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All,
It seems at this point that the article rating feature -- intended to help --
is actually causing more harm than good to the community. It's difficult to
gauge how much harm is being done when opinions are so varied, but it's clear
that something needs to be changed.
Technically, the rating system is working extremely well and, from an admin
point of view, the composite ratings being produced seem very well consistent
with the rating system's main goal of being able to highlight recommended
reading to those short on time.
However, it seems that the high visibility of both the raw and composite
numbers are having an overall negative effect on the community's morale.
Some of the deeper concerns are raised in this message and its replies:
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6130
I also received a private e-mail last night describing the rating system as
"a fiasco and an embarrassment to LUGNET" and calling for its removal.
Clearly, these are very strong feelings being expressed by people. How many
others feel this way? What would you like to see happen? Post your thoughts
as a reply to this message (or reply privately if you prefer not to post your
thoughts publicly).
As to possible "fixes," there have been many suggestions over the past few
weeks, most of which center around making the rating numbers less obvious or
gone altogether. If you're curious, you can find most of these in the group
lugnet.admin.general -- but it's a lot to wade through.
The first, original purpose for having ratings was to be able to lay the
foundation for the later creation of variety of "what's hot" or "top X of
group Y" listings for quick browsing -- something akin to the current
Spotlight pages, only fully automated, instantly updating, and much more
representative of collective opinion. The second original purpose was to
lay the foundation for so-called "collaborative filtering" possibilities --
the server learns (could learn) what types of things you prefer to read,
and gives (could give) higher priority to you personally for messages rated
higher by people with similar interests. These two main purposes become
increasingly relevant as message traffic increases.
It was never a purpose of the ratings system to make anyone ever feel bad
or unwanted or unwelcome. It's core purpose is simply to highlight "neat or
noteworthy stuff" but not to downgrade "un-neat or un-noteworthy stuff" or
regular "fluff" (which there's nothing wrong with).
It seem that no amount of education about what the numbers mean will be able
to make a meaningful dent in the natural inclination to view, say, a 40 as
having been "marked down" from its default of 50. Even if the default were
changed from 50 to 0 (so that numbers tended almost always to climb rather
than to climb half of the time and fall half of the time), it seems likely
that feelings will still be hurt, because it seems that some people are hurt
by the fact that others are getting 80's and 90's while they are getting 40's
or 50's or 60's. Going with a scale 0 to 100, in retrospect, hasn't been any
better from an overall morale point of view than if a scale -100 to +100 had
been used.
Specific personal questions:
1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
setting) that they be displayed to you?
2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
to you?
3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
feature altogether)
4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
get a high rating? How often?
6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
system compare to your current opinion of it?
8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
these issues?
9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Thanks for your time,
--Todd
[followups to .admin.general]
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Todd Lehman wrote:
>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
This is the best option I think, at least better than the option below
(which I was thinking as the best, until reading your message). It
doesn't included the feeling of "elitism is at the front door" by
satisfying an automated "top n list" feature at the same time.
>
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
>
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Actually, before I read your opinion request, I didn't care about
ratings of my posts (I use NNTP) so I checked the ratings of my posts
several minutes ago for first time. It's very interesting that my
highest rated post is the one in which I expressed my dislike about
rating system..:-) I won't hurt in anyway by seeing my posts are rated
low,. but this doesn't mean that (in anyway) I feel comfortable about
the procedure. Lugnet is not an academic place where participants
supposed to present scientific assays or defend their master thesis to
an academic council, IMHO. I visit Lugnet in my SPARE TIME, and it's an
integral part of my HOBBY, which is obviously a SPARE TIME activity by
nature, of which the purpose is nothing but FUN and RELAXING. I can
explain further but I'm sure you get what my point is.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Lego Set? Why not..:-)
Web sites? Yeah, may be. Web sites and news group posts are very
different in nature and I think former is very suitable for rating,
while the latter is no need to be rated (besides being not suitable),
especially in the Lugnet case, where signal to noise ratio is very very
low, or noise is organized in a way that never bothers not interested
people. Actually, don't we rate web pages already? Your CLSoTW elections
made primarily on "rating" basis, AFAIK.
Selçuk
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In lugnet.admin.general, Selçuk Göre writes:
> This is the best option I think, at least better than the option below
> (which I was thinking as the best, until reading your message). It
> doesn't included the feeling of "elitism is at the front door" by
> satisfying an automated "top n list" feature at the same time.
OK, good, we need to get rid of any feelings of elitism...
> Actually, before I read your opinion request, I didn't care about
> ratings of my posts (I use NNTP) so I checked the ratings of my posts
> several minutes ago for first time. It's very interesting that my
> highest rated post is the one in which I expressed my dislike about
> rating system..:-)
Isn't that ironic? :) I've marked almost every message on this thread as
100 a recommendations to read and for the insightful comments. Perhaps
others did as well, or others agreed directly with the concerns (I agreed
with the concerns, BTW).
> I won't hurt in anyway by seeing my posts are rated
> low,. but this doesn't mean that (in anyway) I feel comfortable about
> the procedure. Lugnet is not an academic place where participants
> supposed to present scientific assays or defend their master thesis to
> an academic council, IMHO. I visit Lugnet in my SPARE TIME, and it's an
> integral part of my HOBBY, which is obviously a SPARE TIME activity by
> nature, of which the purpose is nothing but FUN and RELAXING. I can
> explain further but I'm sure you get what my point is.
Oh yes! :)
> Web sites? Yeah, may be. Web sites and news group posts are very
> different in nature and I think former is very suitable for rating,
> while the latter is no need to be rated (besides being not suitable),
> especially in the Lugnet case, where signal to noise ratio is very very
> low, or noise is organized in a way that never bothers not interested
> people.
I think you're onto something there, but I also think that the signal-to-
nosie ratio is an extremely personal thing. By "exteremely personal" I mean
that it varies widely from person to person. Someone said, for example, that
they found approximately 75% of the messages here to be fluff or noise, and
another said that they enjoy reading what they consider fluff.
Not everyone does or wants to read everything, and I know people for whom
90% of all the messages here are just noise -- because their time is limited.
That's a very _low_ signal-to-noise ratio.
> Actually, don't we rate web pages already? Your CLSoTW elections
> made primarily on "rating" basis, AFAIK.
The resulting list of sites spun out by CLSotW is a very crude "in or out"
list. The main (read: 99%) original purpose of of CLSotW was to give a place
to visit once a week to curl up with a cup of coffee and visit some "cool"
(and hopefully relatively new) LEGO-related website. The archive of past
picks is just a by-product (a nice freebie). The summaries of the sites are
the writings of one person -- not extremely helpful compared to what could be
possible instead.
But more importantly, there can only be one CLSotW per week, and at any given
time there are dozens of sites out there which most people would consider
"cool" but which, for one reason or another, aren't easily findable. The
CLSotW page (in its current form) can only show so much.
What I'd like to see someday (this is just me, and I haven't collected
opinions from others on this yet) is a system to rate not only whole websites
but individual pages of websites -- and then collate the ratings and produce
hourly revolving "top N" lists. Age of last addition would be an important
factor here, so that things would drop in their position on the list with the
passage of time. Currently, there is just no way to keep up with all the
great stuff that's being put on display at all the various fan websites.
Without some collaborative rating system for webpages, I'm going to miss at
least half of the great stuff no matter how hard I try...so I'd rather miss
the things that didn't get high ratings and see the things that did. Then
if I have a bit of extra time I can go down the list and look at slightly
lower-rated things. And it would be especially helpful to me if it knew my
preferences and also gave me the option to turn them off or to show me random
things. And categorizing and tagging is important too.
In other words, I trust the collective opinion of a bunch of people far more
than I trust random events which might lead me to something interesting. (Of
course, a mix of both is needed, otherwise one never exposes oneself to new
things -- but that should be a personal decision.)
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> The resulting list of sites spun out by CLSotW is a very crude "in or out"
> list. The main (read: 99%) original purpose of of CLSotW was to give a place
> to visit once a week to curl up with a cup of coffee and visit some "cool"
> (and hopefully relatively new) LEGO-related website.
If you consider this original purpose, CLSotW has definitely lived up to it
and much more! I look forward to the new pick every week, and I usually check
out the nominations too. I think it's a great thing as is and should not be
mixed with any other system that might come up-- it's just fun!
> What I'd like to see someday (this is just me, and I haven't collected
> opinions from others on this yet) is a system to rate not only whole websites
> but individual pages of websites -- and then collate the ratings and produce
> hourly revolving "top N" lists.
If you don't mind me inserting my 20 cents right about here...
I think that rating websites like we rate posts today would be EXTREMELY
harmful, much more so than rating posts can ever be. Websites are usually
results of hard work by individuals, and rating them "down" would always,
*always* be insulting, NO MATTER WHAT.
If, OTOH, the ratings for websites will be displayed only in "top N" fashion,
WITHOUT the rating number being visible AT ALL, that would be a good thing.
(I'm emphasizing the points which seem highly important from my POV so that
people don't get hurt.)
I also think that categorizing/tagging is extra-good. What I mean by tagging
(I don't know what Todd meant) is saying things like "MOCs", "Castle-related",
"Train-related", "b-s-t", etc about each site. I think that is much more
important than any rating; that way, I could ask to see only Castle related
pages, while someone else can check out b-s-t pages, and so forth. A database
of webpages that can be catagorized, or at least defined by *keywords*, would
be very useful. (Whether it involved rating or not!)
I'd love to help collecting websites if need arises; I don't want Todd to
spend his time on that, as cool as I think it could be. I think that this
would work better with combined efforts, though, and the more people that
contribute, the better.
-Shiri
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Selçuk Göre writes:
> > This is the best option I think, at least better than the option below
> > (which I was thinking as the best, until reading your message). It
> > doesn't included the feeling of "elitism is at the front door" by
> > satisfying an automated "top n list" feature at the same time.
>
> OK, good, we need to get rid of any feelings of elitism...
I can't pinpoint any concrete examples of elitism, per se...but,upon
reflection I can see where some debates degenerated into lowballing of
comments from opposing perspectives ...I view Lugnet as a Microcosm of the
internet information explosion: everyone has different standards and
criteria for syphoning usable content from the volumes of raw data
available. Some people will tolerate a higher "signal to noise" ratio...I
guess my speakers hum a little more than others = )
>
> > Actually, before I read your opinion request, I didn't care about
> > ratings of my posts (I use NNTP) so I checked the ratings of my posts
> > several minutes ago for first time. It's very interesting that my
> > highest rated post is the one in which I expressed my dislike about
> > rating system..:-)
That was my point in my "rating system is making me paranoid" post...Which
was my "highest rated-Thumbs-up post"
> Isn't that ironic?
I try not to whine/complain, and yet this was my highest review...lol
:) I've marked almost every message on this thread as
> 100 a recommendations to read and for the insightful comments. Perhaps
> others did as well, or others agreed directly with the concerns (I agreed
> with the concerns, BTW).
>
> Well that explains my rating then = )
> > I won't hurt in anyway by seeing my posts are rated
> > low,. but this doesn't mean that (in anyway) I feel comfortable about
> > the procedure. Lugnet is not an academic place where participants
> > supposed to present scientific assays or defend their master thesis to
> > an academic council, IMHO. I visit Lugnet in my SPARE TIME, and it's an
> > integral part of my HOBBY, which is obviously a SPARE TIME activity by
> > nature, of which the purpose is nothing but FUN and RELAXING. I can
> > explain further but I'm sure you get what my point is.
You summarized my thoughts much better than I did in my own words...That was
my initial feeling of Lugnet...I guess Lugnet is my internet version of
"Cheers" (where everybody knows your name, etc. ad naueum = )
My comments that were critical are best viewed from the "HOBBY and
RELAXATION" point of view. I was merely commenting that the real world is
problematic or judgemental enough; I don't come on-line to find more of the
same...Everything can't be rosy all the time, I realize that. Lego building
+ experimentation is one of my "simple joys" or "guilty pleasures".
Therefore I try to support a very positive environment surrounding this
acquisition of time and resources. I'm sure Todd can see from the webtv
browser hits to the server that I (and Craigo, for that matter) spend
significant amounts of time here (even if I don't post often)
>
> > Web sites? Yeah, may be. Web sites and news group posts are very
> > different in nature and I think former is very suitable for rating,
> > while the latter is no need to be rated (besides being not suitable),
> > especially in the Lugnet case, where signal to noise ratio is very very
> > low, or noise is organized in a way that never bothers not interested
> > people.
>
> I think you're onto something there, but I also think that the signal-to-
> nosie ratio is an extremely personal thing. By "exteremely personal" I mean
> that it varies widely from person to person. Someone said, for example, that
> they found approximately 75% of the messages here to be fluff or noise, and
> another said that they enjoy reading what they consider fluff.
I enjoy seeing a supportive community. Some of the fluff let's peope know
that they have created something truly unique or inspiring. A certain
amount of Positive feedback (or critical commentary) can be just as
inspiring as new pictures or discussions. For instance, a young child
showing his creation to his parents, and the satisfaction that child feels
from finishing a project or "inventing" something new. Regardless of age,
isn't that one of the feelings everyone attaches to this hobby? ...The
happiness derived from building, the satisfaction of displaying it, and the
desire to build something bigger, better, more complex...often reinforced by
the challenge from yorself and others to improve, evolve, and "reinvent the
wheel".
In general, a cigar is just a cigar, and fluff is just fluff, but isn't it
worth it if one builder "blossoms" from feedback and challenges?
> Not everyone does or wants to read everything, and I know people for whom
> 90% of all the messages here are just noise -- because their time is limited.
> That's a very _low_ signal-to-noise ratio.
>
>
> > Actually, don't we rate web pages already? Your CLSoTW elections
> > made primarily on "rating" basis, AFAIK.
>
> The resulting list of sites spun out by CLSotW is a very crude "in or out"
> list. The main (read: 99%) original purpose of of CLSotW was to give a place
> to visit once a week to curl up with a cup of coffee and visit some "cool"
> (and hopefully relatively new) LEGO-related website.
That is how I used to spend Saturday morning or Sunday after reading the
paper...opening up my mind to new things and pondering the possibilities
while viewing someone's masterpieces.
The archive of past
> picks is just a by-product (a nice freebie). The summaries of the sites are
> the writings of one person -- not extremely helpful compared to what could be
> possible instead.
>
> But more importantly, there can only be one CLSotW per week, and at any given
> time there are dozens of sites out there which most people would consider
> "cool" but which, for one reason or another, aren't easily findable. The
> CLSotW page (in its current form) can only show so much.
Since Lugnet has yielded so many additions to discussion groups....why not a
subcategory of .build or .publish or .general (ossibly even a seperate
group) analogous to Tom Stangls S@H updates...A group where people can post
Webpage updates from ANY theme...I have not completely pondered the
consequences of cross-posting and "signal to noise" of this action, but it
might be a way for people who just want to see new content to continually
and quickly keep up w/ updated webpages besides culling "pirates", "trains"
or "castle" links and groups. Ultimately a bulletinboard of updated
webpages from all themes to peruse at liesure...The immediate benefit being
that you are assured that all content is new = )
> What I'd like to see someday (this is just me, and I haven't collected
> opinions from others on this yet) is a system to rate not only whole websites
> but individual pages of websites -- and then collate the ratings and produce
> hourly revolving "top N" lists. Age of last addition would be an important
> factor here, so that things would drop in their position on the list with the
> passage of time. Currently, there is just no way to keep up with all the
> great stuff that's being put on display at all the various fan websites.
Well I guess that's a positive and negative...so much inovation and
creativity, it's impossible to keep up...I welcome the challenge.
> Without some collaborative rating system for webpages, I'm going to miss at
> least half of the great stuff no matter how hard I try...so I'd rather miss
> the things that didn't get high ratings and see the things that did. Then
> if I have a bit of extra time I can go down the list and look at slightly
> lower-rated things. And it would be especially helpful to me if it knew my
> preferences and also gave me the option to turn them off or to show me random
> things. And categorizing and tagging is important too.
>
> In other words, I trust the collective opinion of a bunch of people far more
> than I trust random events which might lead me to something interesting. (Of
> course, a mix of both is needed, otherwise one never exposes oneself to new
> things -- but that should be a personal decision.)
Kinda like a Best-sellers list or "other customers also read/purchased this:..."
> --Todd
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In lugnet.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Clearly, these are very strong feelings being expressed by people. How many
> others feel this way? What would you like to see happen? Post your thoughts
> as a reply to this message (or reply privately if you prefer not to post your
> thoughts publicly).
I, personally, like the rating system. I do understand the emotion that I
attach to my posts, and while I know I don't always post something useful, it
does stab (a tiny bit) when I see it marked down... So I guess I wouldn't want
to have it go away, but perhaps be less visible...
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
that's probably a good idea - if someone wants nothing to do with the rating,
they could disable it alltogether.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
I think I'd like to be able to find out what my post (or any post, for that
matter) is rated in the community.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
no, I think this would be a bad idea. I like the ratings, and I like the idea
of the spotlight being updated automaticlly...
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
well, someone rated my idea that "la la la" should be an html tag as a 0.
While it stung, I definitly agreed with it.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
nope.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
nope, and I don't think it makes it easier or harder...
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
heh, well, I didn't think of all the trouble it could cause... I still like it.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
right time :)
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
don't we already have that for web pages, at least in some form, in the CSotW?
anyway, what I think should be done:
* have an option to hide the whole rating system, like it was never there...
The scores, and the voting bar as well.
* perhaps hide the score of an article by default - you won't see it unless you
are activly looking for it. If I post a useless post (IMO), I won't bother
looking at it's rating, since I know it's bad...
* possibly make the ratings invisible to anyone but the poster of that message
- though that will kinda defeat the purpose of showing other people cool
posts...
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Boger writes:
> > 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> > collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> > Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
>
> don't we already have that for web pages, at least in some form, in the
> CSotW?
In some form, yes, but it's greatly lacking in that it has no way of learning
your personal preferences. Already there are 180 CLSotW past picks, and just
to go through all of them (even on a T1 or a T3) would probably take someone
several days.
I believe there are also hundreds of sites out there which escape notice
too easily. I just took a thorough look at Tom Stangl's website today, for
example, and I was totally blown away by it. I'm not sure if I'd ever seen
the whole thing before -- only bits & pieces of it. I wish I could rate it
very highly somewhere as a recommendation for people to check it out. I
could post a message about it, but that's so transient -- not persistent
enough.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In some form, yes, but it's greatly lacking in that it has no way of learning
> your personal preferences. Already there are 180 CLSotW past picks, and just
> to go through all of them (even on a T1 or a T3) would probably take someone
> several days.
>
> I believe there are also hundreds of sites out there which escape notice
> too easily. I just took a thorough look at Tom Stangl's website today, for
> example, and I was totally blown away by it. I'm not sure if I'd ever seen
> the whole thing before -- only bits & pieces of it. I wish I could rate it
> very highly somewhere as a recommendation for people to check it out. I
> could post a message about it, but that's so transient -- not persistent
> enough.
so something like /lugnet/publish/sites or /lugnet/announce/site where you (or
someone) can post a site, has to set a FUT to someplace else... perhaps
instead of the regular message post form, you do it with a special form that
will ask for Author name, email and description?
feh, I had some other ideas for it, but this blinding headache is confusing
me... :/
More on this later.
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
(Some snipping here, read Todd's post)
> Specific personal questions:
> 1. ... the ratings were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested
> (via some simple setting) that they be displayed to you?
>
> 2. ...the numeric values of the ratings were not displayed ever to anyone but
> collected and used by the server only...
I think a combination of these could work well. The ratings could be hidden
from public view, so that noone feels like they are being punished, and the
server could still use the numbers. I'd like to still have the link to the
Distribution of Input page. That way, curious users could see how that article
is being rated. I think that this would work better than a personal setting to
make ratings visible.
I support ratings because of the possibilities that they allow (for searching,
hot topics, etc). However, we have a natural tendency to feel bad when our
opinions aren't considered to be as great as those of others. Getting rid of
ratings all together would help morale, but I personally think that we'd be
losing more than we'd be (re)gaining.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Because I know what good the ratings could be used for, I'd feel worse.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system?
Fortunately, no. (Perhaps not yet)
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
No, but Larry's theory that certain people mark him down automatically makes me
uncomfortable. I hope that doesn't really happen, but if it does, it's bad.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas?
