparent ratings for those who value it and still giving an accurate information that comes with such ratings at the same time.
Stay tuned. :slight_smile:

Thank You for the quick reply, i’ll definitely stay tuned :slight_smile:

Again, facebook’s no-negative-reviews policy seems the best (and simplest) approach to me (of course, just like facebook, you’ll still keep the “report this” button), but sure, if you can come up with something better, why not

Hi gyll,
we today stopped any abuse voting by allowing only real supporters to up or downvote a product.
To exrpess someones favorites, anyone can still use the “HEART” aka LIKE symbol.
Let us know if you think some people unjust rated any products and we may think to remove those accounts.

This is VERY wrong, now we’ll see an upvote once in a lifetime, it’s TOTALLY DISENGAGING for us content creators.

You should just have removed the downvotes altogether, or leave the downvote option but allow downvotes only from people with at least one product which has 70%+ rating. In this latter case, the potential abusers would be so few that you could actually handle them “manually” once they were reported.

PLEASE reconsider your solution, it’s VERY, VERY bad.

Sorry but thats a stupid suggestion - if people are allowed to upvote so they need to be allowed to downvote otherwise i would call it broken. The best way would just to remove the voting system and bring back the old sorting by downloads(there could be different ways eg downloads per week, month, overall etc.)

Sorry but that’s a stupid remark

  1. see facebook: no “downvote” (they now have those new “reactions”, but those are relative to the content of the post, e.g. you express anger, or sadness, etc relative to the event/message/news/etc that’s being posted, it’s not a like/dislike duality). Plus, significantly, facebook rose to the top only with the “like” button
  2. see stackexchange: negative review rights are special privileges, you progressively gain negative review rights based on your own credits (which you receive from others on the network)

You say “otherwise i would call it broken”, well, i don’t. Not at all. But i do call it broken now.

yeah and they are criticized for it every year, there is also a reason why we know now terms like a filter bubble.

@also I dont get you second point - in an ideal voting system everyone would vote on every submission so you would probably the bad guy just because you voted something down that doesn’t work for you or you just dislike it.

there are also other examples how to make a proper voting system, on some pages you have to write a comment for every vote with at least 100 characters - no bad since then the author would at least know why its voted down or up.

Hi all,

I want to say too: Please do NOT remove downvotes at all!! I’m completely L1nuxAdd1cted, if people are allowed to upvote so they need to be allowed to downvote. There is so much rubbish and stupid and even illegal copies here, which need at least a kind of control by the community itself! Just my two cents…

will;

Some members downgrade rating abuse and specialy swept own products with fake accounts.
See this topic and examples:

Mostly popular sites not have downvote and not have problem…

rubbish and stupid and even illegal copies

I agree with you. Maybe need make mandatory some points. For example:

  • Sources
  • Develop page (GitHub/GitLab and etc)
  • Issues page
  • Changelog
  • Author
  • Limit upload/upgrade product ( for example, some members update own product with very minimal changes everyday)
    and etc… at discretion of admins

Mostly popular sites not have downvote and not have problem…

Actually this in an argument, I don’t know how to follow… sorry… If we want to talk about other sites and “mostly popular”:
I think, there is a very big difference between a like on Facebook for a simple status update or a shared link and creative work and content here. Most stores and shops are using star ratings, which have neutral mid to start or in fact negative meaning for one and two stars.

But please do not consider star ratings! It’s good for DAUs, most people here should be Pros…

I think opendesktop needs to fight against the root cause (spammer), and not restrict the instruments…

@WillS: Why on earth would you want to hammer someone? if it’s stolen work etc then you have that “report abuse” button, otherwise let them live!

Or, as i said, if you really want to hammer someone, you’ll need to earn that privilege, e.g. for each product of your own rated some 70%+ you gain the right to throw some 5 negative votes, for 75%+ rating on your own product you get another 5 downvotes, (etc?). What you don’t seem to grasp here is that it’s not your job to police this website, that’s the admins’ role.

Plus, “if people are allowed to upvote so they need to be allowed to downvote”, says who? Says you? To quote you, this is plain rubbish, it’s anything but an argument.

Those are all good suggestions that we will consider at one point or another.
A fair rating system takes time, but making some things mandatory or in a sense “authentic” or verified is a good idea.

@gyll Actually I don’t want to “hammer someone”, but want to stick with the freedom to do so, if needed. :wink:

What you’re saying seems a bit “over-engineered” to me… it’s to much “if” for me.

Since the Plings were introduced, it feels like a lot of people forget about, that opendesktop is still a community platform. I can’t remember such discussions back in the good-old-days™. If this is the conclusion of Plings, I would like to see them removed…
I personally prefer community based control mechanisms. In addition it might be a good help for the site admin to check for - voted content and user, which just doing - . For this it might be more helpful, if downvotes of product would directly influence the ranking of a user. (even downvote users) This might be a way for an eligible community to react on any Trolls and Abusers.

I think we’re all old enough to cope with somebody saying: “I don’t like, what you created”. If everybody is saying this, I would be happy to know why and if it’s worth to change or continue.

Actually this isn’t a problem for now, since there are only 8 people privileged to vote at the moment. (What actually is a pity…)

@opendesktop It would be great, if you could share any changes in a early stage! Just to catch up with the community. Latest changes where a kind of surprise… (and I’m still afraid you’er going to consider star ratings :wink: )

will;

At first glance, I liked what was done, until I know that there are really few privileged ones who can vote (I guess I have not read that part). Favoring (that heart) a product does not influence anything at all relevant, at least as far as I know. The focus is to wipe out the false accounts and its negative votes, but what we got was a big score freeze. 8 people to vote on thousands of products? Really?

As for “remove Plings,” as someone suggested here, I disagree. Like it or not, whether you like it or not, the world is driven by trade, in the end, even community platforms have monetary goals. I believe that before the introduction of the Plings, people did their arts with the intention of gaining recognition and job opportunities, for, oh, look, make money. I started at opendesktop a few years ago with similar intentions, I did not have any results that would make me continue, so I stopped a few more years until the introduction of Plings, as we see happen with other artists users. There is no free lunch. “But the donations …” Plings give me in one month what I did not get in years of donations. Of course this is my case, but it is shared by many.

If you do not need money to move on, congratulations and good luck, but for for me and many others this is was a motivation (though it still needs improvement). I just want to say to the opendesktop team: thank you!

1 Like