Not at all. Though, I can see how it would for some.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
I was initially upset because I sent my membership money in too late and was
missing out. :) Now, I'm a full member that rates 90% of the messages that I
read. It seems to me that people are getting upset over numbers that don't
actually do anything yet, so I'm currently nervous about what will happen
in the community when features based on ratings appear.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
Perfect timing. If it had been done before, no one would know what to
think. If we'd waited, some people might have left.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Lego sets definately! I'd like to see an overall rating for a thread
(though that's more of a use of the current ratings). Theme ratings could
work, though does it really help anyone to know that we all liked classic
space? :) I think that web site ratings would cause more of a problem than
article ratings currently do.
I think I just wrote my longest Lugnet message yet. :)
Ben Roller
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Clearly, these are very strong feelings being expressed by people. How many
> others feel this way? What would you like to see happen? Post your thoughts
> as a reply to this message (or reply privately if you prefer not to post your
> thoughts publicly).
Hi Todd,
To be brutally honest, I had some doubts about the rating system when I
originally saw it - I wondered how long it would be before somebody
decided (say) that they didn't like someone else and started rating all of
their posts as '0'. (I don't know if that's happened yet or not.) I also
wondered if people would use the ranking as a "competition". (Some people
will use *anything* as a competition...) I didn't really think either of
these possibilities were that great for LUGNET, but I kept quiet because I
really didn't have any firm evidence and I didn't want to slight your
work.
I know the rating system has made a few changes to my behavior, but it's
in the area of "checking what my articles were ranked" instead of "using
the ranking to decide what's worthwhile to read.
> It was never a purpose of the ratings system to make anyone ever feel bad
> or unwanted or unwelcome. It's core purpose is simply to highlight "neat or
> noteworthy stuff" but not to downgrade "un-neat or un-noteworthy stuff" or
> regular "fluff" (which there's nothing wrong with).
I'm not sure how this would work (and it's certainly got potential for
abuse) but maybe a self-rating system? I wouldn't be averse to marking
things I post as 'fluff' if they really are.
Another idea would be a non-numerical "rating" system. Maybe you could
rate something as "Fluff", "General Interest", "Group Spotlight" (sort of
like the Spotlight, but for individual groups), and "Spotlight". The X
posts with, say, the highest number of votes for "Group Spotlight" could
be shown in a special window. The numbers could decay over time so it
wouldn't be always the same posts. (Am I making this clear? If not, tell
me and I'll try to explain...)
A keyword system might also be a possibility (to help the "finding stuff
that interests you" part of the equation).
> It seem that no amount of education about what the numbers mean will be able
> to make a meaningful dent in the natural inclination to view, say, a 40 as
> having been "marked down" from its default of 50.
I'm afraid you're right here. Why? I think it's because somebody cared
enough about your post to give it a sub-50 rating, when they could have
just "left it alone".
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
I don't think I'd mind that at all. Of course, I do half of my LUGNET
reading via NNTP, so I don't always see the ratings anyway.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
I think this would really cut down on hurt feelings. I know I wouldn't
mind it.
Would the personal recommendations be something like alexlit.com, where it
compares your ratings of articles with other people's ratings of those
same articles so it can "guess" what other articles you'd like?
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
I wouldn't really miss it.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Hmm. Most of the stuff I've posted that's gotten a low rating has been
"fluff", so I really didn't feel too bad about getting a low rating,
except for that first initial burst of displeasure at seeing that someone
thought my post was "not useful".
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Hmm...not really. But I don't study the ratings that much, either.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
Nope. I'm an opinionated son of a bull moose, so the rating system isn't
going to shut me up.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
Not too much changed, especially now that I find out that other people
aren't satisfied with it.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
It's never too early to defuse a potential problem in the community. "Too
late" would mean that LUGNET was doomed, and I highly doubt that it is.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Hmm. The websites/web pages one could get personal the way the article
ratings did, if you weren't careful. LEGO set ratings would be pretty
cool, though!
J
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
<bulk snip>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
Indifferent. I've been following along, and have a pretty good idea of what
the issues are, but it just doesn't matter much to me. I don't put much stock
in the numbers to date, since so few people are rating messages. If the
system becomes more wide spread, I'd definately like the option of seeing the
numbers, because they will be more indicative of community opinion.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
So long as I can (when the system becomes more widespread) use the ratings as
intended, I don't care if I see the numbers. However, it seems likely to me
that seeing the numbers (or having the option) makes it easier to use them.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
:/ One step forward, two steps back. I think the ratings is a good idea, and
will become even more of a good idea as Lugnet grows. The current
implementation is generating some ill-will, but I don't think that the
"damage" to the community outweighs the potential use of ratings. I am also
of the opinion that much of the "damage" to the community is from a mis-
understanding of what the ratings indicate.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Not victimized, per se. I have felt irritated, though. A specific example:
When I posted a message about my current MOC, with description and pictures,
some anonymous individual rated it "0". It didn't bother me that someone
thought my message wasn't worth the electrons it's printed on, it bothered me
that I had/have no way of finding out *why*. To put it another way - I try to
contribute positively to the community here, and someone out there thinks I
didn't - I'd like to know what they think needs fixing.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Nope, not even remotely. (And I have a hard time understanding why anyone
would)
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
It would be nice if there was the option for people to explain their rating.
Even just a 20 character text box would go light years to making it better.
It turns "80" and "20" into "80 - cool mech, dude!" and "20 - link doesn't
work"
But more relevantly- no, it doesn't affect my posting habits one iota.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
It's currently less useful than my initial expectations. I don't think enough
people are rating messages to give a meaningful sample. A combination of
members not signing in, apathy, and non-ease of use.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
No time like the present. I don't think addressing it earlier would have
allowed enough time for people to react to the system.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Oh cool... If the ratings system was linked into the Pause database, that
would be sweet! I also think it could be useful for CLSotW, but that may be
trickier.
YMMV.
James
http://www.shades-of-night.com/lego/
I'm getting paid for this --> alladvantage.com
Sign up via me, the reference $$ go to fund Lugnet.
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Hi Todd,
My personal feedback. I think the ratings system has caused me to post less,
if that's a concern or not. I haven't felt belittled or berated, but I tend
to think nobody reads my posts when I see it rated by less than 3 people and
it rated poorly. If a hundred people rated my post, even if it was voted
down, I feel like my voice has been heard. Even though I know it's not true,
but the rating gives you the impression that "nobody read this, nobody
cares."
Conversely, I completely ignore the ratings on other people's posts. I'm
after info on certain topics. There's not enough people rating to make it
seem worth looking at.
>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
Even if my ratings were hidden, I still would want to see what it said.
Remember, ratings and responses are the only gauge Lugnet gives for people
reading your posts. I suppose I would constantly check my own and never check
anyone elses.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
I would like that better. I just don't know if what YOU think I like, is
equal to what I think I like. When you tell me, "this is what you like," I'll
probably tell you, "No it isn't." My interests usually don't line up with the
majority opinion.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
I'd like that better still.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
I'd like to believe that very few things make me feel victimized, Oprah. :O)
My life doesn't ride on what 3 or 4 Lugnet members think about my post. I
post less than I did before the ratings because it gives me the impression
that people aren't reading what I'm posting.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Never victimized.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
Harder. I just feel less inclined to share.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
about the same.
>
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
If I saw an increase in ratings, I'd say too early. But I don't think most
people rate them and it doesn't look like that's on the increase. It would
make a difference if either of the above were true. (Being too early, I mean)
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
I like when sets are rated, it gives me an idea on whether I would like it,
but that's only if they tell me why they like or dislike it. A numeric system
tells me zero. I think you have that covered in one of the groups. I just
wish it had more participation.
> Thanks for your time,
> --Todd
>
> [followups to .admin.general]
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Some miscellaneous unordered thoughts:
- I would be inclined to say that the rating system is definitely
harmfull. I have not seen anyone say "wow, this rating system just
helped me read through 2 weeks of posts and catch up on all the
important stuff", but we have seen several people express bitterness
about it.
- without a uniform way of applying ratings, I don't see how usefull it
will be. One example I came up with is suppose a bunch of people felt
that any post in lugnet.off-topic.humor should be rated 0-20 because
overall they are irrelevant, and they don't want them to show up in
general searches. On the other hand, another group of people rate
messages based heavily on the appropriateness of the message to the
group it's in (figuring that the search will let them adjust the weight
of all messages in a group), rate the funniest humor posts highly.
- I haven't paid too much attention to the ratings, but just looked over
the ratings of my posts. I didn't see any real problems.
- I tend to pay more attention to the response my messages gain. Of
course there is one area where this frustrates me. There has been
discussion going on about the T&C for a few months or so now. Several
times it has seemed that we were working towards some usefull goal, and
then all of a sudden a pall of silence drifts over the discussion. As a
result, it doesn't feel like anything has been accomplished. People are
still posting auctions in wrong places and people are still getting
blasted for posting a non-auction market post to a non-market group.
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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A couple more thoughts:
- Anytime you have a way to compare reactions about things, there is
opportunity for people to feel that their contribution wasn't valued.
Note that we have someone currently bummed out that they got a lukewarm
reaction to their web site.
- Any "scoring" system without feedback will be frustrating. I have to
admit that I'm curious as to why my post to lugnet.admin.terms about
"where is Waldo" posts got a high rating by one person, but has had no
responses. Obviously if you get a low rating, you're going to wonder why
(seeing the discussion here, I do know why the postings of mine which
got low ratings got them).
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
snip,snip,snip...
>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
That's probably a good idea (it doesn't worry me) for the sensitive, but
people will always be tempted to look at their 'mark' and get upset.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
I think the rating system has a purpose. The problem is the number of people
rating a post (would you like a jury of one or two ?). It showed it's purpose
in response to Brad J's recent post, where a more significant number of
raters had their say. We Australians got a bit carried away and were marked
down accordingly because our concerns are outside Brad's jurisdiction, and
there would be little point in his reading them.
So maybe the rating system should stay 'public' in certain groups, such as
Lego.direct (quite narrow guidelines) to cut down noise, and stay 'public'
for a different reason in lugnet.general just to trim the fat.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
No it should stay, as Lugnet traffic grows we will need some tool to pick
items of most interest for those of us with less time.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
No, I think a post that gets no replies or a thread that dies is a worse
feeling. We all shouldn't get too precious about it though.
Now that the hounds have got auction announcements back to .marketplace,
who is marking them down there ? Something of interest to someone, will be
of no interest to someone else, so maybe no ratings in a group such as this.
The post title should be specific and people can decide from there. The
purely commercial aspect of some Lugnetters is irksome to me as it seems to
be to others, but I am not about to mark an auction announcement down just
because the item is of no interest to me and has been posted to where it
should be.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Not really, but some must have.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
People who are continuously marked down may be deterred from posting and we
need the widest possible community base as possible.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
I must admit I thought what has happened would happen. At whatever part of
life people are evaluated and marked the lowly marked will get testy.
Maybe a marking system that instead of a 'fail' mark, articles of no interest
were unmarked (which does happen with articles unrated and left at 50 now).
Just have a star system (3 stars,5 stars ...) for posts of note, or maybe
a tally of the number of readers of a post.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
Better now than later.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Lego sets definitely (inanimate objects),but it's hard enough already getting
enough reviews in .reviews. Websites....here we go again, it's getting
personal.
We do need a rating system, just fine tune it, more members rating and more
members joining Lugnet (my IMO's in the mail !), and try and cut out negative
ratings just neutral and positive.
-pete.w
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In lugnet.admin.general, Peter White writes:
> > 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> > collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> > feature altogether)
>
> No it should stay, as Lugnet traffic grows we will need some tool to pick
> items of most interest for those of us with less time.
Here BTW is a quick example of a "top N" list (N=40)...
http://www.lugnet.com/top40.cgi
It's just an experimental page, and it may go away without notice. I'll leave
it up for at least a few days, though, for feedback. It's updated once hourly
by a cron job. The ratings aren't shown in the listing itself, only in the
body of the article snippet. Your personal news-filter settings from
http://www.lugnet.com/news/filter/
aren't taken into account here -- this page currently shows everything in the
system.
One thing to try (if you're a member) -- go through a few of these, and rate
a few of the ones you haven't rated, and then check back a few hours later to
see how/if the list changed.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Peter White writes:
> > > 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> > > collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> > > feature altogether)
> >
> > No it should stay, as Lugnet traffic grows we will need some tool to pick
> > items of most interest for those of us with less time.
>
> Here BTW is a quick example of a "top N" list (N=40)...
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/top40.cgi
>
> It's just an experimental page, and it may go away without notice. I'll leave
> it up for at least a few days, though, for feedback. It's updated once hourly
> by a cron job. The ratings aren't shown in the listing itself, only in the
> body of the article snippet. Your personal news-filter settings from
I like the top 40, and hope it stays.
I was hopefully speaking for others with the 'less time' comment, I myself
use the web browser to look for interesting post titles or hop into ng's I
have an interest in, I admit to spending hours browsing on lugnet at a time.
-pete.w
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In lugnet.admin.general, Peter White writes:
> > Here BTW is a quick example of a "top N" list (N=40)...
> > http://www.lugnet.com/top40.cgi
> > [...]
>
> I like the top 40, and hope it stays. [...]
Any suggestions on a better title than "top 40"? If there wasn't already
something called "Spotlight," that might be a good name for it. I'm wary
that "top 40" sounds possibly like it's putting things up on a pedestal or
too much like the music industry. :)
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Here BTW is a quick example of a "top N" list (N=40)...
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/top40.cgi
Neat. However it is ironic that as of this writing many of the top rated
articles are ones expressing dissatisfaction or concern with the rating
system.... as the old saying goes, you can vote yourself OUT of a democracy but
you can't vote yourself back into one.
If the ratings system survives in some form, this particular use of it is one
reason to keep it around and I agree with the other posters who would like to
see this page, in some form or another, stay.
++Lar
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Before I start this message is a response to
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6221.
I have very rarely used the Lugnet News web-interface so I did a little
research on the rating system. After twiddling around in the web-based
version I discovered that some fundamental issues need to be addressed to
achieve a meaningful rating system.
Firstly, what is being rated? Is it the relevancy of the post to the
message commencing the thread? Is it the quality of the ideas contained in
the post? Is it the post in general - e.g. style, humour, etc? It would
appear that the rating system is too vague and wide to achieve anything at
present. For example, if ratings are based on the relevancy of an article
to the message commencing the thread than the starting message cannot in
itself be rated. It also leads to problems when a conversation goes
off-topic; the mind boggles to think of the problems relevancy ratings would
cause.
Secondly, as I understand Lugnet Members can only rate posts; i.e. only
those that have coughed up the necessary wonga can rate messages. It would
appear that to have to pay to have the privilege of rating messages is
absurd. There are thousands of users but only hundreds of members. If I as
a non-member (not sure how long that'll last :) ) want to alert fellow
Lugnet users to Jimmy Crankies' article on Lego bricks being pretty
impressive/relevant I am unable. It is better that anyone can alert
everyone else to a great article than only a select few.
However, I will not simply state that the ratings system is unhelpful or
hurtful. I myself do believe that the ratings system can be made to work
but only with the following fundamental changes:
1 - That the ratings system criteria are clarified. The ratings must have
meaning to be useful. Relevancy to the message commencing the the thread is
wrong as it ultimately achieves nothing. Instead ratings should be based on
the quality of ideas expressed; for example, I want to say to fellow
Lugnet.Trains users that James Mathis post for a link to his latest train
creation is 'Great' so I simply select 'Alert users that message is 'Great'
'.
2 - The current 1-100 system is abolished. Instead a message can be rated
as 'Great' or just left alone as an average message. This would be very
much like the e-mail priority system; an exclamation mark could appear in
the web-interface to alert users to a 'Great' post. Rather than turning a
user away from posts it simply draws them to particularly brilliant
articles. As I said in point two, it alerts fellow users to something
especially interesting. It also prevents others from being hurt at their
messages being 'down-rated'.
3 - Rating privileges are extended to non-members. It appears that voting
is only for a select few; imagine being told, 'You have to pay £100 to vote
at the next general election'. It is undemocratic!
To summarise; the current ratings system is vague, undefined and
undemocratic. It needs clarification, simplification and opening to all
users to achieve the degree of effectiveness that Lugnet wants and requires.
If anyone has any views, comments and opinions than please reply; this issue
must be dealt with swiftly to prevent the current problem turning into a
crisis.
Thank-you,
Nicholas Allan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Nicholas Allan writes:
> Firstly, what is being rated?
Good point. I see a growing need for a "ratings HOW-TO" page.
> Secondly, as I understand Lugnet Members can only rate posts;
If just anyone can rate a message, what's to keep me from creating 100
accounts and rating my posts up to "100" for whatever reason? Todd's taking
steps to verify existance of people to keep this from happening.
> only those that have coughed up the necessary wonga
I assume you mean money. ;) The cost for lifetime membership is only $10.
That's not a lot of money by any account. I pay that in a single month for
Internet access, and I get a lot more VALUE out of Lugnet. :)
> but only with the following fundamental changes:
>
> 1 - That the ratings system criteria are clarified.
I don't agree with your suggested implementation, but the idea is right on
the money.
> 2 - The current 1-100 system is abolished. Instead a message can be rated
> as 'Great' or just left alone as an average message.
After about 100 messages got rated 'Great', those ratings would be,
for the most part, useless.
> 3 - Rating privileges are extended to non-members.
Well, other than asking "Why become a member", there's the problem of
control of how often each person rate messages.
> It is undemocratic!
If everyone has to pay the same fee to vote (anywhere), is it still
undemocratic?
Just some thoughts,
Ben Roller
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"Ben Roller" <broller@mail.clemson.edu> wrote in message
news:FtC0nK.AGL@lugnet.com...
> In lugnet.admin.general, Nicholas Allan writes:
>
> > Firstly, what is being rated?
> Good point. I see a growing need for a "ratings HOW-TO" page.
Perhaps rating can be done in two completely seperate ways. First one rates
the quality of the content of the post and second one rates the relevancy.
For messages commencing a thread one could only apply the first point;
otherwise one ends up rating the relevancy of a post to itself :)
> > Secondly, as I understand Lugnet Members can only rate posts;
> If just anyone can rate a message, what's to keep me from creating 100
> accounts and rating my posts up to "100" for whatever reason? Todd's • taking
> steps to verify existance of people to keep this from happening.
I understand completely. I was simply pointing out that not everybody is
going to be happy about not being able to rate posts and draw others'
attention to them.
> > only those that have coughed up the necessary wonga
> I assume you mean money. ;) The cost for lifetime membership is only • $10.
> That's not a lot of money by any account. I pay that in a single month • for
> Internet access, and I get a lot more VALUE out of Lugnet. :)
I hope to apply for Lugnet membership very soon, and yes, I certainly get
more value than that per month. Again I was simply illustrating the
principle involved. Obviously one does need to get benefits from one's
membership or some people (not myself) will question the point of
membership.
> > but only with the following fundamental changes:
> >
> > 1 - That the ratings system criteria are clarified.
> I don't agree with your suggested implementation, but the idea is right • on
> the money.
I just popping off to start a new thread in lugnet.admin.general titled
'Creating Lugent Ratins Criteria'. I hope by doing this I can draw
everyone's attention to the current problem.
> > 2 - The current 1-100 system is abolished. Instead a message can be • rated
> > as 'Great' or just left alone as an average message.
> After about 100 messages got rated 'Great', those ratings would be,
> for the most part, useless.
Very true, but if the criteria explained why and how a message was rated
'Great' then it may work. After posting last night (British time) I had
some more thoughts about the rating system and realised that the reason some
are getting hurt is that messages start off at a midpoint value of 50%.
This means that people can have their messages 'down-rated' so-to-speak,
which can be very demoralising. An alternative would be to start at zero
and then work up but that would result in many posts that don't get
'up-rated' just disappearing in the web-interface behind all the rated
messages.
> > 3 - Rating privileges are extended to non-members.
> Well, other than asking "Why become a member", there's the problem of
> control of how often each person rate messages.
I have since changed my mind on the privilege of rating as it is quite
honestly very petty in reality; I apologise, I just demonstrating one of my
principles.
> Just some thoughts,
> Ben Roller
Thanks for replying Ben, hopefully this debate in general will result in
meaningful criteria to rate posts.
Nicholas Allan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
I think I've already said just about everything I have to say on this topic :)
But if you're counting numbers...
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
I think being able to instantly see rated messages sitting next each other in a
group is likely to continue to cause bad feeling. But I'm unsure about your
question.. if you mean:
(i) How would I feel if users could flick a switch and default to the current
implementation? Then I don't think that would be a good idea.
(ii) How would I feel if users couldn't see messages in a group rated alongside
each other, but could see an individual posts rating by clicking on a "Show
Ratings" button from within the post itself? Then I think that would be great!
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
I think it's useful, and interesting to be able to see an individual posts
marks.. but not by default - the user has to want to see it.
So I would feel worse.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Worse.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Once or twice.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
I usually feel happy for someone if I see they've got a high rating.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
Probably easier once the tables and upper layers are in place. At the moment I
don't know how much stock people take from ratings to judge.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
No too much differently, some fears have come to life, others aren't as
widespread as I thought they might be. I still think it's a great idea, and
still looking forward to the upper layers :)
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
Probably about the right time.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Well.. you could have made this a "how much do you agree with this statement"
questionairre :) If people could 'propose' things, and let people vote on them
- community ideas. I'm sure the CAD groups could use something like that? If
members could set up such questionairres easily that would rock!
Richard
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> It seems at this point that the article rating feature -- intended to • help --
> is actually causing more harm than good to the community. It's difficult • to
> gauge how much harm is being done when opinions are so varied, but it's • clear
> that something needs to be changed.
I think the rating system, in a ideal world, is a great idea. However, this
is not an ideal world. The trouble with the system is, as I see it, that not
enough members are voting - and those who are voting are not using the
system the same way as others are. Additionally, it could be argued that
those who can't vote, but want to, may feel disenfranchised by not being
able to.
I'd be a little reluctant to say goodbye to the rating system, as it does
have potential. With that in mind, I'd suggest restricting it to a single
group {1} where it can be monitored in isolation and perhaps even enhanced
in some way.
BTW : I reckon that on loc.uk there is only one person voting (I expect it
is RF?). This means that anyone glancing at this group a few years down the
line will be using that single opinion as a guide. As much as I respect RF,
nobody could argue that is ideal.
Scott A
{1} I'd suggest .general for this as, for the most part, it is both well
read and fairly mellow in nature (just like me :-) )
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In lugnet.admin.general, Scott Arthur writes:
> BTW : I reckon that on loc.uk there is only one person voting (I expect it
> is RF?). This means that anyone glancing at this group a few years down the
> line will be using that single opinion as a guide. As much as I respect RF,
> nobody could argue that is ideal.
Just for the record.. it isn't me! As in I do rate in loc.uk, but not all of
them, and not my own posts :)
Richard
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > BTW : I reckon that on loc.uk there is only one person voting (I expect it
> > is RF?). This means that anyone glancing at this group a few years down the
> > line will be using that single opinion as a guide. As much as I respect RF,
> > nobody could argue that is ideal.
>
> Just for the record.. it isn't me! As in I do rate in loc.uk, but not all of
> them, and not my own posts :)
Me neither -- :) -- I try hard not to give opinions on messages in any of the
loc groups except ones local to me, or rare cases where someone announced
something that was obviously way helpful... There might BTW be some
crossposting effects going on. Of course there are also other members in the
UK besides Richard! :)
--Todd
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In lugnet.loc.uk, Richard Franks writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Scott Arthur writes:
>
> > BTW : I reckon that on loc.uk there is only one person voting (I expect it
> > is RF?). This means that anyone glancing at this group a few years down the
> > line will be using that single opinion as a guide. As much as I respect RF,
> > nobody could argue that is ideal.
>
> Just for the record.. it isn't me! As in I do rate in loc.uk, but not all of
> them, and not my own posts :)
Sorry, I did not mean to infer you'd been voting on your own posts - although
I'm sure you do value your own opinion :-)
I just assumed that as the total number of votes were so low, that only one
person was activley doing it - and I know you do vote.
Enjoy Easter
Scott A
>
> Richard
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Many of my posts have never received any replies or follow-ups, which is quite
depressing. With the current scoring system, at least I know one or two people
have read my post. This often makes me feel better. The actual score is not
that important. (I have never received a high score so far. :-P)
In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> The first, original purpose for having ratings was to be able to lay the
> foundation for the later creation of variety of "what's hot" or "top X of
> group Y" listings for quick browsing -- something akin to the current
> Spotlight pages, only fully automated, instantly updating, and much more
> representative of collective opinion. The second original purpose was to
> lay the foundation for so-called "collaborative filtering" possibilities --
> the server learns (could learn) what types of things you prefer to read,
> and gives (could give) higher priority to you personally for messages rated
> higher by people with similar interests. These two main purposes become
> increasingly relevant as message traffic increases.
For this purpose, maybe a simple voting system will do a better job than the
current scoring system.
Just put a checkbox there, meaning "I like this post", and let's see how many
votes each posts get.
Cheers,
Hao-yang Wang
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
I think this is my preference. Furthermore, I think it'd be good if the
current numerical scheme (while cool from a geek point of view) were reduced
to two buttons: "This article is great" and "This article is off-topic".
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
I'm sorta annoyed by the way it doesn't work from the nntp interface (at
least not without some serious hacking). That alone is a divisive problem.
(Especially since the web interface is less capable than a newsreader in so
many other ways.)
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman wrote:
[some concerns about the rating system]
I don't post here often, because usually what I want to say has
already been said. However, Todd asked for our opinions, so I
figured I would speak up, as a non-"usual suspect".
I don't mean for this message to sound snotty or anything like that.
If it ends up that way, it's because whoever is reading this doesn't
really know me. I think my overall reaction is, wow, this whole
ratings thing has really gone to people's heads and has been blown
WAYYYY out of proportion. (My reaction to most arguments I encounter
is, "Ahh, get over it already!")
I prefer to make my own decisions about what to read rather than
relying on someone else's opinion. That usually means that I end up
reading everything in the groups to which I am subscribed. (I am
currently subscribed to 135 of 725 total groups, and I am tens of
thousands of messages behind, but that's my "problem" and no one
else's.) Since I tend to read threads to their conclusion, I notice
that about 70% or more of all the messages are fluff: me too, wow
that's great, or person-to-person messages that would be better off
sent via email. Also, there are a lot of posts that are just not
legible, not relevant, or not in the right newsgroup. I don't see
that getting low ratings on these messages has caused their posters
to stop posting them.
Also, I think there are a lot of overly sensitive people here who
care overly much about what people think of their posts. It's just a
message; it's not evidence of your worth as a human being!
Since questions 1 - 5 assume that one is actually noticing ratings,
I'll answer them together:
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of
> the ratings were not displayed to you unless you specifically
> requested (via some simple setting) that they be displayed to you?
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of
> the ratings were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used
> by the server only for internal calculations, hotlist generation,
> and personal recommendations to you?
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not
> even collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the
> destruction of the feature altogether)
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you
> posted something which has obtained a low rating and felt
> uncomfortable or unhappy about yourself or about LUGNET because of
> the low rating? How often?
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone
> else's post get a high rating? How often?
I rarely use the web interface, so I would feel neither better nor
worse if ratings were hidden or disappeared entirely. If there came
a time when ratings were sent as an X-Lugnet-rating header, my news
client already gives me the option to selectively display headers, so
I would already have the option to display or not.
As for personal recommendations, I don't see how the bot would be
able to determine, from aggregate ratings given by others, what *I*
would like to read.
As I said above, I rarely post to LUGNET. A quick search shows a
whopping 139 posts in 1.5 years of reading, most of them unrated, a
few rated by 2. I don't think I've blipped enough people's radar to
have people rating my posts. Since I don't post enough to get rated,
and I don't see the ratings when I read, I don't feel victimized at
all either by getting low ratings or having other people get high
ratings.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for
> you or harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother
> you?
Neither, no. I try to police myself. Sometimes I'm more successful
than at other times. In looking over my past posts, I winced a
couple of times at some of the fluffy things I posted. Sigh.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the
> article rating system compare to your current opinion of it?
My current opinion is about the same as my initial reaction: what
would I use it for?
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to
> address these issues?
Probably the right time, since so much energy has been spent
discussing them already, energy that would be better spent clicking
bricks together. :)
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO
> sets? Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
I would prefer to see more time and energy put into objective data,
such as the set inventory & database, rather than subjective stuff
like ratings. Links to websites are more helpful if they include a
description of what one might find there. In general, I
prefer objective rather than subjective.
Thanks, Todd, for taking time to ask for our opinions, and thanks for
giving us a forum in which to express them.
Can we get back to building now?
--
Susan Hoover
Houston, TX
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
Then its a blind crapshoot. I, for instance, am a member but simply have not
bothered to rate any articles as I can decide for myself what was worth
reading. A rating system is, in and of itself, one of two things: 1. a
critiqueing system. 2. a popularity contest. While neither is of itself
necessarily a bad thing, without multiple rating criteria, its pretty useless.
It likes rating the color green only the basis of the color green. Green
compared to red? How green makes you feel? All greens or only LEGO green? etc.
The results will be desparate.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
Doesn't matter to me.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Your original intent is admirable, however, from the messages you have gotten,
things don't seem to be going as intended. I'd say lose it.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Nope, don't even pay much attention to it.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Nope.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
Nope.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
The word SNAFU comes to mind, not through anyones fault.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
It is definitely the right time.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Again, rating systems become either critiques or popularity contests. Noone is
a winner. It creates a democracy that, but its pure definition, is
exclusionary.
> Thanks for your time,
> --Todd
>
> [followups to .admin.general]
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Todd Lehman wrote:
> Specific personal questions:
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
I mainly use the NNTP interface; my perception of the rating system wouldn't
change much.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
This sounds good. Instead of trying to express one's personal feelings
publicly but anonymously, a rater's motive would instead be to give feedback
to the server only. IOW, let's let someone express their opinion of my
message in a public reply. I would definitely feel better about this.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
I feel that something is needed, if for nothing else then for building the
Spotlight page. Scrapping the rating system in favor of something else might
be good.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Yes. Yes. If someone disagrees with me and wants to let the world know, I at
least want to know who said it. This kind of anonymous, public reply is wide
open for abuse.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Not really.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
It doesn't affect what I say before I hit the Send button.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
I am actually disappointed in how it's turned out. I stopped rating messages
a while ago, largely due to the anonymity of the system, and the lack of
feedback. If someone doesn't like what I said (or if they did), I'd like more
feedback than just a 30 or 70.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
Probably a little too late, but most likely just in time.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
LEGO sets, of course. Websites and web pages, probably not. e.g. I know my
web site is lacking in sparkle, and it'll stay that way -- if someone doesn't
like that, tough. If someone wants to critique my web site *content*, then
let's *discuss* it.
Cheers,
- jsproat
--
Jeremy H. Sproat <jsproat@io.com> ~~~ http://www.io.com/~jsproat/
I think the mistake a lot of us make
is thinking the state-appointed shrink is our friend.
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In lugnet.admin.general, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> > 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> > something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> > about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
>
> Yes. Yes. If someone disagrees with me and wants to let the world know, I
> at least want to know who said it. This kind of anonymous, public reply is
> wide open for abuse.
Hmm, hmm... Very insightfully put. Hadn't looked at it from the point of
view of an "anonymous, public reply." Interesting...
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> > 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> > collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> > Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
>
> LEGO sets, of course.
That could be a great application of a detailed rating system... Multi-
dimensional too, not just a single number.
> Websites and web pages, probably not. e.g. I know my
> web site is lacking in sparkle, and it'll stay that way -- if someone doesn't
> like that, tough. If someone wants to critique my web site *content*, then
> let's *discuss* it.
In terms of websites, I was thinking more along the lines of you telling the
server what types of websites you liked best, and it would compare that with
what other people had said about what they liked best, and would present you
with predictions about or lists of sites you hadn't visited yet. At present
there are well more than 500 fan-created LEGO pages (sites).
Composite collation of ratings would also help in building and maintaining
"cool links" lists which are currently created by hand by a number of people.
Imagine if you could get a "cool links" list tailored just for you, in addition
to lists prepared by hand or other impersonal composite machine-generated
lists.
--Todd
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Todd L wrote:
> Composite collation of ratings would also help in building and maintaining
> "cool links" lists which are currently created by hand by a number of people.
> Imagine if you could get a "cool links" list tailored just for you, in addition
> to lists prepared by hand or other impersonal composite machine-generated
> lists.
I don't think you need site ratings to do this. If there was some way
for a person (whether the site owner or someone else) to "register" a
site with the cool links page, and then fill in a form specifying which
themes (not just Lego themes, but themes popular with AFOLs such as
military models or Ancient Rome) or subjects it covered, and what kind
of other content was included, a user wanting a personalised list of
cool sites could then specify what themes or subjects they wanted to see
and get a customised list. This wouldn't address site *quality* but
that's so subjective and a site which might be very low quality from a
design point of view might be just the one I want from a content point
of view.
Kevin
--
Personal Lego Web page:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kwilson_tccs/lego.html
eBay auctions:http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/kevinw1/
Subscribe to my Lego auction mailing list:
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/Legopartsales?referer=1
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Todd Lehman wrote in message ...
> Composite collation of ratings would also help in building and maintaining
> "cool links" lists which are currently created by hand by a number of • people.
> Imagine if you could get a "cool links" list tailored just for you, in • addition
> to lists prepared by hand or other impersonal composite machine-generated
> lists.
What I think would be helpful for this is to come up with a good set of
categories (do a fair bit of brainstorming so it doesn't have to be expanded
too much later). Then when a web site author submits his website to the
"cool web pages" directory, it becomes open for rating (but an author can
withdraw his website at any time, in which case the ratings can be erased or
hidden at his choice). The author of course gets a vote (and each category
should be able to be listed by order of submission (even cooler - show me
all the ones in this category I haven't rated yet) or by levels of coolness.
People rating a web site just get a yes or no vote for each page in each
category. The scale of coolness could break down into say 4 groupings (top
10, top 1/3, 2nd 1/3, bottom 1/3) with the ranking being figured as a simple
num_yes/num_votes.
This will still have a subjectivity problem unfortunately.
Ultimately, I guess cool lists are best done by hand. Then they are just a
list of notable sites. Note that in my web categorization, I the only value
judgement I make is a small set of top sites. This is a set of sites that I
would recommend someone visit first. One shouldn't feel bummed out that your
web site didn't make that list (for one thing it doesn't get updated very
often). What I would like people to do though is let me know that they think
their site should show up somewhere in my categorizations. I make very
little value judgement when categorizing the pages (if you have a web site
with a picture of a train car, as long as I can decide what general type of
car it is, I'll list it). Of course some of those categorizations include
superlatives like "cool castle", which are value judgements. The main intent
of the pages is for ME to find web sites when I want inspiration, but since
I've gone to all this effort, why not share it.
I'm actually slowly starting to link to Lugnet messages on the pages. This
may be the best way to highlight information. There are a number of threads
which are real useful. Of course what would be nice is a way to create a
custom thread which had only the most useful posts (there are some valuable
threads out there which are so large as to be probably worthless to go back
and try and read). Of course creating edited threads would involve value
judgements (but hopefully people won't feel bad that their "me too" or a
post with wrong information gets left out of the edited thread). Perhaps
this type of thing could be done by giving each group an associated
.best-of. Then the articles are cross-posted to .best-of by the editors
somehow. If each group had a small team of editors, one would get around
most personal issues (and of course you can always ask in the original
thread "hey, why didn't my post get included in the edited thread"). Note
also that if a post filled with errors was not included in the edited
thread, the post with corrections which referred to it, will still do so, so
the post doesn't get totally hidden, it just won't show up in one's
newsreader or on the web page (though one might want to be able to see the
edited thread's posting tree).
Frank
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Todd Lehman skrev i meddelandet ...
[...about the rating system...]
As I only read via a newsreader (off-line), I don't see the ratings and, even
if I had been a member, don't have any opportunity to rate, I find it rather
unnecessary. The storms that it has raised are, IMO, equally disturbing as
auction posts in the wrong groups, if not worse.
(It's about time to kill-file posts containing 'rating')
> Specific personal questions:
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Suits me fine! But as I don't see the ratings (only the wawes they create), it
doesn't matter much either way.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
It sounded like a good idea, although not very important. The effects have
been disturbing.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
It's about time!
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Rating of sets might be meaningful, although you have to realize that people
have different opinions, and *none* of them are wrong.
Rating of web pages would be even more crushing for the down-rated individual
than a spurious '0' on a posting. We all know *our* page is good (if not the
best)!
> Thanks for your time,
Thanks for *your* time Todd, lugnet *IS* fantastic, but IMO you should use
your time for something else than rating systems.
--
Anders Isaksson, Sweden
BlockCAD: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/proglego.htm
Gallery: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/gallery.htm
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Todd Lehman wrote in message ...
<snip>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the • ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some • simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
I think most users would activate this setting, if available. That is,
it wouldn't likely solve the problems.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the • ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
One idea is that ratings continue to be collected as they are now, but
conditionally display the numerical results. That is, only display the
net rating result for a post if:
- the sample size is greater than a certain threshold (say 4)
- the rating is greater than a threshold (say 70)
In this way, noteworthy posts would stand out. Also, the ability to
down-rate a message still exists, but there is little chance of
offending the poster.
If the above admin-set thresholds are not met for a post, only the
number of submitted ratings would be displayed.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Ratings would help with the 'spotlight' feature, which I find
valuable.
John
(remove the obvious to reply)
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In lugnet.admin.general, John Koob writes:
> Todd Lehman wrote in message ...
> > 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the • ratings
> > were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> > for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> > to you?
>
> One idea is that ratings continue to be collected as they are now, but
> conditionally display the numerical results. That is, only display the
> net rating result for a post if:
> - the sample size is greater than a certain threshold (say 4)
> - the rating is greater than a threshold (say 70)
> In this way, noteworthy posts would stand out. Also, the ability to
> down-rate a message still exists, but there is little chance of
> offending the poster.
That's a good idea! I'm not sure what you mean by "sample size"; but I think
that adding another condition would be useful:
-Only display the rating if more than X people have rated it (X = ? Perhaps
5?)
Is that what you meant by sample size? If not, what did you mean by it?
> Ratings would help with the 'spotlight' feature, which I find
> valuable.
Agreed; the temporary "top 40" seems very useful.
-Shiri
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Shiri Dori wrote in message ...
> In lugnet.admin.general, John Koob writes:
>
> > One idea is that ratings continue to be collected as they are now, but
> > conditionally display the numerical results. That is, only display the
> > net rating result for a post if:
> > - the sample size is greater than a certain threshold (say 4)
> > - the rating is greater than a threshold (say 70)
> > In this way, noteworthy posts would stand out. Also, the ability to
> > down-rate a message still exists, but there is little chance of
> > offending the poster.
>
> That's a good idea! I'm not sure what you mean by "sample size"; but I • think
> that adding another condition would be useful:
> -Only display the rating if more than X people have rated it (X = ? Perhaps
> 5?)
>
> Is that what you meant by sample size?
Yes.
It doesn't really matter what X is, but 4 or 5 seems reasonable
to start with.
--
John
(remove the obvious to reply)
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
<some questions about article rating>
i can't really address the questions you asked, but i just
wanted to say that i use emacs or slrn to broswe, and they
both have great scoring systems, which i use on the groups
here.
i think something like a rating system for the whole site,
while a nice idea, just won't work. everyone has a unique
opinion on what should be what, or just don't care, and it
would be difficult to get useful results such a system.
if an article was given a rating depending on the viewer's
preference, it might be more useful.
right now, i dont see what the rating system accomplishes.
other people enjoyed reading the article, or didn't? what
does that mean? why didn't they enjoy it? is it going to
be for the same reason i wouldn't enjoy it? if that isn't
the reason, i'm probably going to want to have read it, so
the scoring system didn't do anything good for me.
--
Science is the systematic classification of experience.
George Henry Lewes (1817-78)
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I have always felt that the ratings given to my posts accurately reflected
how interested others would be towards those posts.
In fact, if you had asked me to personally rate all of my posts, i probably
would have given them the same number.
I usually read my news through a news program, so I only rarely see those
numbers (usually if I'm searching using the LUGNET news browser).
The numbers don't bother me in the least.
Brad
Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote in message
news:FtBuAn.2LD@lugnet.com...
> All,
>
> It seems at this point that the article rating feature -- intended to • help --
> is actually causing more harm than good to the community. It's difficult • to
> gauge how much harm is being done when opinions are so varied, but it's • clear
> that something needs to be changed.
>
> Technically, the rating system is working extremely well and, from an • admin
> point of view, the composite ratings being produced seem very well • consistent
> with the rating system's main goal of being able to highlight recommended
> reading to those short on time.
>
> However, it seems that the high visibility of both the raw and composite
> numbers are having an overall negative effect on the community's morale.
> Some of the deeper concerns are raised in this message and its replies:
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6130
>
> I also received a private e-mail last night describing the rating system • as
> "a fiasco and an embarrassment to LUGNET" and calling for its removal.
>
> Clearly, these are very strong feelings being expressed by people. How • many
> others feel this way? What would you like to see happen? Post your • thoughts
> as a reply to this message (or reply privately if you prefer not to post • your
> thoughts publicly).
>
> As to possible "fixes," there have been many suggestions over the past few
> weeks, most of which center around making the rating numbers less obvious • or
> gone altogether. If you're curious, you can find most of these in the • group
> lugnet.admin.general -- but it's a lot to wade through.
>
> The first, original purpose for having ratings was to be able to lay the
> foundation for the later creation of variety of "what's hot" or "top X of
> group Y" listings for quick browsing -- something akin to the current
> Spotlight pages, only fully automated, instantly updating, and much more
> representative of collective opinion. The second original purpose was to
> lay the foundation for so-called "collaborative filtering" • possibilities --
> the server learns (could learn) what types of things you prefer to read,
> and gives (could give) higher priority to you personally for messages • rated
> higher by people with similar interests. These two main purposes become
> increasingly relevant as message traffic increases.
>
> It was never a purpose of the ratings system to make anyone ever feel bad
> or unwanted or unwelcome. It's core purpose is simply to highlight "neat • or
> noteworthy stuff" but not to downgrade "un-neat or un-noteworthy stuff" or
> regular "fluff" (which there's nothing wrong with).
>
> It seem that no amount of education about what the numbers mean will be • able
> to make a meaningful dent in the natural inclination to view, say, a 40 as
> having been "marked down" from its default of 50. Even if the default • were
> changed from 50 to 0 (so that numbers tended almost always to climb rather
> than to climb half of the time and fall half of the time), it seems likely
> that feelings will still be hurt, because it seems that some people are • hurt
> by the fact that others are getting 80's and 90's while they are getting • 40's
> or 50's or 60's. Going with a scale 0 to 100, in retrospect, hasn't been • any
> better from an overall morale point of view than if a scale -100 to +100 • had
> been used.
>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the • ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some • simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
>
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the • ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server • only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal • recommendations
> to you?
>
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
>
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or • unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
>
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
>
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
>
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article • rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
>
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to • address
> these issues?
>
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
>
> Thanks for your time,
> --Todd
>
> [followups to .admin.general]
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Todd L wrote:
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
Better
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
Better
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Better
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Sort of: not "uncomfortable or unhappy about yourself or about LUGNET"
but annoyed and indignant. Only once, because I use a newsreader 99% of
the time and don't normally see the ratings.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
No
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
No effect (having looked at the ratings and decided I didn't like how
they worked or felt, I went back to my newsreader so I don't see em)
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
Sounded like a good idea at the time: actual experience seems not useful
and actively repellent to some people.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
The righ t time.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Lego sets. Impersonal things (ie not individuals messages or individuals
web sites).
Kevin
--
Personal Lego Web page:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kwilson_tccs/lego.html
eBay auctions:http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/kevinw1/
Subscribe to my Lego auction mailing list:
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/Legopartsales?referer=1
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Hey Todd,
I've been avoiding a direct and complete opinion about the rating system till
now, mainly because I wasn't sure of my stand on it. But now I know where I
stand... here're my answers:
> The first, original purpose for having ratings was to be able to lay the
> foundation for the later creation of variety of "what's hot" or "top X of
> group Y" listings for quick browsing -- something akin to the current
> Spotlight pages, only fully automated, instantly updating, and much more
> representative of collective opinion.
This is a good idea and I'll be glad to ee it implemented.
> The second original purpose was to
> lay the foundation for so-called "collaborative filtering" possibilities --
> the server learns (could learn) what types of things you prefer to read,
> and gives (could give) higher priority to you personally for messages rated
> higher by people with similar interests.
This, IMO, would work if (and only if) the rating were *not* based on numeric
rating, because the numbers can be perceived in oh-so-many ways. It would work
well, IMO, if there was a rating system based on written-out choices, for
example:
-this post is in the wrong NG (ie, off-topic)
-this post is OK, but not very useful
-this post is very informative
-this post features great MOCs/web sites/[etc]
You get the picture.
This could be very useful once (if?) the RSS/channels are implemented. I could
say, for example, that I want to see informative posts only; while Jeff (just
throwing around names) will ask to see MOC posts as well as informative ones;
and Eric will want to see all posts regardless... that kind of thing.
> These two main purposes become
> increasingly relevant as message traffic increases.
Right; but pure numbers aren't really helping. Categorizing posts
by "usefulness" is downright inappropriate and unhelpful. Because what's
useful and important to someone (e.g. info about a cool new mindstorms set
that is sighted in stores), will be useless to me and vice versa.
> It was never a purpose of the ratings system to make anyone ever feel bad
> or unwanted or unwelcome. It's core purpose is simply to highlight "neat or
> noteworthy stuff"
That's why I think that written-out statements are more useful than numbers.
Like Jeremy and others mentioned, a numeric scoring without a reason does not
help the person posting to realize what he/she has done wrong (or done
excellently well).
> but not to downgrade "un-neat or un-noteworthy stuff" or
> regular "fluff" (which there's nothing wrong with).
Right! "Fluff" is one of the things I like in lugnet, we are here day-in and
day-out; and there aren't Brad Justus posts every day, or MTT sightings every
week. Lugnet contains of a whole lot of fluff, and I personally like to read
it-- and see what's happening every day, regardless if it's highly "useful".
> Going with a scale 0 to 100, in retrospect, hasn't been any
> better from an overall morale point of view than if a scale -100 to +100 had
> been used.
Sorrowfully enough, no. :-(
Numbers are numbers, no matter what they are.
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
Neither better nor worse.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
Better. I would like that.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Neither better nor worse. I think it is a good idea but it needs to be re-
thought.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Yes, to some extent. Not very often, though.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
I can't recall such a situation.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
Neither, and no.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
Originally, I thought it was a great idea. After seeing it in action, I still
think it's a good idea; but it has to be reworked.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
Right time. Perhaps a tad too late, but it doesn't matter.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you?
> LEGO sets?
Yes; but again, not pure numerical value.
> Websites? Individual web pages?
No way. Much, MUCH more potential for insults and bad feelings all around.
-Shiri
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Shiri Dori <shirid@hotmail.com> wrote:
> -this post is in the wrong NG (ie, off-topic)
> -this post is OK, but not very useful
> -this post is very informative
> -this post features great MOCs/web sites/[etc] • [snip]
> Right; but pure numbers aren't really helping. Categorizing posts
> by "usefulness" is downright inappropriate and unhelpful. Because what's
> useful and important to someone (e.g. info about a cool new mindstorms set
> that is sighted in stores), will be useless to me and vice versa.
> That's why I think that written-out statements are more useful than numbers.
Good point -- this is kind of what I was trying to say, although I'd taken
it to a further extreme. (Even less choices.)
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Shiri Dori writes:
> Right; but pure numbers aren't really helping. Categorizing posts
> by "usefulness" is downright inappropriate and unhelpful. Because what's
> useful and important to someone (e.g. info about a cool new mindstorms set
> that is sighted in stores), will be useless to me and vice versa.
That's what the averaging effect is for -- to smooth that out. If the system
also could learn what you liked, you might find that helpful. (That's a long
way down the road, though.)
> [...]
> Right! "Fluff" is one of the things I like in lugnet, we are here day-in and
> day-out; and there aren't Brad Justus posts every day, or MTT sightings every
> week. Lugnet contains of a whole lot of fluff, and I personally like to read
> it-- and see what's happening every day, regardless if it's highly "useful".
Will you still feel that way when there are 4x the number of messages daily?
A year and a half ago, there were only 80-100 messages a day (on average).
Now there are 350-400 a day (on average). At some point, the fluff becomes
too much. And you may already have an unusually high liking or tolerance for
that sort of thing. Not everyone out there so much time to read everything.
Not trying to sound like a contrarian, just pointing out another POV.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> > Right; but pure numbers aren't really helping. Categorizing posts
> > by "usefulness" is downright inappropriate and unhelpful. Because what's
> That's what the averaging effect is for -- to smooth that out. If the system
> also could learn what you liked, you might find that helpful. (That's a long
> way down the road, though.)
Smoothing what out, though? How does the system distinguish between "0: I
like posts about robots, but not in .castle" and "0: not interesting to me",
or "60: kinda funny if you're in the right mood" and "60: contains some
useful information but could be more complete"?
Also, I'm _very_ skeptical of the "match what you like" concept. It sounds
neat in practice, but I've never seen it implemented well.
homr/ringo/Firefly/bignote/launch/whateverthey'recallingthemselvestoday did
an ok job, but you'd have to do some serious language parsing/comprehension
stuff to make it work with news posts, even in such a narrow subject as
Lego.
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
> Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> > That's what the averaging effect is for -- to smooth that out. If the
> > system also could learn what you liked, you might find that helpful.
> > (That's a long way down the road, though.)
>
> Smoothing what out, though? How does the system distinguish between "0: I
> like posts about robots, but not in .castle" and "0: not interesting to me",
> or "60: kinda funny if you're in the right mood" and "60: contains some
> useful information but could be more complete"?
It can't (and doesn't actually need to) distinguish that so greatly -- the
bottom line (to it) would be that you disfavor posts about robots in castle
and things that are kinda funny or contain some useful info.
> Also, I'm _very_ skeptical of the "match what you like" concept. It sounds
> neat in practice, but I've never seen it implemented well.
> homr/ringo/Firefly/bignote/launch/whateverthey'recallingthemselvestoday did
> an ok job, but you'd have to do some serious language parsing/comprehension
> stuff to make it work with news posts, even in such a narrow subject as
> Lego.
I'm very skeptical about that form of collaborative filtering as well. But
there's a completely other form of it which is purely statistical correlation
based. It looks only at how your responses correlate to the responses of
others, without knowing (or having to know) anything at all about the content.
Then it makes a prediction about how you would feel about some brand new data
point based on how other people before you felt about that new data point.
Of course, it's a scheme which works better for things like record albums or
books or LEGO sets than time-sensitive things like news articles. If you're
always the first one to rate something, it couldn't help you out, but if
you're always the last one to rate something, then it could. That's the
theory, anyway. It works basically on the premise that everyone tends to
have opinions which can be approximated by a linear combination of other some
set of other people having multiple partially overlapping domains of input.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
> > Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> > > That's what the averaging effect is for -- to smooth that out. If the
> > > system also could learn what you liked, you might find that helpful.
> > > (That's a long way down the road, though.)
> >
> > Smoothing what out, though? How does the system distinguish between "0: I
> > like posts about robots, but not in .castle" and "0: not interesting to me",
> > or "60: kinda funny if you're in the right mood" and "60: contains some
> > useful information but could be more complete"?
>
> It can't (and doesn't actually need to) distinguish that so greatly -- the
> bottom line (to it) would be that you disfavor posts about robots in castle
> and things that are kinda funny or contain some useful info.
Whoops -- :) -- I meant to say, "...that you disfavor posts about robots in
castle and _favor_ (somewhat) things that are kinda funny or contain some
useful info." But actually it would just look at the statistical correlation
between your rating and other people's ratings, etc.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Shiri Dori writes:
> > Right; but pure numbers aren't really helping. Categorizing posts
> > by "usefulness" is downright inappropriate and unhelpful. Because what's
> > useful and important to someone (e.g. info about a cool new mindstorms set
> > that is sighted in stores), will be useless to me and vice versa.
>
> That's what the averaging effect is for -- to smooth that out.
Well- yeah. But at the current amounts of rating (most posts get no more than
two ratings) the averaging effect doesn't smooth much out.
I totally forgot to mention in my long post that I actually stopped regarding
a rating of a post as a factor of whether I'm going to read it or not. I just
ignore the rating, because I've noticed that the rating had nothing to do with
my perspective on the post whatsoever.
> If the system
> also could learn what you liked, you might find that helpful. (That's a long
> way down the road, though.)
Yes... the thought occured to me that perhaps, while posting, one could
(optionally) check off any number of boxes describing the post
(e.g. "MOC", "market", "set opinion"). Then each reader could specify what
things he would and would not like to see.
> > [...]
> > Right! "Fluff" is one of the things I like in lugnet, we are here day-in and
> > day-out; and there aren't Brad Justus posts every day, or MTT sightings
> > every
> > week. Lugnet contains of a whole lot of fluff, and I personally like to read
> > it-- and see what's happening every day, regardless if it's highly "useful".
>
> Will you still feel that way when there are 4x the number of messages daily?
> A year and a half ago, there were only 80-100 messages a day (on average).
> Now there are 350-400 a day (on average). At some point, the fluff becomes
> too much. And you may already have an unusually high liking or tolerance for
> that sort of thing. Not everyone out there so much time to read everything.
You're right. That hadn't occured to me. When I think of it, I spend more time
on lugnet than the average fan (1) and I check it every 10 minutes or so (more
often if I'm really bored). I guess I *do* tolerate fluff more than other
people, because lugnet for me is not only a mean for sharing my hobby (lego)
with other fans, but also a source of communication with people. (1)
I still think that word strings will provide better feedback and guidance (as
to what to read/what not) than numbers, though. But if the RSS ends up having
number ratings, I'd set my prefs to "show any message regardless of the
rating" because I, personally, like to read it all.
-Shiri
(1) What can I say? I'm in a bad social situation right now, my only friends
live 7 time-zones away from me and I mostly communicate with people (2) via
the net. I also have a lot of free time on my hands because I don't hang out
with my friends (it's a bit hard considering the geographical differences ;-).
(2) both my friends from Israel, and AFOLs.
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Todd Lehman wrote a bunch of worthy stuff about the rating system.
Lugnet hosts an amazing variety of visitors. From my background, the rating
system is fine. If I want to rate, I will (which I generally don't). If I
want to pay attention to other people's ratings I will (which I generally
don't).
Sure the system can be misused by mean spirited people, and ego trippers,
but they're out there anyway, and if they don't use this vehicle they'll
just use another, and the damage will be the same.
> I also received a private e-mail last night describing the rating
> system as "a fiasco and an embarrassment to LUGNET" and
> calling for its removal.
See - mean spirited people. Lugnet on the whole is a fine contribution to
the sum of the universe. Even where it has its drawbacks (and there are
some, but my list is very short), its net is a major contribution. Some
people focus only on the negatives, and these assume overwhelming
proportions in their minds. Its a mistake, but its very common.
On the attempts at helpful suggestions side (and conscious that those taking
this considerably more seriously than I have probably already suggested
these):
- it would seem that the aims could be achieved by not allowing mark downs.
Let every post have no rating at all, and allow 'noteworthy', 'especially
noteworthy', and 'golly gee, everyone has gotta read this' to be ratings
which can be assigned. Without going into all the detail, it seems to hit
all the marks and prevent most of the damage. Using text strings rather
than numeric ratings might help out the numerically challenged :-)
- and list raters names and email addresses too. People tend to behave much
more sensibly when they're acountable for their actions. If the raters knew
their ratings would be obviously traceable to them, you'd get a few less
ratings, but the ones you'd lose would be the scurrilous ones. I for one
have no problem with being held publicly accountable for anything I say or
do. This would banish the cloak and dagger naysayers too (the ones
complaining about being rated by the shadowy elite).
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of
> the ratings were not displayed to you unless you specifically
> requested (via some simple setting) that they be displayed to
> you?
Hmmm. Hard to imagine people would not turn this on, even if it pained
them. This is not a close your eyes kind of medium. (Then again, I'm not a
close your eyes kind of guy)
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of
> the ratings were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and
> used by the server only for internal calculations, hotlist
> generation, and personal recommendations to you?
This sounds like a good idea. I still prefer my suggestions up top, but
this would appear to be an improvement.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not
> even collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the
> destruction of the feature altogether)
I'd feel worse. I'd feel like the holier than thou types and naysayers had
won again. You're shooting for a worthy goal Todd. Press on regardless.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
I don't check ratings of what I post. I was told I got a low rating on a
post (10). Like I said, mean spirited people about. I can understand
though how first time posters might be discouraged if they got pasted.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Good grief no. I can't understand how I could feel that. What, jealous of
someone else's apparent success? Surely if I did feel that way, i'd be
qualifying myself as someone you shouldn't listen to!
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
Its an interesting sideline, not critical for me, but important to me that
Lugnet should go on developing.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article • rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
No change. It has worked out pretty much as I would have expected.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to • address
> these issues?
Any time's a good time to think.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Yup all sounds fine to me.
> Thanks for your time,
No problem, least I can do.
And those of you with a fine sense of history might recall that I left
.general some time ago, after I copped a dose of abuse over my potty mouth.
Rest assured I have not become soft and resigned in my old age. I'm only
here because Todd seems to be wearing more than a fair share of abuse, and
because he asked me (like he asked everyone) to.
I reckon this is about the biggest post I have ever sent to Lugnet -
apologies to those with traffic issues.
Regards
Richard
Still baldly going...
Check out Port Block at http://www.hinet.net.au/~rparsons/port/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Parsons writes:
> [...]
> Sure the system can be misused by mean spirited people, and ego trippers,
> but they're out there anyway, and if they don't use this vehicle they'll
> just use another, and the damage will be the same.
I wish I could mark that statment an "11". :) Very good point. (!!!!)
--Todd
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Richard Parsons skrev i meddelandet ...
> Todd Lehman wrote a bunch of worthy stuff about the rating system.
>
> > 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> > get a high rating? How often?
>
> Good grief no. I can't understand how I could feel that. What, jealous of
> someone else's apparent success?
If that's how you see the ratings ("someone else's success"), I think the
system should be turned off at once. I thought the ratings were supposed to
help find readworthy (is that a word?) posts, not signaling 'success' or
'failure' to individuals!
[Side remark]
The lugnet traffic seems heavily skewed into .admin right now, in this
download I found only one group with more than 10 messages since my last
download (about 16 hours ago) - guess which one!
(Of course, this observation is based on the 19 groups I read, not all of
lugnet)
--
Anders Isaksson, Sweden
BlockCAD: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/proglego.htm
Gallery: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/gallery.htm
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In lugnet.admin.general, Anders Isaksson writes:
> Richard Parsons skrev i meddelandet ...
> > > 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> > > get a high rating? How often?
> >
> > Good grief no. I can't understand how I could feel that. What, jealous of
> > someone else's apparent success?
>
> If that's how you see the ratings ("someone else's success"),
I think Richard was trying to guess what I meant by my question. My question
was meant to "amplify" and address the worst possible imaginary concern.
> I think the
> system should be turned off at once. I thought the ratings were supposed to
> help find readworthy (is that a word?) posts, not signaling 'success' or
> 'failure' to individuals!
That's correct. It's being changed to reflect that more closely.
> [Side remark]
> The lugnet traffic seems heavily skewed into .admin right now, in this
> download I found only one group with more than 10 messages since my last
> download (about 16 hours ago) - guess which one!
> (Of course, this observation is based on the 19 groups I read, not all of
> lugnet)
Yes, this is an active thread. Every group goes through bursts of activity
at one time or another.
--Todd
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Todd & All,
> However, it seems that the high visibility of both the raw and composite
> numbers are having an overall negative effect on the community's morale.
> Some of the deeper concerns are raised in this message and its replies:
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6130
I pretty much agree with Thomas Main's assessments of the rating system. I
don't use the system in terms of the website interface, since I get all my
LUGNET info from the NNTP. One of the most visible complaints I have of the
ratings system is the inability of seeing these ratings on the various
postings submitted on the web interface locally.
> Clearly, these are very strong feelings being expressed by people. How • many
> others feel this way? What would you like to see happen? Post your • thoughts
> as a reply to this message (or reply privately if you prefer not to post • your
> thoughts publicly).
See above.
> It was never a purpose of the ratings system to make anyone ever feel bad
> or unwanted or unwelcome. It's core purpose is simply to highlight "neat • or
> noteworthy stuff" but not to downgrade "un-neat or un-noteworthy stuff" or
> regular "fluff" (which there's nothing wrong with).
Hmm... this sounds interesting in theorey, but knowing a little bit of human
nature, it can be abused. If I really don't like someone in debate, or in
another area, I can trash all their posts by giving them a 0 or 10. (I have
not done this, BTW, I have not voted for any posts one way or another)
I think this is a matter of interpretation of what a 0 rating as opposed to
a 100 or a 90. Some people differ on intrepretations.
> It seem that no amount of education about what the numbers mean will be • able
> to make a meaningful dent in the natural inclination to view, say, a 40 as
> having baeen "marked down" from its default of 50. Even if the default • were
> changed from 50 to 0 (so that numbers tended almost always to climb rather
> than to climb half of the time and fall half of the time), it seems likely
> that feelings will still be hurt, because it seems that some people are • hurt
> by the fact that others are getting 80's and 90's while they are getting • 40's
> or 50's or 60's. Going with a scale 0 to 100, in retrospect, hasn't been • any
> better from an overall morale point of view than if a scale -100 to +100 • had
> been used.
>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the • ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some • simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
Since I don't see them, I don't know. I guess if I would use the web
interface, I would probably not read the lower rating ones. I read a
majority of the e-mails I get, unless I am definately not interested in it
(IE Castle auctions) I don't think displaying the numbers is good.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the • ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server • only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal • recommendations
> to you?
I think this is better. That way you can still generate the hotlists
automatically.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Well, I don't think it is necessary to remove it all together, private
voting might be better.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or • unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Well, I don't know if any of my posts have been, I frankly don't care
anymore if they do, simply because I am a big guy and can take it. I would
hate to see debate anymore, however, especially since I am not in the
"majority" in terms of leftists thinking. I think this is an area where
ratings do little.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Well, from what I have seen, some of the postings get really bad ratings for
no reason, and some get good ratings for, IMO, are not. It is a flawed
system in terms of some people throwing off the numbers.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
Harder. That is one of the reasons I dropped out of debate. It does bother
me.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article • rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
I think my concerns were promptly validated.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to • address
> these issues?
I think it is a good thing, before it goes for too long.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
I don't really think I would want a ratings system on my page. i am
flattered if people visit it, period. I would hate to have mine downgraded
because of my lack of html. My website will undergo a major change, since I
have learned a lot since I put it together, once I get the my steatlh
project going. I think I good way of portraying websites would be a major
links page with themes, and construction techniques and so on, and you could
submit your thoughts on building mechs, or something.
> Thanks for your time,
> --Todd
Thank you, Todd, for your continuous efforts to get LUGNET as good as it can
be. I for one, still enjoy it, and look forward to the improvements ahead.
It is a substantial monument to all AFOL'S to have a home on the internet to
share and exchange ideas, projects, likes, dislikes, etc. and I am glad to
be a part of it. : )
Sincerely,
Scott S.
--
Scott E. Sanburn
Systems Administrator-Affiliated Engineers -> http://www.aeieng.com
LEGO Page -> http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Station/3372/legoindex.html
Coming Soon: The Sanburn Systems Company
>
> [followups to .admin.general]
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> [...]
> Clearly, these are very strong feelings being expressed by people. How many
> others feel this way? What would you like to see happen? Post your thoughts
> as a reply to this message (or reply privately if you prefer not to post your
> thoughts publicly).
> [...]
First, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to put their thoughts into
words, both publicly and privately. A clearer picture is beginning to emerge.
We'd like to try scaling things back (i.e., simplifying things) just a little
bit first before trying out any drastic fixes. Three things seem very clear:
(1) the current system of publicly showing composite numbers in the range 0 to
100 with a default of 50 is causing more overall harm than overall good, and
(2) changing the method of the scale might help, and (3) eliminating the
visible numeric scores altogether would definitely help (help relieve hurt
feelings, that is).
Ironically, the problem isn't the collection of data; the problem is
presenting back too much data -- too easy to see details or variations and
not know what they mean.
We're going to try a simple change to the way the scores are presented -- and
we'd like to keep this in place for at least 24 hours to collect feedback.
Maybe this improves things a bit, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it solves the
problems altogther, maybe not. We apologize in advance for the bumpy ride,
since the changes will be visible ones.
Changepoint 1
-------------
Remapped the range 0 to 100 to the range 0 to 5 and changed the default score
from 50/100 to 1/5 so that scores tend generally to climb rather than to fall.
Articles can still be marked down (toward zero), but seeing scores turn
downward would now be a rare rather than a common occurrence.
Thus, here's an old/new conversion table (just for illustration and
understanding -- not important to memorize):
OLD <==> NEW
--- ---
100 5
90
80 4
70
60 3
--> 50 <------------- old default
40 2
30
20 --> 1 <--- new default
10
0 0
And a comparison of the "marked down" and "marked up" ranges (which, again,
are a figment of the imagination, but it's effectively impossible to convince
people of that...so we have to live with that impression and compensate
for it):
OLD
-----
100 | ^
90 | |
80 | "marked up" (perceived as "good")
70 | |
60 | |
50 |<--starting point (default score)
40 | |
30 | |
20 | "marked down" (perceived as "bad")
10 | |
0 | V
NEW
-----
5 | ^
4 | |
3 | "marked up" (perceived as "good")
2 | |
1 |<--starting point (default score)
0 | "marked down" (perceived as "bad")
This was a very simple two-line code change on the server...the ratings engine
was designed to have its output mapped to other ranges besides 0-100, and the
default scores of 50 are/were never stored in the database (it was always
added on-the-fly at display-time) so changing this from 50 to 1 was trivial.
When casting input, the number of choices is also now decreased from 11
choices (corresponding before with 0,10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100) now to
6 choices (corresponding now with 0,1,2,3,4,5).
Changepoint 2
-------------
Instead of displaying ratings as numbers, display them now as a string of "+"
symbols (and a "-" symbol for 0)... i.e.:
SYMBOL NEW OLD
++++ 5 83-100
+++ 4 67-82
++ 3 50-66
+ 2 33-49
1 17-32
- 0 0-16
This was also a simple code change in a single location.
Changepoint 3
-------------
Simplifed the rating display in the "Brief" article view mode (the one which
shows an abstract or snippet of it, like what you see on the homepage):
OLD: Unrated: 50
NEW: (nothing)
OLD: Rated: 40 by 1
NEW: +
OLD: Rated: 63 by 5
NEW: ++
OLD: Rated: 96 by 14
NEW: ++++
Also simplified the rating display in the "All" (full) article view mode so
that the rating displays along with the other headers further to the left:
OLD: Rating: 50 / By: _0_
NEW: (nothing)
OLD: Rating: 40 / By: _1_
NEW: Rating: (_histogram_)
OLD: Rating: 40 / By: _1_
NEW: Rating: + (_histogram_)
OLD: Rating: 96 / By: _14_
NEW: Rating: ++++ (_histogram_)
These were also simple code changes each in a single location.
Changepoint 4
-------------
In a couple of places, flipped the direction of the symbol used for showing
articles you've rated from >> to << (only cosmetic to support the above).
Final notes
-----------
These changes are not switched "on" yet, but look for them about 10-15 minutes
after this "heads-up" message appears.
And the /news/rating-graph.cgi displays (the histograms) still show the raw
input table 0 to 100... Something to change later if this is worth pursuing.
--Todd & Suz
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> [...]
> Instead of displaying ratings as numbers, display them now as a string of "+"
> symbols (and a "-" symbol for 0)... i.e.:
>
> SYMBOL NEW OLD
> ++++ 5 83-100
> +++ 4 67-82
> ++ 3 50-66
> + 2 33-49
> 1 17-32
> - 0 0-16
> [...]
The minus signs still look damaging, and I don't think it's good that a
default of 1 (20 internally) can be lowered to 0 by a single person casting
a 0. (20+0)/2 = 10, which becomes 0, which becomes "-".
Might tweak this tomorrow, either to...
SYMBOL NEW OLD
+++++ 5 83-100
++++ 4 67-82
+++ 3 50-66
++ 2 33-49
+ 1 17-32
0 0-16
...or to...
SYMBOL NEW OLD
++++ 4 80-100
+++ 3 60-79
++ 2 40-59
+ 1 20-39
0 0-19
...and in either case with 0 as the default rather than 1 (or 20 internally).
0 (blank) just seems so much easier to start with and explain than partway
up the range. This way, also, nothing could _ever_ get a negative rating --
The worst that could happen to something is that it didn't have any symbol
shown next to it.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> SYMBOL NEW OLD
> ++++ 4 80-100
> +++ 3 60-79
> ++ 2 40-59
> + 1 20-39
> 0 0-19
>
> ...and in either case with 0 as the default rather than 1 (or 20 internally).
> 0 (blank) just seems so much easier to start with and explain than partway
> up the range. This way, also, nothing could _ever_ get a negative rating --
> The worst that could happen to something is that it didn't have any symbol
> shown next to it.
This looks like a much better rating system. And I agree that any given
article shouldn't be given a negative rating without further explanation. If
someone continuously receives negative ratings for their posts, they might
take it as their posts are not wanted and might cause them to stop posting at
all. In your old rating system, I assume anything less than 50 is a negative
meaning there is something wrong with the post. If there is anything wrong,
please explain further by leaving a reply instead of leaving a rating.
Leaving a low rating won't explain to the original poster what is wrong with
the article. Since the old rating was done anonymously, people might leave a
low rating for any reason even just because they don't like the original
poster.
On a side note I noticed that before the rating system was implemented I used
to scroll through at least 2-3 pages (by clicking on "show 100 more") of new
posts every morning and after the rating system was implemented, the number of
posts died down to a little more than 1 page.
Way back I thought about rating all links that I have on my page (almost 500
of them) but quickly discarded the idea since giving a lower rating than the
maximum to anybody will be like sending them a message that their "product" is
not good enough. This rating system would have done more harm than good.
And finally, the whole reason for having a rating system is to show the most
interesting articles? I thought that the purpose of having a Spotlight
section was to do this.
D.
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Jezek writes:
> [...]
> And finally, the whole reason for having a rating system is to show the most
> interesting articles?
That's not the whole reason, no. It's one important reason, though.
> I thought that the purpose of having a Spotlight section was to do this.
That's one purpose of it, although the Spotlight section almost always ignores
auctions because it's more news- and MOC-focused. Before the ratings, it was
also produced from only a single person's input (in 99% of the cases), which
is a downside both in overhead and accuracy.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> SYMBOL NEW OLD
> ++++ 4 80-100
> +++ 3 60-79
> ++ 2 40-59
> + 1 20-39
> 0 0-19
How about
+++ 4
++ 3
+ 2
1
0
?
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
> Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> > SYMBOL NEW OLD
> > ++++ 4 80-100
> > +++ 3 60-79
> > ++ 2 40-59
> > + 1 20-39
> > 0 0-19
>
> How about
>
> +++ 4
> ++ 3
> + 2
> 1
> 0
That's probably even better.
Gonna try out a related thing first -- changing the "+" symbols to "!" symbols.
The "!" symbol is a lot skinnier than "+", so it saves precious space, and the
count of symbols isn't really as important anyway as the overall bottom-line
visual draw. The "+" symbol (chosen over "*" for its higher legibility in
default Helvetica) still somewhat connotates "plus" or "better" even without
an accompanying "-" sign. (Do you get that feeling as well?) The idea behind
the exclamation point "!" is shouting "hey, look at this!!"
Changing the input-collection text from:
How would you rate this message? Low o o o o o o High o (No comment)
to:
Would you recommend this article to others? Yes! o o o o Yes!!!! o No
ought to alleviate ambiguity.
I always had reservations about using the word "rating" in context with
articles. Slashdot uses the word "score" but that also gives the feeling that
someone is "keeping track" or "keeping score." Other word options were
"voting" and "opinions" but according to their dictionary definitions, those
didn't quite match. (I don't recall how much in-depth the word choice was
discussed in the initial thread, but probably not enough.)
Migrating this away from the idea of "rating" and toward the idea of
"recommending" (that's what the ratings are supposed to do, in the final
analysis) seems like a wise idea.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Gonna try out a related thing first -- changing the "+" symbols to "!" • symbols.
> The "!" symbol is a lot skinnier than "+", so it saves precious space, and the
> count of symbols isn't really as important anyway as the overall bottom-line
> visual draw. The "+" symbol (chosen over "*" for its higher legibility in
> default Helvetica) still somewhat connotates "plus" or "better" even without
> an accompanying "-" sign. (Do you get that feeling as well?)
No, but I see how other people might.
> The idea behind
> the exclamation point "!" is shouting "hey, look at this!!"
>
> Changing the input-collection text from:
>
> How would you rate this message? Low o o o o o o High o (No comment)
>
> to:
>
> Would you recommend this article to others? Yes! o o o o Yes!!!! o No
>
> ought to alleviate ambiguity.
<snip>
Yes, definitely yes.
If your post isn't recommended, it doesn't mean anything... just that it's not
recommended. No hard feelings (or at least less hard than "low ratings").
-Shiri
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In lugnet.admin.general, Shiri Dori writes:
> Yes, definitely yes.
> If your post isn't recommended, it doesn't mean anything... just that it's
> not recommended. No hard feelings (or at least less hard than "low ratings").
Also thinking of making a rating of 0 (lowest) not count -- i.e., be exactly
the same as inputting no opinion at all. In other words, there would be a
way not to recommend to read something (naturally) but no way to recommend
not to read something. This way, _only_ positive things could be "said" via
the input. Negative input would be the same as no input. This would
effectively discard the ability to penalize someone for what they've posted.
It would be a loss of useful functionality, but overall, we're probably better
off if that aspect of functionality doesn't exist, since (a) few people are
relatively emotionless and (b) this is just a hobby, after all. We're here to
have fun, to do positive things, not to begrudge each other accidentally or
on purpose.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> This way, _only_ positive things could be "said" via
> the input. Negative input would be the same as no input.
"If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". Gee thanks for
reminding us Mom...er..Todd. ;)
Ben Roller
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> default Helvetica) still somewhat connotates "plus" or "better" even without
> an accompanying "-" sign. (Do you get that feeling as well?) The idea behind
> the exclamation point "!" is shouting "hey, look at this!!"
Yeah, I agree that "+" has connotations of "better". But I think the "!"
seems to have a "Warning" feeling to it, especially in red. (It's a typical
icon in warning error message dialog boxes, for example.) That doesn't mean
it's necessarily a bad choice -- maybe it's just me. If it weren't for the
space issue, I'd pick "*".
> Changing the input-collection text from:
> Would you recommend this article to others? Yes! o o o o Yes!!!! o No
*grin* Other than reminding me of those awful Herbal Essences shampoo
commercials, looks good.
> Migrating this away from the idea of "rating" and toward the idea of
> "recommending" (that's what the ratings are supposed to do, in the final
> analysis) seems like a wise idea.
Agreed.
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
> Yeah, I agree that "+" has connotations of "better". But I think the "!"
> seems to have a "Warning" feeling to it, especially in red. (It's a typical
> icon in warning error message dialog boxes, for example.) That doesn't mean
> it's necessarily a bad choice -- maybe it's just me. If it weren't for the
> space issue, I'd pick "*".
Welp, space isn't really _that_ much of an issue compared to the symbol itself.
All things being equal, a thinner character is better than a big fat character
like "+". Let's see what people think about "!" after seeing it for a little
while...I seem to remember visiting a discussion group site once which used a
small orange "!" image to mark something that was important -- it didn't seem
to me like a "don't read this!" but obviously a "read this!".
(Anyone else reading this -- if you think "!" is a terrible choice or have
another suggestion, please let us know! We can certainly try out "*" if "!"
sends the wrong impression.)
--Todd
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Todd Lehman <lehman@javanet.com> wrote:
> like "+". Let's see what people think about "!" after seeing it for a little
> while...I seem to remember visiting a discussion group site once which used a
> small orange "!" image to mark something that was important -- it didn't seem
> to me like a "don't read this!" but obviously a "read this!".
For what it's worth, slrn uses ! to mark highly-scored (via my own score
file) articles. So I'm certainly used to it. (I thought it kind of odd of
slrn too, but no one asked me for feedback there....)
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> (Anyone else reading this -- if you think "!" is a terrible choice or have
> another suggestion, please let us know! We can certainly try out "*" if "!"
> sends the wrong impression.)
I like + over *, but unless the !'s font is darker, it's worthless to me. I
have fairly good eyes, but I can barely even see that the article is rated.
Again, I introduce you to Mr. Dead Horse...Why not use 1-5 instead of !-!!!!!,
*-*****, +-+++++, or anything else. Yes, I know why not, but I like the
numbers better.
Ben Roller
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In lugnet.admin.general, Ben Roller writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
>
> > (Anyone else reading this -- if you think "!" is a terrible choice or have
> > another suggestion, please let us know! We can certainly try out "*" if "!"
> > sends the wrong impression.)
>
> I like + over *, but unless the !'s font is darker, it's worthless to me. I
> have fairly good eyes, but I can barely even see that the article is rated.
Ah, but that's the beauty of it! The font will be darker when the rating (or
recommendation) is higher; if the rating is low, you shouldn't even notice it.
A high-rated post will attract attention to itself; which is like a
recommendation-- the people recommending it (ie rating at higher) are helping
you notice it, etc.
I think it's great that way!
-Shiri
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> Ironically, the problem isn't the collection of data; the problem is
> presenting back too much data -- too easy to see details or variations and
> not know what they mean.
Hmm. As far as I can see, the main problem is neither the collection _or_ the
representation of the data but the data itself. When members vote, they are
voting on different things eg:
Do I agree with that?
Was that worded well?
Was it interesting?
Is it of value to others?
etc?
Changing the way the data is represented, does not make the data any better.
If the rating system is to stay, I think the data would be a little more
meaningful if we knew how many people have read the message - i.e. if message
is has 4 votes and 4 readers, the rating may be meaningful... but if it has had
100 readers and only 4 votes that's not so good.
Lastly, members should not be able to rate their own posts (I assume they can
right now - but I'm not 100% sure).
Scott A
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> we'd like to keep this in place for at least 24 hours to collect feedback.
Well, since you asked, I thought I'd leave mine.
> Changepoint 1
> Remapped the range 0 to 100 to the range 0 to 5...
This change could be for the better. I was fine with the 100 scale (I think
the 5 scale gives less acurate results) but it's good if it makes rating easier
for people. Hopefully this will cause more people to rate. Under the old
0-100 system, I constantly was counting dots to see where "70" or "60" was.
under any system, I think it might be nice to somehow label each selection.
> and changed the default score from 50/100 to 1/5 so
This is much better than setting the default to zero as you seem to suggest
in http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6288 I see a huge difference between
"not yet rated" and "rated down" and think that for ratings to work that we
need both.
> Changepoint 2
> ...display them now as a string of "+" symbols (and a "-" symbol for 0)
I don't mind going from 0-100 to 0-5, but I would MUCH rather see the number
than a number of symbols. It is much easier to quickly assess the rating of a
message when I don't have to count the symbols (and they are too close together
for me to be able to quickly tell the number by just looking). I wonder if
others feel the same about this change.
> Changepoint 3
> Simplifed the rating display in the "Brief" article view mode
As long as unrated messages are the only ones that don't have their
rating shown, this is fine. You mentioned changing the "-" to showing no
rating, and that makes it difficult to tell the difference between bad and
unrated messages. I prefer to see the "by 7" in all of the ratings views so
that I can tell how many have rated, but I would live on without that.
> Changepoint 4
> In a couple of places, flipped the direction of the symbol used for showing
> articles you've rated from >> to << (only cosmetic to support the above).
I didn't notice and I doubt that this will be the point that you get the most
complaints about. :)
Ben Roller
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> All,
>
> It seems at this point that the article rating feature -- intended to help --
> is actually causing more harm than good to the community. It's difficult to
> gauge how much harm is being done when opinions are so varied, but it's clear
> that something needs to be changed.
I think that your rating concept has potential, but is incurring "issues in
interprtation and implementation"
> Technically, the rating system is working extremely well and, from an admin
> point of view, the composite ratings being produced seem very well consistent
> with the rating system's main goal of being able to highlight recommended
> reading to those short on time.
I browse Lugnet liesurely and often ( I have more time than most-I work out
of my home) I can sympathize w/ those who are time-constrained, accessing
Lugnet on their lunch hour, etc. I can see where a "highlighting system" or
"USA Today style headlines" may appeal to those seeking specific discussion
or content.
>
> However, it seems that the high visibility of both the raw and composite
> numbers are having an overall negative effect on the community's morale.
The rating system has affected my moral...
> Some of the deeper concerns are raised in this message and its replies:
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6130
>
> I also received a private e-mail last night describing the rating system as
> "a fiasco and an embarrassment to LUGNET" and calling for its removal.
I hesitate to judge it as a fiasco....I speak purely as an individual on
this point. However, I don't think that my mindset differs greatly from others.
> Clearly, these are very strong feelings being expressed by people.
I participate in these philosophical discussions on a rare basis, but I am
interested in their outcomes more often, nowadays. I can not accurately
describe my feelings, but I do have a strong emotional response. I
sometimes feel slighted, and I don't wish to participate in any system that
may impact others in a similar way.
How many
> others feel this way? What would you like to see happen? Post your thoughts
> as a reply to this message (or reply privately if you prefer not to post your
> thoughts publicly).
I do not wish you to construe my comments as being critical of your effort
or in any way imply that Lugnet is "out of control". I admire what you
created and only wish to maintain Lugnet as my Lego cyber shangrila, so to
speak. I would like to see ratings removed from certain groups (like
auction, B-S-T, etc.) I think any "highlighting" system should have a
"gentleman's agreement" or "code of conduct" that is more concise and
commonly understood. I think people should rate posts on relevance to
group, topic etc. NOT THE CONTENTS OF THE WEBPAGE, PICTURE, WHATEVER. I
think the way the ratings are presented now degenerates multiple individual
posts to a beauty contest.
> As to possible "fixes," there have been many suggestions over the past few
> weeks, most of which center around making the rating numbers less obvious or
> gone altogether. If you're curious, you can find most of these in the group
> lugnet.admin.general -- but it's a lot to wade through.
I tried to wade throgh it and got lost and blurry eyed quickly...If you are
going to keep the rating system, I think it should be employed
selectively...not in .local, .market, .people, for instance.
> The first, original purpose for having ratings was to be able to lay the
> foundation for the later creation of variety of "what's hot" or "top X of
> group Y" listings for quick browsing -- something akin to the current
> Spotlight pages, only fully automated, instantly updating, and much more
> representative of collective opinion. The second original purpose was to
> lay the foundation for so-called "collaborative filtering" possibilities --
> the server learns (could learn) what types of things you prefer to read,
> and gives (could give) higher priority to you personally for messages rated
> higher by people with similar interests. These two main purposes become
> increasingly relevant as message traffic increases.
I respect your mindset and vision....this is akin to systems of analysis
employed by Amazon.com and music sites...this I would be interested in, but
I guess there are alot of growing pains getting to the end result.
> It was never a purpose of the ratings system to make anyone ever feel bad
> or unwanted or unwelcome. It's core purpose is simply to highlight "neat or
> noteworthy stuff" but not to downgrade "un-neat or un-noteworthy stuff"
The intent is different from the defacto result...I only have 250,ooo bricks
which "precludes me from competing" for "praise" from people who only like
big MOCs or I focus on themes (Ninja, Wild West, et. al) that are commonly
reviled or discounted by others in the community. The rating system was not
intended to create this, but in implementation it is happening. Possibly
some individuals misinterpret the idea of rating, thus "judging" the quality
of the creation. The person who originally posted their masterpiece in the
interest of communal participation may then be discouraged or intimidated.
Essentially the inent of the rating system is victimized by interpretation.
PERCEPTION = REALITY A person may perceive that his contribution is unwothy
and n longer participate, or worse become antagonistic. This rating system
can also be used to setle scores between rivals. (again not the goal, but in
reality I think it happens in debates)
or
> regular "fluff" (which there's nothing wrong with).
I used to be annoyed by gratuitous fluff, now I miss it...fluff adds to the
poitive spirit here.
> It seem that no amount of education about what the numbers mean will be able
> to make a meaningful dent in the natural inclination to view, say, a 40 as
> having been "marked down" from its default of 50. Even if the default were
> changed from 50 to 0 (so that numbers tended almost always to climb rather
> than to climb half of the time and fall half of the time), it seems likely
> that feelings will still be hurt, because it seems that some people are hurt
> by the fact that others are getting 80's and 90's while they are getting 40's
> or 50's or 60's.
For me it is purely personal...I have been a salesman for a long
time...numbers going down is rarely a ood thing = ) i have a VERY thick
skin, but I often see clique-like behavior similar to that in
highschool...so+so does/says something, so automatically it is
prophetic...another person (outside the clique) says/does something equally
profound and is blown off, low-balled, gnored, etc. That is the nature of
human behavior; there are some people that I follow more than others, BUT
now the rating system can skew some individauls higher and "newbies" much lower.
Going with a scale 0 to 100, in retrospect, hasn't been any
> better from an overall morale point of view than if a scale -100 to +100 had
> been used.
>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
I would feel better, but then I would always know they are lurking in the
server somewhere. So I guess I would be tempted (on a low-self-esteem-day)
to go looking for validation...lol
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
I would support and generaly prefer this most of all...again the amazon.com
analogy
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
I think that "once done...thi thing can not be undone" (you can't unspill
milk-you can only clean it up and try to avoid future occurences)
I would like limited destruction of the feature...essentially removal of a
VISIBLE rating from all groups except dear lego (or othr Brad read / TLG
read groups)
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Yes. I may be overly sensitive on this, may be not. I can think of at least
6-12 occurences in a week...(if people don't want to listen to me or thnk
I'm a nut, cry-baby etc., then I don't want to know from some
anomolous/anonymous rating...share your reasoning and discuss it...If people
think my posts are vacuous or devoid of useful content, give me a chance to
improve. Tell me my grammar is lacking, my typos are annoying, or my
comments are off topic. As it stands right now, I consider my opinion no
less or more valid than anyone else's, but rating views on politics, MOCS,
and building "lower" than others is like sniping from cover instead of
meeting in the open on level ground.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
Yes. More frequently now that I have been paying attention to ratings.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
I am now intimidated, on occasion, to share my ideas. Sometimes I am low on
"profound" words and building epiphanies. I still want to participate, but
unless I am giving away free Guarded Inns or reinventing the wheel, I
hesitate. I feel like I am back in Catholic grade school (20 some years in
the past) being graded on my class participation and how much trivia I can
spout.
I was never overly hung up on my reputation or impression here til a
number was tagged on my butt everytime I posted a message. Now I feel like
I am trying to live up to some amorphous standard. For instance, what if a
Lugnet "newbie" saw posts from person "x" always rated highly while ALL of
person "y"s posts are continually marked lower; consequently never reading
"y"'s comments. What if this "newbie always skips reading posts from
"y"....both individuals miss out on the value of each others intellect and
experience; person "y" may have some useful/interesting contributons. By
extension what would happen if this happened on a large scale, if a whole
community no longer paid attention to "y".
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
I missed the original announcement, but I was willing to try anything new on
Lugnet = ) Now I am at the least disinterested, at the most disenfranchised,
ignored, and discouraged.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
I think I have some issues of my own to deal with = ) <memo to self, seek
psychiatric help+ buy more guiness>
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
I love popular opinions of sets...that I support.
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
If you are going to rate websites, then you also take o the burden of
determining a standard to judge by, AND a responsibility to uggest improvments.
<insert paraphrased quote from Merlin to Arthur in Boorman's Excalibur
"there can be no good w/ out evil...you can not have one w/ out the other"
> Thanks for your time,
> --Todd
Thank you for being proactive and listening
>
> [followups to .admin.general]
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
Better
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
So so. If the feature is to be kept, prefer that they be viewable. Else why
have them.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Better. Wish the time had never been spent to develop them.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
Victimized? Hardly.
Annoyed that there's a strategic rater out there (and while there is no way to
PROVE it, I have pretty strong circumstantial evidence that it happens to me on
a fairly regular basis, and I am starting to suspect I know who it is, which
just validates my opinion of that person as basicaly a waste of food) but I
don't really seek validation from others as my main goal in posting, so I don't
get "unhappy about myself" over it. If you, gentle reader, do... grow up!
But then I am more self assured than the average person and I truly believe
that other people may well not have strong enough egos to get "down checked"
(or apparently downchecked... as I said, no amount of explaining away will
correct the perception that downchecking is what is happening) without feeling
bad about it.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
No one makes better posts than me (when I take the time to be eloquent) so how
could I be upset by someone else getting a good rating? That's saying that a
competent person is threatened by another persons competence. If I believed
that I would be threatened by the ability of others to make models almost as
good as mine or to architect systems almost as well as, or even better than, I
do. That way lies Looterville of the soul. So no.
Further I'd say that anyone who feels victimised because someone else was
winning a popularity contest this meaningless in the grand scheme of things has
deep deep issues and may want to seek professional help.
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
Mildly easier when they are good ideas, harder when they're flippant fluff, so
that's a (tiny little) good thing.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
Initially thought it was technically a neat idea and wasn't sure of the social
implications. Early experiences I observed portended problems which came to
pass.
Now feel that the LDT (Lugnet Development Time) would have been better spent on
any number of other things, such as unifying member information/cookies, fixing
the ***broken*** password system, streamlining and improving set database input
capabilities, allowing member areas to be created, facilitating group
sheparding/information gathering, improving the web interface ability to
remember what you had read, or some other things that I forget.
But then LDT gets spent on weird things. Look at how much of it was spent on a
password checker that over time due to repeated twiddling became so tuned to
recognise arcane substitutions that it fails perfectly good random passwords
that are not subject to dictionary attack... and ultimately there that checker
sits, a neat toy to play with, and we still have broken hard to remember
passwords that we can't change. But LDT is Todd's to spend as he sees fit. As
it should be.
Ratings have been a big administrative waste of time so far. Time that I'd
rather see Todd spend on coding useful features or on building or on sleeping,
or on having fun with Suz. Or even on doing LDT for geeky, useless but less
divisive things like that password checker.
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
A bit late... quite a bit. The right time would have been before they were
deployed, and before this brouhaha got out of hand.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
Websites. I already know what sets I like and don't need anyone else's opinion,
thank you very much, but I don't know about all the websites out there and do
value some filtering there. Make it like Amazon in that it shows me sites I am
likely to like based on how I rated sites myself, not just ones that the great
unwashed masses liked, because who cares about popularity.
One other comment.... the current linear rating system, no matter how the
number of gradations, starting point, scale values, etc, is tuned, is
insufficient. That's because it is linear. As with so many things, there are
more dimensions than just one.
on/off topicness
newsworthiness
long term information value
Gee whiz that's neat factor
suitability for children
Just to name a few possible things...
Pretty much any linear scale is broken, c.f. the right left "political
spectrum" which fails to describe anything useful because politics is not one
dimensional.
> Thanks for your time
No charge. I just wrapped up a project early and sold followon work, so I'm in
a good mood.
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> [...]
> But then LDT gets spent on weird things. Look at how much of it was spent on
> a password checker that over time due to repeated twiddling became so tuned
You talk as if you seem to know how much actual time was spent on it. Elapsed
time is a crude indicator of development time.
> [...]
> Ratings have been a big administrative waste of time so far. Time that I'd
> rather see Todd spend on coding useful features or on building or on
> sleeping, or on having fun with Suz. Or even on doing LDT for geeky, useless
> but less divisive things like that password checker.
Sorry if you feel the password checker is useless. Sorry if you feel inclined
to make gross assumptions about how time is being spent based on what you see
from the outside. We work on many different things at once. If you judge
what's being worked on by what appears as features, you'll get a very warped
view. Some things in the over are 3 years old. Some things are 2 months old.
Some things are 2 days old. The priority of every background task is
continually reassessed. The only foreground task is staying on top of issues
that arise in the groups. Writing a reply like this is a complete waste of my
time, but I don't feel that I was left much choice, since misinformation was
being spread.
> > 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> > these issues?
>
> A bit late... quite a bit. The right time would have been before they were
> deployed, and before this brouhaha got out of hand.
Actually, many of these issues were indeed addressed beforehand. Anything
that wasn't, wasn't thought of during the original discussions... Some
things were avoided, some things weren't...it's somewhat a matter of
experience and 20-20 hindsight.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > [...]
> > But then LDT gets spent on weird things. Look at how much of it was spent on
> > a password checker that over time due to repeated twiddling became so tuned
>
> You talk as if you seem to know how much actual time was spent on it. Elapsed
> time is a crude indicator of development time.
Time is time, all I have to do is look at the number of posts about it to tell
that some time was spent on it, by you, by me, by others, regardless of how
much time was development time vs playing with it time vs loading up its DB.
I won't presume to estimate exactly how much time was spent but I doubt it was
less than a man day all told.
> > [...]
> > Ratings have been a big administrative waste of time so far. Time that I'd
> > rather see Todd spend on coding useful features or on building or on
> > sleeping, or on having fun with Suz. Or even on doing LDT for geeky, useless
> > but less divisive things like that password checker.
>
> Sorry if you feel the password checker is useless.
Useless was a bit harsh, sorry... let's just call it less useful than quite a
few other things, and more useful than a few other things. And clearly you
enjoyed doing it and enjoyed that other people enjoyed playing with it. Nothing
wrong with geeking out on low priority things, after all. For if that were so,
all of us would be better served doing our real work 100% of the time instead
of enjoying our hobby, eh?
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > Sorry if you feel the password checker is useless.
>
> Useless was a bit harsh, sorry... let's just call it less useful than quite
> a few other things, and more useful than a few other things.
Fair enough.
> And clearly you enjoyed doing it
Not really. Wish I hadn't had to.
> and enjoyed that other people enjoyed playing with it.
Not really, no. It's not intended as a toy or a means of entertainment.
I enjoyed getting feedback on aspects of it to the extent that getting
useful feedback is enjoyable.
> Nothing wrong with geeking out on low priority things, after all.
> For if that were so, all of us would be better served doing our real work
> 100% of the time instead of enjoying our hobby, eh?
Not sure what/if you are insinuating between the lines there, or whether I
should feel insulted by that comment, but having a password validator that
doesn't suck is IMHO a fundamental prerequisite to allowing passwords to be
changed. Anything less is irresponsible. (Yes, I know, allowing too much
time to pass before facilitating the change of passwords is also arguably
irresponsible, but it's a much lesser maximum risk.)
Can we drop this argument?
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> having a password validator that doesn't suck is IMHO a fundamental
> prerequisite to allowing passwords to be changed. Anything less is
> irresponsible.
Even if you have great passwords - can't just anyone in the intervening
networks between the user and LUGNET just snoop in and copy down the
unencrypted password?
Richard
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Richard Franks <spontificus@__nospam__yahoo.com> wrote:
> Even if you have great passwords - can't just anyone in the intervening
> networks between the user and LUGNET just snoop in and copy down the
> unencrypted password?
Not if it uses https, which I assume it will at some point.
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> > having a password validator that doesn't suck is IMHO a fundamental
> > prerequisite to allowing passwords to be changed. Anything less is
> > irresponsible.
>
> Even if you have great passwords - can't just anyone in the intervening
> networks between the user and LUGNET just snoop in and copy down the
> unencrypted password?
As long as it's using http and not https, yes. Once it's in a cookie, it's
no longer plaintext, so it's less susceptible to snooping although still
susceptible to playback attacks.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > Even if you have great passwords - can't just anyone in the intervening
> > networks between the user and LUGNET just snoop in and copy down the
> > unencrypted password?
> As long as it's using http and not https, yes. Once it's in a cookie, it's
> no longer plaintext, so it's less susceptible to snooping although still
> susceptible to playback attacks.
Aren't the contents of a cookie simply Base64-encoded? I mean, it's a
wel-known and reversable format.
Cheers,
- jsproat
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Sproaticus <jsproat@io.com> wrote:
> Aren't the contents of a cookie simply Base64-encoded? I mean, it's a
> wel-known and reversable format.
I assume it's a one-way hash of some sort. I'd guess (without looking) that
it's probably md5....
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Jeremy H. Sproat writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> > In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > > Even if you have great passwords - can't just anyone in the intervening
> > > networks between the user and LUGNET just snoop in and copy down the
> > > unencrypted password?
> > As long as it's using http and not https, yes. Once it's in a cookie, it's
> > no longer plaintext, so it's less susceptible to snooping although still
> > susceptible to playback attacks.
>
> Aren't the contents of a cookie simply Base64-encoded? I mean, it's a
> wel-known and reversable format.
No, the last phase of encoding (and thus the first phase of decoding) for
the sign-in cookie is a Base16 (ASCII hex [0-9A-F]) pass. This, however, is
applied to an already-encrypted id/pw combo, which has been passed through a
pad-style encryption which changes each time you ask for a sign-in cookie.
(Thus, you'll never get the same cookie twice even if your password stays the
same.) On the receiving end, after the server decrypts your cookie, it then
reencrypts this data a different way (on the fly) and compares this with the
encrypted version on file in the encrypted-pw table. Thus no raw pw's are
stored anywhere.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
>
> > having a password validator that doesn't suck is IMHO a fundamental
> > prerequisite to allowing passwords to be changed. Anything less is
> > irresponsible.
So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to things
that the validator feels don't suck, or are you going to give advice but allow
it anyway?
The former is rather draconian for a site that doesn't handle money. I've asked
this question before but didn't get a clear answer, I don't feel.
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to
> things that the validator feels don't suck,
That is its purpose.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to
> > things that the validator feels don't suck,
>
> That is its purpose.
But the validator doesn't find non-sucky passwords, it just finds the least
randomised - ie, it will pass something like:
4h(i,>$s& but fail:
4h(i,>$s&-fun
What's the point of allowing people to change from their highly randomised
default LUGNET password (because they have a hard time remembering it), if the
validator only allows something of greater randomisation?
IIRC at least one default LUGNET password failed? My LUGNET password which is
rather easy to remember.. passed with honours!
IMHO it is reasonable to impose a minimum limit of characters, impose an
alpha-numeric mix, maybe even make sure that it isn't just one word known to a
dictionary mixed with one number. But much more than that seems too
restrictive. There is also the counter-security risk - as people have to use
really complicated and random passwords, they tend to start writing them down
in places, password files etc.
Besides which, the longer it takes before users can change their passwords, the
greater chance that other people will stumble upon their LUGNET welcome pack,
which contains their password handily printed out :)
I'm not a security expert - just a user who would rather take the advice of a
password system but have ultimate personal responsibility over my password.
Richard
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Richard Franks <spontificus@__nospam__yahoo.com> wrote:
> But the validator doesn't find non-sucky passwords, it just finds the least
> randomised - ie, it will pass something like:
> 4h(i,>$s& but fail:
> 4h(i,>$s&-fun
It's finding _more_ random passwords in a technical sense of "random". (More
random = containing no sequences. Or more accurately, no part of the number
follows from any other part.)
I agree that the super-cool validator may be overkill for the current state
of LUGnet -- there's no money or credit card information involved. However,
it may be quite reasonable for the future.
--
Matthew Miller ---> mattdm@mattdm.org
Quotes 'R' Us ---> http://quotes-r-us.org/
Boston University Linux ---> http://linux.bu.edu/
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In lugnet.admin.general, Matthew Miller writes:
> Richard Franks <spontificus@__nospam__yahoo.com> wrote:
> > But the validator doesn't find non-sucky passwords, it just finds the least
> > randomised - ie, it will pass something like:
> > 4h(i,>$s& but fail:
> > 4h(i,>$s&-fun
>
> It's finding _more_ random passwords in a technical sense of "random". (More
> random = containing no sequences. Or more accurately, no part of the number
> follows from any other part.)
Yup - you're right - my squiff (I meant *more*) :)
> I agree that the super-cool validator may be overkill for the current state
> of LUGnet -- there's no money or credit card information involved. However,
> it may be quite reasonable for the future.
I'd be happy with a user-responsible password for membership logins (ie 90% of
membership use including posting privilidges), but with authorisation through a
LUGNET-validated password for more intimate services (ie financial). I think
Todd suggested that 2-tier password scheme already?
Richard
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(canceled)
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I can't believe that Larry posted this twice (accident maybe, maybe not). I
am with Larry on this one. This is a problem that requires a simple
solution. Please do not confuse simple with simplistic. It is a
complicated problem; the solution, while perhaps complicated in it's
synthesis, needs to be simple. Listen to Larry, he will guide you toward
the light!
Build On!
John Matthews
(It's not my fault that Larry is usually right)
Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net> wrote in message
news:FtHnrw.IM9@lugnet.com...
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
>
> > I'd be happy with a user-responsible password for membership logins (ie • 90% of
> > membership use including posting privilidges), but with authorisation • through
> a
> > LUGNET-validated password for more intimate services (ie financial).
>
> I wouldn't.
>
> Look. I've read through the plan several times. There is nothing there • that
> needs this *insane* level of protection. Nothing. Really.
>
> We are *not* talking missile lanuch codes here, people.
>
> Two levels of passwords is ridiculous. And what is safer, a sort of easy • to
> crack password that is memorised, or a hard to crack password that is kept • in a
> cookie and written on a sticky and kept in the users wallet? The latter.
>
> Use the checker to tell the user that their password isn't very secure and • that
> the system can't be held responsible if someone hacks it and starts • posting
> under their name, submitting ratings, or heaven forbid, puts in some bids • or
> transfers funds out of their account to another user's account.
>
> Then ask them if they're OK with that and OK with the fact that the system
> *isn't* their daddy and isn't going to be able to protect them from every
> conceivable thing that could go wrong. Let's get a grip. We are NOT • talking
> power plant control codes either.
>
> ++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, John Matthews writes:
> I can't believe that Larry posted this twice (accident maybe, maybe not).
It was an accident and I would appreciate the first one being cancelled. There
is a difference in phrasing of less than 1% between the first and second, but
it's crucial.
> I am with Larry on this one. This is a problem that requires a simple
> solution. Please do not confuse simple with simplistic. It is a
> complicated problem; the solution, while perhaps complicated in it's
> synthesis, needs to be simple. Listen to Larry, he will guide you toward
> the light!
I appreciate the support but I don't actually agree with John. At least not
when he says this is a complicated problem.
Let me put my cards on the table here. I would claim I know as much about what
Lugnet is intended to be as anyone else who is peering in from the outside can.
Certainly Todd knows more, but I claim I know as much as anyone possibly can
that doesn't know what Todd knows but hasn't shared with us. (for perfectly
valid reasons, mind you)
Further,
- I have been here from the beginning
- I have read the plan
- I have a fair bit of experience in evaluating requirements from rather
sketchy information, as well as a fair bit of experience in estimating
development effort both before the fact based on those same sketchy
requirements, and after the fact by observing developers who sometimes want to
hide how much effort they put out.
So my professional judgement of what is required, based on the evidence
available to me is that... this is NOT a complex problem. This site (based on
the requirements that are public knowledge) does not need or deserve elaborate
security measures for the casual user. And that's what 99% of us are. Casual
users visiting a hobbyist site.
What is being discussed is more elaborate security than 99+% of commercial
sites have. And I'm arguing from authority. After all, I build these for a
living. Some sites I have been involved in building move millions of dollars a
day.
It's not justifiable from a development effort perspective.
It's not justifiable from a user interface perspective.
Now, as I always say, Todd's gold, Todd makes the rules, Todd can do what he
wants.
But if you want me to shut up about this you either have to flat out say
"shut up" to me *and* everyone else, or you have to convince me differently.
Nothing in the requirements visible to me can justify a need for this elaborate
security. Multiple layers of passwords? I just don't see the benefits being
worth the cost.
Just ignoring me isn't going to get me to shut up, Todd.
Why am I raising such a big stink? Because human factors matter. They matter a
lot, and they are more important than just about anything else. The human
factors here now aren't as good as they could be. Preferences and passwords are
broken. A robust design for them is not hard to come up with (go look at
Yahoo, for example... it is fast and unobtrusive, it reprompts you for the
same password in areas where you wouldn't want a casual visitor to your
machine to have access to) but won't be achieved by fiddling around the edges
one feature at a time, it needs to be realised by a holistic approach that
takes the vision in the plan and turns it into concrete requirements that can
be implemented in a staged way.
Keep fiddling and you'll get a patchwork and you'll do a lot of backing and
filling, way more than you have to. Iterative design and development is the way
to go but there has to be more than a vague vision for the iteration beyond the
next, or patches on top of kludges is what you'll get.
Larry Pieniazek
System Architect, Project Manager, Estimator, General Nuisance and proud of
it...
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> I'd be happy with a user-responsible password for membership logins (ie 90% of
> membership use including posting privilidges), but with authorisation through • a
> LUGNET-validated password for more intimate services (ie financial).
I wouldn't.
Look. I've read through the plan several times. There is nothing there that
needs this *insane* level of protection. Nothing. Really.
We are *not* talking missile lanuch codes here, people.
Two levels of passwords is ridiculous. And what is safer, a sort of easy to
crack password that is memorised, or a hard to crack password that is kept in a
cookie and written on a sticky and kept in the users wallet? The latter?
Hardly!
Use the checker to tell the user that their password isn't very secure and that
the system can't be held responsible if someone hacks it and starts posting
under their name, submitting ratings, or heaven forbid, puts in some bids or
transfers funds out of their account to another user's account.
Then ask them if they're OK with that and OK with the fact that the system
*isn't* their daddy and isn't going to be able to protect them from every
conceivable thing that could go wrong. Let's get a grip. We are NOT talking
power plant control codes either.
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> I'd be happy with a user-responsible password for membership logins
> (ie 90% of membership use including posting privilidges), but with
> authorisation through a LUGNET-validated password for more intimate
> services (ie financial). I think Todd suggested that 2-tier password
> scheme already?
Ya, sorta... But not so much two different states of logins as two tiers of
passwords which would both be required (only if you wanted it that way) before
you'd be considered actually logged in. In other words, you could give two
passwords (one strong, one weak), leaving one in a cookie permanently and
putting the other in a cookie only temporarily.
When might something like that be useful? Say you'd like to log in from work
during the workday, but you don't want to leave yourself logged in while you're
away from the keyboard (at lunch, in a meeting, in the loo, etc.), but for
practical reasons, you don't want to type a full-strength password every time
you log in.
The two-password combination would allow you to log in "halfway" using a
first password which would go into a first cookie on your machine. You could
leave that there 24 hours a day without worrying about abuse because it would
be useless to anyone without the other half. Then, when you wanted to log in
for real, you could use a second password (this one could be really simple and
weak and easy to remember) and this would go into a second cookie on your
machine. You'd want that second cookie to stay only as long as you were at
your keyboard -- then when you logged out, only the second cookie would be
deleted.
In other words, think of it this way: Instead of having two passwords in
order to log in, you have two _halves_ of a single password -- kind of like
the medallion in the first Indiana Jones film.
BTW, speaking of two- or multi-tier login states... There won't actually
_be_ a change-password facility per se... Instead, there will be an create-
new-password and a delete-old-password facility. It's important that there
be both because passwords are like keys: You can lose a key, but you tend
to have a back-up key just in case. So in that spirit, you'll be able to
give yourself any number of passwords that you want -- and delete old ones
(if you want) after your newer ones have "taken hold" in your mind and you're
absolutely positive that you don't need the old one anymore. A side-benefit
of having multiple passwords is retaining the option to later add login
attributes to the passwords -- i.e., you use password A to do simple things
(maybe from the public library or at work) and you use password B to do
complex things (say, only from home -- if you want that kind of separation).
Another benefit of multiple passwords is this: No matter how hard or how
many times you tell people never ever to give out their password to anyone,
people still sometimes do. If they're going to do it, it's best to give them
the benefit of the doubt and assume they're doing it for at least what they
consider to be a good reason. Thus, if they needed to give out their password
temporarily to, say, a relative helping them do something on their behalf for
whatever reason (I can't think of anything off-hand but I'm sure it'll come
up), they could actually create a new password just for that and then destroy
that password afterwards (say, the next day) -- all without having to
compromise their "real" password. And that's a benefit that happens purely
for free with zero extra coding, once you have the ability to add and subtract
passwords from a list.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> > In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > > So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to
> > > things that the validator feels don't suck,
> >
> > That is its purpose.
>
> But the validator doesn't find non-sucky passwords, it just finds the least
> randomised - ie, it will pass something like:
> 4h(i,>$s& but fail:
> 4h(i,>$s&-fun
>
> What's the point of allowing people to change from their highly randomised
> default LUGNET password (because they have a hard time remembering it), if
> the validator only allows something of greater randomisation?
It's perfectly content to "pass" most 6- to 8- character pw's constructed by
the first letter of successive words, especially if the pw includes a digit,
a capital letter, or a special character. Those types of things tend to be
"random" from a brute-force-attack point of view but un-random to the person
generating the pw.
The point is that there are plenty of other pw's that people could come up
with which aren't dangerous, but which are sufficiently random and perfectly
memorable.
> IIRC at least one default LUGNET password failed? [...]
That's entirely possible -- the generator for those doesn't consider
dictionary words, keyboard sequences, etc. But it doesn't necessarily mean
that the pw which failed is risky, so long as they're still chosen from an
equally distributed set of structured input. I can see how it could be
disconcerting, though. :-)
> IMHO it is reasonable to impose a minimum limit of characters, impose an
> alpha-numeric mix, maybe even make sure that it isn't just one word known
> to a dictionary mixed with one number. But much more than that seems too
> restrictive.
:) you and I both know that you're an extremely intelligent adult who has
thought about these things and wouldn't pick something particularly risky --
but the server doesn't know that...(well, I guess it knows that you're an
adult, but...) What of a 10-year-old kid (not that there's anything wrong
with being a 10yo)? Just because someone is a 10yo, should they should be
given a break and allowed to pick a risky pw like "lego4me"?
> There is also the counter-security risk - as people have to use
> really complicated and random passwords, they tend to start writing them
> down in places, password files etc.
Definitely a risk -- but a weak password like "lego4me" or "zaza88" is a
higher worst-case security risk than a strong password which has been written
down.
No matter how strong or weak a password is, if someone writes it down or tells
it to a friend, there's the possibility that someone in that person's nearby
vicinity could use their password -- that's always a risk, and the blame lies
entirely with the user if something goes awry there.
On the flipside, if someone chooses a weak password and never writes it down
and never tells it to anyone, but then someone halfway around the globe who
has never met them suddenly guesses it through trial and error or a brute-
force attack, the blame lies entirely with the system and not with the user.
> Besides which, the longer it takes before users can change their passwords,
> the greater chance that other people will stumble upon their LUGNET welcome
> pack, which contains their password handily printed out :)
True, very true. But if someone leaves that password in a place that it can
be discovered by untrusted eyes and subsequently abused, then that's their
own darn fault.
> I'm not a security expert - just a user who would rather take the advice of
> a password system but have ultimate personal responsibility over my password.
Think of it this way: It's not a PR disaster if someone has their written-
down password stolen and used by a friend or coworker or family member --
that's their own irresponsibility. It -is-, OTOH, a huge PR disaster if
someone chooses a weak password and their account is hacked. There is a
middleground where both extremes are avoided -- where people can pick their
own passwords which don't "have to" be written down and which aren't
particularly dangerous either.
Perhaps the password strength analysis tool should have two thresholds for
the "pass" state:
- Pass if 100% or higher
- Pass with a warning if between 50% and 100%
- Fail if 50% or lower
This would still weed out dictionary words and awful keyboard sequences like
'zaza' and 'qwerty' and 'mnbvcxz' and '3edcvfr4' but allow more (in practice)
than it currently does. I'm not sure if this is what Larry meant or if he
was suggesting an infinitely-low fail threshold.
I don't have a problem with two thresholds as long as the fail-in-practice
threshold isn't too much lower than the fail-in-theory threshold.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> The point is that there are plenty of other pw's that people could come up
> with which aren't dangerous, but which are sufficiently random and perfectly
> memorable.
Maybe I'm just miffed because it failed *all* of the passwords I use? :) If I
did anything that even remotely required great security that would be a problem
I guess!
> > IMHO it is reasonable to impose a minimum limit of characters, impose an
> > alpha-numeric mix, maybe even make sure that it isn't just one word known
> > to a dictionary mixed with one number. But much more than that seems too
> > restrictive.
>
> :) you and I both know that you're an extremely intelligent adult who has
> thought about these things and wouldn't pick something particularly risky
*mumble*mumble* Look over there - a MISB Galaxy Explorer!
> What of a 10-year-old kid (not that there's anything wrong
> with being a 10yo)? Just because someone is a 10yo, should they should be
> given a break and allowed to pick a risky pw like "lego4me"?
It's not just children - there are lots of adults out there with even mild
learning difficulties that might find it hard to remember more randomised
passwords.
> On the flipside, if someone chooses a weak password and never writes it down
> and never tells it to anyone, but then someone halfway around the globe who
> has never met them suddenly guesses it through trial and error or a brute-
> force attack, the blame lies entirely with the system and not with the user.
Just out of curiousity - would LUGNET allow brute-force or trial and error
attacks? Something like sending an email warning after 3 fails, then locking
the account for 24 hours after 5 fails would somewhat negate the danger of
those types of attacks?
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> Maybe I'm just miffed because it failed *all* of the passwords I use?
Me too. I mean, I'm not miffed (I have *much* better things to get miffed
about) but it did fail, without exception, every password I have ever used.
> If I
> did anything that even remotely required great security
I do. And the things I apply them to have checks for weak passwds.
I suspect that they aren't as tight because they use a secondary measure to
prevent brute force (three missed passwd attempts means you have to get your
passwd manually reset).
eric
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In lugnet.admin.general, Eric Joslin writes:
> (three missed passwd attempts
In a row. Very important phrase I left out.
> means you have to get your
> passwd manually reset).
eric
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In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> Maybe I'm just miffed because it failed *all* of the passwords I use? :)
Are there any that it gave between 0% and 100% to? (i.e., not < 0% ?)
> [...]
> Just out of curiousity - would LUGNET allow brute-force or trial and error
> attacks? Something like sending an email warning after 3 fails, then locking
> the account for 24 hours after 5 fails would somewhat negate the danger of
> those types of attacks?
Eeek -- no! -- locking people out on a failed login attempt would certainly
negate the danger of a brute-force of attack, but it would make an entirely
new type of attack (an even worse one!) possible. Consider:
$url = <URL of member sign-in page>
foreach $m (1..1000) # Loop over all members
{
foreach (1..5) # Attack each member 5 times
{
$pw = <generate random nonsense>
<HTTP POST to $url with $m and $pw>
}
}
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to
> > things that the validator feels don't suck,
>
> That is its purpose.
Draconian and rather big-parentish. Why can't I take the risk of a sucky
password if I so choose? Not that I personally would, mind you.
Now, unlike government jackbootedness, we do as consumers have a choice not to
use Lugnet... but what exactly is the harm of allowing sucky passwords? It
falls entirely or for the most part on the person who made the poor choice. Why
be their daddy?
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Draconian and rather big-parentish. Why can't I take the risk of a sucky
> password if I so choose? Not that I personally would, mind you.
You put more at risk than your own data or matters when you choose a sucky
password. (Think about it.)
> Now, unlike government jackbootedness, we do as consumers have a choice not
> to use Lugnet... but what exactly is the harm of allowing sucky passwords?
Increased probability of successful brute-force compromises.
> It falls entirely or for the most part on the person who made the poor
> choice. Why be their daddy?
Have I somehow given you the impression that that the only purpose of the
validator is to protect data?
--Todd
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Todd Lehman wrote:
> > Now, unlike government jackbootedness, we do as consumers have a choice not
> > to use Lugnet... but what exactly is the harm of allowing sucky passwords?
>
> Increased probability of successful brute-force compromises.
true, but can't you limit the number of attempts to, say, 5 in 30 minutes... that will make brute force attacks impractical...
:)
Dan
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Boger writes:
> Todd Lehman wrote:
> > > Now, unlike government jackbootedness, we do as consumers have a choice
> > > not to use Lugnet... but what exactly is the harm of allowing sucky
> > > passwords?
> >
> > Increased probability of successful brute-force compromises.
>
> true, but can't you limit the number of attempts to, say, 5 in 30 minutes...
> that will make brute force attacks impractical...
How without opening an equally dangerous door?
--Todd
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Todd Lehman wrote:
> > > Increased probability of successful brute-force compromises.
> >
> > true, but can't you limit the number of attempts to, say, 5 in 30 minutes...
> > that will make brute force attacks impractical...
>
> How without opening an equally dangerous door?
Well, for a brute force attack to be successful, they have to try 100,000s of passwords... if you limit them to 5 tried every 30 minutes, it's pretty certain that they won't stumble upon the correct password before the password owner dies...
Or are you referring to a different door?
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In lugnet.admin.general, Dan Boger writes:
> Or are you referring to a different door?
Denial of service. I could write a bot that wakes up every 4 minutes and
tries 6 random passwords for your account (and theoretically every one else's
too) thus denying you (or theoretically anyone) the ability to get on as a
member, because no matter when you try, you will already be locked out for
that time period.
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Have I somehow given you the impression that that the only purpose of the
> validator is to protect data?
Who said that? Not me...
++Lar
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Larry P and then Todd L wrote:
> > So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to
> > things that the validator feels don't suck,
>
> That is its purpose.
In that case, you may as well not bother allowing us to change passwords
since we can only change to one just as random and hard to remember,
which will also go up on a yellow sticky on the monitor like the current
one is... (if I worked in an office I wouldn't do that, but since I work
from my home no-one else is going to see the array of yellow stickies
except me, and I don't post the $$-related ones).
Seriously, I'm pretty good at remembering weird numbers (I have my
library card PIN, bank card PIN, and several bank account #s memorised)
but I am getting totally over-passworded lately and it's just not
possible to remember them all. What's going to be so earth-shatteringly
important in the member facilities on LUGNET that you have to force a
password which is far tighter than the ones I use to access my bank and
CC accounts over the net?
Kevin
--
Personal Lego Web page:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kwilson_tccs/lego.html
eBay auctions:http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/kevinw1/
Subscribe to my Lego auction mailing list:
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/Legopartsales?referer=1
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Todd Lehman skrev i meddelandet ...
> In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to
> > things that the validator feels don't suck,
>
> That is its purpose.
I think that's unwise (to _force_ people to use an acknowledged pw). Two
reasons:
- one cannot choose a password that is easy to remember --> it will be written
down in some easy accessible place.
- by disallowing some passwords, you are limiting the number of possible
passwords, i.e. you are making a brute force attack easier.
- the refutation of a password makes the customer irritated, especially if
there's no _obvious_ (to the customer) reason.
Test for a minimum length, and force a mix of letters (upper and lower case)
and numbers/special characters, and it will be good enough.
[OK, that was three things, but who said I can count?]
--
Anders Isaksson, Sweden
BlockCAD: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/proglego.htm
Gallery: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/gallery.htm
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In lugnet.admin.general, Anders Isaksson writes:
> Todd Lehman skrev i meddelandet ...
> > In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> > > So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to
> > > things that the validator feels don't suck,
> >
> > That is its purpose.
>
> I think that's unwise (to _force_ people to use an acknowledged pw). Two
> reasons:
>
> - one cannot choose a password that is easy to remember --> it will be
> written down in some easy accessible place.
Can't or won't?
> - by disallowing some passwords, you are limiting the number of possible
> passwords, i.e. you are making a brute force attack easier.
I don't believe that's the case.
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=5788
> - the refutation of a password makes the customer irritated, especially if
> there's no _obvious_ (to the customer) reason.
I may have to make a short FAQ page.
> Test for a minimum length, and force a mix of letters (upper and lower case)
> and numbers/special characters, and it will be good enough.
SW:Ep1
M:Tron6989
70'sLEGO
2*4Brick
Pi3.14159
12:34Sunday
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> > Test for a minimum length, and force a mix of letters (upper and lower case)
> > and numbers/special characters, and it will be good enough.
>
> SW:Ep1
> M:Tron6989
> 70'sLEGO
> 2*4Brick
> Pi3.14159
> 12:34Sunday
Oops, almost forgot to list the classic counterexample!
E=mc^2
That uses a mix of...
* At least one uppercase letter from A-Z
* At least one lowercase letter from a-z
* At least one numeric digit from 0-9
* At least one "special" character
...and yet it's still a terrible password.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman skrev i meddelandet ...
> In lugnet.admin.general, Anders Isaksson writes:
> >
> > - one cannot choose a password that is easy to remember --> it will be
> > written down in some easy accessible place.
>
> Can't or won't?
I'm not sure what you're asking here...
What I tried to say was:
If I have to construct a (for me) strange password, 'just to please the
system' (that's how most users see it, at least), the probability of my
remembering it is lower than if the system accepts whatever I choose. The
harder it is to remember, the higher the probability that I have to keep it
written down somewhere (easily accessible).
--
Anders Isaksson, Sweden
BlockCAD: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/proglego.htm
Gallery: http://user.tninet.se/~hbh828t/gallery.htm
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In lugnet.admin.general, Anders Isaksson writes:
> I'm not sure what you're asking here...
oh, sorry. I was asking if you meant that people (a) actually wouldn't be
_able_ to choose a password that was easy for them to remember or (b) actually
could but wouldn't bother trying to come up with one that was easy for them to
remember. In other words, did you mean that you would be inclined to come up
with something difficult to remember but which passed, and then simply write
that down somewhere, or would you take the time to come up with something that
you could actually remember easily?
> What I tried to say was:
> If I have to construct a (for me) strange password, 'just to please the
> system' (that's how most users see it, at least), the probability of my
> remembering it is lower than if the system accepts whatever I choose. The
> harder it is to remember, the higher the probability that I have to keep it
> written down somewhere (easily accessible).
I take it as a given that most people will still write a password down
somewhere no matter how easy or difficult it is for them to remember (if they
feel that password is important) just in case they might forget it. Even if
most people don't, it certainly doesn't alarm me one bit knowing that some
people would -- and do.
Maybe they write it down backwards, or shifted by one letter, or letter-case
flopped, or even raw, but it's still safer for them and for LUGNET if they
keep a written record of it in a safe place (such as their wallet or purse
or bureau at home) than if they have a weak password which could be guessed
at from any of 100 million nodes on the Internet.
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> I take it as a given that most people
but not all. I don't.
> will still write a password down
> somewhere no matter how easy or difficult it is for them to remember (if they
> feel that password is important) just in case they might forget it. Even if
> most people don't, it certainly doesn't alarm me one bit knowing that some
> people would -- and do.
>
> Maybe they write it down backwards, or shifted by one letter, or letter-case
> flopped,
I doubt most people that write down passwords apply any of these cyphers to
them but I am just speculating on this particular point.
> or even raw, but it's still safer for them and for LUGNET if they
> keep a written record of it in a safe place (such as their wallet or purse
> or bureau at home) than if they have a weak password which could be guessed
> at from any of 100 million nodes on the Internet.
Fascinating... can you provide a reference for this assertion, or is it just
conjecture? Keeping ATM passwords in one's wallet or purse is a particularly
bad practice, for example. But then, we're talking about something rather
different than money, aren't we?
++Lar
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From the last two posts, I think I have arrived at my own conclusion on this
matter. Todd wants to protect his hard earned work by issuing complicated
passwords that theoretically cannot be hacked. I can't blame Todd for this
notion, it seems to make a great deal of sense. Larry, on the other hand,
wants to name his password, and he should be allowed to do so. Todd fears
that not all Lugnet users are as sophisticated as Larry, and someone will
name a password that is easily breached. Again, this seems to make a great
deal of sense. While bad for Larry (and many other Lugnet Members), Todd
can protect his network by using these methods. Unfortunately, this leads
me to the conclusion that there is no need for me to become a member! (bad
for Todd). I am not a member, I have no password, and none of this
discussion applies to me. Furthermore, I read Lugnet with a newsreader! As
many people do, I suspect.
What happens next? How does Todd attract me (and other sophisticated users)
to use the web interface and deal with passwords, etc? From where I sit, I
don't think it can be done. Either cut off newsreader access (bad), or
allow folks to name their passwords (bad according to Todd).
This is becoming *way* too complicated. Let me have my newsreader access
without making me feel like I am left out because I choose not to use the
web interface.
Sorry for trouncing your web playground Todd, but that is how I see it.
Build On!
John Matthews
(plans on contributing to the great effort known as LUGnet, just wants
something other than a moving target)
Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net> wrote in message
news:FtHxnL.8r2@lugnet.com...
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
>
> > I take it as a given that most people
>
> but not all. I don't.
>
> > will still write a password down
> > somewhere no matter how easy or difficult it is for them to remember (if • they
> > feel that password is important) just in case they might forget it. Even • if
> > most people don't, it certainly doesn't alarm me one bit knowing that • some
> > people would -- and do.
> >
> > Maybe they write it down backwards, or shifted by one letter, or • letter-case
> > flopped,
>
> I doubt most people that write down passwords apply any of these cyphers • to
> them but I am just speculating on this particular point.
>
> > or even raw, but it's still safer for them and for LUGNET if they
> > keep a written record of it in a safe place (such as their wallet or • purse
> > or bureau at home) than if they have a weak password which could be • guessed
> > at from any of 100 million nodes on the Internet.
>
> Fascinating... can you provide a reference for this assertion, or is it • just
> conjecture? Keeping ATM passwords in one's wallet or purse is a • particularly
> bad practice, for example. But then, we're talking about something rather
> different than money, aren't we?
>
> ++Lar
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(canceled)
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In lugnet.admin.general, John Matthews writes:
> [...]
> This is becoming *way* too complicated. Let me have my newsreader access
> without making me feel like I am left out because I choose not to use the
> web interface.
> Sorry for trouncing your web playground Todd, but that is how I see it.
Thanks for your insightful and thoughtful comments, John!
It's really not as complicated as it may seem. There is a simple pw tester,
it does a reasonable job of identifying weaknesses in pw's, and it outputs a
number in a range. It fails anything below a given threshold on its scale.
Every site that allows people to choose their own password has _some_ kind of
validator attached to it. Usually it's something pretty simple like requiring
four or more characters or a mixture of letters, numbers, etc. Some of the
better ones also include dictionary checks.
From my POV, it's not a matter of whether or not to validate pw's with exactly
this sort of thing in combination with dictionary lookups and a couple other
checks, but simply a matter of where to set the threshold for pass vs. fail.
The magic number (whatever it is) has simply to be chosen high enough to be
safe for users and safe for LUGNET, yet low enough to be acceptable from a
human factors perspective. From recent feedback here, it seems that the
threshold may be higher than it should be. (That's OK; it can be adjusted
lower if needed.)
How best to proceed? Let's not talk about whether or not it's a good idea to
use a strict validator. Let's talk about what the validator's threshold could
safely be lowered to.
http://www.lugnet.com/people/members/pwsa/
There are two thresholds in need of being chosen:
1. The threshold above which pw's are considered "strong" (from a statistical
perspective) and passed without protest.
2. The threshold above which pw's are considered "strong enough" (from a
human factors perspective) and passed with protest (i.e., a warning)
and below which pw's are considered "too weak" for comfort and rejected
flat-out.
Maybe #1 ends up staying at 100%, or maybe it lowers to 50%. And maybe #2
needs to be set to 50%, or -25%, or maybe even -300%. The scale can be
adjusted.
If a consensus on what #2 should be cannot be reached, then the last resort
would be to go with a weaker form of strict validation -- something workable
but more importantly something that typical users are used to living with
(like, for example, being at least N characters long and having at least one
uppercase letter and one digit and one non-alphanumeric).
I'd love to hear more opinions from people who consider themselves typical
computer users -- this kind of input (like what John gave) is very helpful.
--Todd
p.s. Multi-Layer passwords (for multi-tiered logins) is just an idea -- not
something on the slate. Don't worry about that being too complicated because,
if it ever would be useful to add, it would only be something purely optional.
It's not part of the present discussion.
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This is an interesting subject. However, I only know one person who keeps a
written note of his password/ATM number etc. The only reason he does this is
because he is dyslexic. Despite that, I'm sure that as more and more web
services now ask for passwords, I suppose people will write down passwords,
use the same one all the time or develop some other strategy.
Scott A
"Larry Pieniazek" <lar@voyager.net> wrote in message
news:FtHxnL.8r2@lugnet.com...
> In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
>
> > I take it as a given that most people
>
> but not all. I don't.
>
> > will still write a password down
> > somewhere no matter how easy or difficult it is for them to remember (if • they
> > feel that password is important) just in case they might forget it. Even • if
> > most people don't, it certainly doesn't alarm me one bit knowing that • some
> > people would -- and do.
> >
> > Maybe they write it down backwards, or shifted by one letter, or • letter-case
> > flopped,
>
> I doubt most people that write down passwords apply any of these cyphers • to
> them but I am just speculating on this particular point.
>
> > or even raw, but it's still safer for them and for LUGNET if they
> > keep a written record of it in a safe place (such as their wallet or • purse
> > or bureau at home) than if they have a weak password which could be • guessed
> > at from any of 100 million nodes on the Internet.
>
> Fascinating... can you provide a reference for this assertion, or is it • just
> conjecture? Keeping ATM passwords in one's wallet or purse is a • particularly
> bad practice, for example. But then, we're talking about something rather
> different than money, aren't we?
>
> ++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> SW:Ep1
> M:Tron6989
> 70'sLEGO
> 2*4Brick
> Pi3.14159
> 12:34Sunday
NONE of those are bad passwords for the level of security that LUGNET, now, or
ever, (2) will require.
To think differently implies that either there is something far far deeper and
earth shatteringly important about to happen at some point (2), or that there
is a bit of excessive paranoia at work somewhere. People who really don't want
their ID's hacked should use better ones, of course, but J. Random AFOL would
be well served by any of these.
1 - based on what has been revealed publicly
2 - which may be the case, but how would *we* know... Only Todd does.
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> In lugnet.admin.general, Richard Franks writes:
> > In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> >
> > > having a password validator that doesn't suck is IMHO a fundamental
> > > prerequisite to allowing passwords to be changed. Anything less is
> > > irresponsible.
>
> So are you going to enforce that people HAVE to set their passwords to things
> that the validator feels don't suck, or are you going to give advice but allow
> it anyway?
>
> The former is rather draconian for a site that doesn't handle money. I've
asked
Not to mention that Lugnet != NSA.
KL
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Not sure what/if you are insinuating between the lines there, or whether I
> should feel insulted by that comment, but having a password validator that
> doesn't suck is IMHO a fundamental prerequisite to allowing passwords to be
> changed. Anything less is irresponsible. (Yes, I know, allowing too much
I haven't posted with respect to this in a while, but I would like to say that
if you use this current validator to validate what people can choose for
passwords you might as well just not use it and keep sticking people with the
ones you are now.
I've fed it almost every password I've ever used, some of which took more than
a day on a P2 for l0phtcrack to brute-force, and it failed them all.
It's a neat toy - it's fun to throw things that are purely random at it and
have it spit back how worthless as passwords they are. But it's insanely
picky, with the emphasis being on the insanely part.
I've got a password or three now that it passes, taking a tip from your "first
letter of each word of a sentence" comment. But I don't see them as any
better than the multitude it failed.
But I have no desire to argue overmuch about this. You do what you want, but
you need to keep in mind that as LUGNET grows and as you hope to attract more
and more people, ultimately benefiting both the community and you, you could
possibly be sticking those willing to *pay* to be members with a password
system that is about a million times more restrictive than the ones they use
to buy with credit cards and access their bank accounts every day. I wonder
how many people will find the services worth the trouble?
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In lugnet.admin.general, Mike Stanley writes:
> [...]
> I've fed it almost every password I've ever used, some of which took more
> than a day on a P2 for l0phtcrack to brute-force, and it failed them all.
> [...]
> I've got a password or three now that it passes, taking a tip from your
> "first letter of each word of a sentence" comment. But I don't see them
> as any better than the multitude it failed.
> [...]
Thanks for the above data points. How badly did it fail them by?
Did you catch this post from Monday?--
http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6459
What threshold number was below the all the number returned for the ones you
tried that it failed? Would a threshold of, say, 50 (instead of the current
100) pass all of the ones that it's currently failing? Would a threshold of
-100?
(The threshold is just a number on a scale -- that scale can be adjusted.)
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> Thanks for the above data points. How badly did it fail them by?
Pretty badly - I know they were all worthless. I didn't really pay attention
to the numbers. I think they were as low negatively, though, as the "first
leter from each word in a sentence" was positively, though.
> Did you catch this post from Monday?--
>
> http://www.lugnet.com/admin/general/?n=6459
Yep.
> What threshold number was below the all the number returned for the ones you
> tried that it failed? Would a threshold of, say, 50 (instead of the current
> 100) pass all of the ones that it's currently failing? Would a threshold of
> -100?
I think they were all < -100. Just tried one of them, and it was -138.
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I find the labels a bit pejorative, as they impose your thinking on what level
of security is appropriate on what should just be strength metrics.
For example at setting 1 "lax" it fails passwords that I consider perfectly
adequate for the risk level here at Lugnet and which I would use if I could.
The next setting up is "casual" but it is far from casual, it's already shading
up towards quite restrictive.
Suggest you dump the labels and just go with numeric indicators. My lax is
probably -23 on your scale and I would call your lax "serious" and your casual
"moderately insane".
So clearly these labels are going to be divisive if you keep them. Just say you
require security level 2 and leave it at that with no label attached to it.
PS, my opinion remains unchanged, even 2 is way too strong for what is needed
here but that's a different issue.
++Lar
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In lugnet.admin.general, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> I find the labels a bit pejorative, as they impose your thinking on what
> level of security is appropriate on what should just be strength metrics.
OK, fair enough. Labels gone. Just pure numbers in the drop-down list now.
> For example at setting 1 "lax" it fails passwords that I consider perfectly
> adequate for the risk level here at Lugnet and which I would use if I could.
The label covers (covered) what the setting allows in the worst-case. If you
poke around enough (or, as I've done, run scripts internally that hammer on it
to generate meaningful statistics), you'll find that the "Lax" setting (1)
does indeed pass some very, very bad pw's. It may also fail a few good ones
here and there, but as I'm sure you must realize, false positives are
infinitely more harmless than the reverse.
> The next setting up is "casual" but it is far from casual, it's already
> shading up towards quite restrictive.
It's appropriate to call it casual because it is only a minimal level of pw
security -- it offers approximately 25 bits of protection in the worst case.
(It passes approximately 40% of all 5-character pw's chosen from the alphabet
{a-z,0-9}.) 2^25 is scarcely 30 million combinations to try. That IS casual,
trust me.
> Suggest you dump the labels and just go with numeric indicators. My lax is
> probably -23 on your scale and I would call your lax "serious" and your
> casual "moderately insane".
Here is why "1 - Lax" is in fact lax and not even remotely close to serious:
1. It passes terribly poor 4-character passwords such as "chow", "itso",
and "frob", and in fact passes 90% of all 4-character randomly generated
pw's using a linear distribution of the letters 'a' to 'z'. 26^4 =
456,976 (bad).
2. It passes 95% of all 4-character randomly generated pw's using a linear
distribution of the letters a-z and the digits 0-9. 36^4 = 1,679,616
(also bad).
3. It passes 99% of all 4-character randomly generated pw's using a linear
distribution of the 95 printable ASCII characters. 95^4 = 81,450,625
(still rather bad).
It you believe that any of the above is not lax, then I would posit that you
have at best a weak understanding of even the most basic statistical and
mathematical issues related to pw cracking. (Sorry.)
> So clearly these labels are going to be divisive if you keep them. Just say
> you require security level 2 and leave it at that with no label attached to
> it.
Okie dokie.
> PS, my opinion remains unchanged, even 2 is way too strong for what is
> needed here but that's a different issue.
You go right ahead and believe that. In actuality, it would be totally
irresponsible to lower the bar any further. I've already made it far less
restrictive than it was going to be originally. I really would appreciate
it if you would please stop bugging me about this.
--Todd
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Todd Lehman wrote:
> Here is why "1 - Lax" is in fact lax and not even remotely close to serious:
>
> 1. It passes terribly poor 4-character passwords such as "chow", "itso",
> and "frob", and in fact passes 90% of all 4-character randomly generated
> pw's using a linear distribution of the letters 'a' to 'z'. 26^4 =
> 456,976 (bad).
>
> 2. It passes 95% of all 4-character randomly generated pw's using a linear
> distribution of the letters a-z and the digits 0-9. 36^4 = 1,679,616
> (also bad).
>
> 3. It passes 99% of all 4-character randomly generated pw's using a linear
> distribution of the 95 printable ASCII characters. 95^4 = 81,450,625
> (still rather bad).
>
> It you believe that any of the above is not lax, then I would posit that you
> have at best a weak understanding of even the most basic statistical and
> mathematical issues related to pw cracking. (Sorry.)
Perhaps part of the problem is the relative weights attached to various
elements of strength of passwords. I would generally agree that a 4
character password should not be accepted (of course I suspect most of
us have a significant amount of money protected only by our physical
possesion of a plastic card, and a 4 DIGIT password - I at least chose
an 8 digit PIN the one time I was allowed to chose a PIN, but few ATM
systems these days allow anything other than a 4 digit PIN).
I'm not sure that boiling the strength of a password down to a single
number is the best way to go about it. Why not require a few things,
like minimum length, and let the other checking try and reject trivial
extensions of a short password into the minimum length.
However, you have spoken that this is the final word on Lugnet
passwords, follow-ups to lugnet.off-topic.debate if anyone cares to
continue discussion.
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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In lugnet.admin.general, Frank Filz writes:
> Perhaps part of the problem is the relative weights attached to various
> elements of strength of passwords. I would generally agree that a 4
> character password should not be accepted (of course I suspect most of
> us have a significant amount of money protected only by our physical
> possesion of a plastic card, and a 4 DIGIT password - I at least chose
> an 8 digit PIN the one time I was allowed to chose a PIN, but few ATM
> systems these days allow anything other than a 4 digit PIN).
For the average person or script kiddle to crack a 4-digit PIN via brute
force, they'd have to:
(1) first actually get someone's card; and then
(2) manually try out up to 10,000 combinations, and IIRC, ATM's are programmed
to eat cards after a few failed attempts, and they'll probably be on
videotape too.
For the average person or script kiddle to crack a 4-digit PW on the Internet,
all they need to do is write a tiny script, then sit back and watch it go, all
relatively untraceable if they're being careful. Even if they're not being
careful, it would still be trivial for them to crack a 4-digit PW or cause a
DoS if service were denied after a few failed attempts.
Unless the cracker works in the banking industry, comparing PINs to PW's is
apples and orange, my friend. :)
--Todd
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Todd Lehman wrote:
>
> In lugnet.admin.general, Frank Filz writes:
> > Perhaps part of the problem is the relative weights attached to various
> > elements of strength of passwords. I would generally agree that a 4
> > character password should not be accepted (of course I suspect most of
> > us have a significant amount of money protected only by our physical
> > possesion of a plastic card, and a 4 DIGIT password - I at least chose
> > an 8 digit PIN the one time I was allowed to chose a PIN, but few ATM
> > systems these days allow anything other than a 4 digit PIN).
>
> For the average person or script kiddle to crack a 4-digit PIN via brute
> force, they'd have to:
>
> (1) first actually get someone's card; and then
> (2) manually try out up to 10,000 combinations, and IIRC, ATM's are programmed
> to eat cards after a few failed attempts, and they'll probably be on
> videotape too.
(1) is certainly true, (2) is mostly true (there are many ATMs,
including ones in stores which can not eat cards, and probably don't
alert the cashier to take the card [possibly dangerous if the person
using the card is a real criminal]).
> Unless the cracker works in the banking industry, comparing PINs to PW's is
> apples and orange, my friend. :)
True. But my main point was that one shouldn't allow 4 character
passwords in general. The ATM note was just a side note.
Another interesting security flaw I just saw yesterday: I am nearing the
end of my student loan paybacks, and randomly decided to check out if I
could find my account information on the web. I had some paperwork with
the loan servincing agency with me, and noticed an e-mail, so I pulled
up www.host-name.com. Sure enough, they had a screen to get to account
information. What did you need to get there: SSN and ZIP! The screen
allows you to change your address and phone numbers, shows your last 12
payments for each loan, and other status. Not an incredible amount of
information, but somewhat scary.
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
> True. But my main point was that one shouldn't allow 4 character
> passwords in general. The ATM note was just a side note.
oh! OK. I totally totally totally agree with that!
--Todd
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In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> but I don't feel that I was left much choice, since misinformation was
> being spread.
Oops, wrong word. It wasn't right to say that "misinformation" was being
spread. Rather, speculation was being presented which just happened to be
incorrect. (Big difference!)
--Todd
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I believe there is a problem that has already been addressed by several
people, and that is that the ratings are too vague. If everyone is rating
messages based on their own criteria, then we will never be able to use the
information that is being collected effectively.
I would suggest that above the ratings bar, that there could be a little blurb
regarding how messages in the current group should be rated. For instance, in
Lego.Direct, the blurb could be, "How useful is this message to Brad Justus
and the team at Lego Direct?". The same message could be cross posted to
another group and be rated by a different criteria in that group (and
therefore would have a different rating that would be relevent to that
group). In each group, the rating blurb would be different.
Hmmm... I guess this would probably boil down to a one line summary of the T&C
for that group. I'm not sure, but this could be food for thought.
Another possibility would be to have several categories of ratings, such
as "Overall Rating", "Relevance to Topic", "Usefulness to Group or Community"
and then have a rating selection for each, and average them. That way, a
person could like the post, but mark it down for not being on-topic, and that
way, the posted can get some small amount of feedback as to why their post got
the rating that it did.
Just some random thoughts...
-Andy Lynch
In lugnet.admin.general, Todd Lehman writes:
> All,
>
> It seems at this point that the article rating feature -- intended to help --
> is actually causing more harm than good to the community. It's difficult to
> gauge how much harm is being done when opinions are so varied, but it's clear
> that something needs to be changed.
>
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In lugnet.announce, Todd Lehman writes:
<snip>
>
> Specific personal questions:
>
> 1. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed to you unless you specifically requested (via some simple
> setting) that they be displayed to you?
It doesn't matter to me.
> 2. How would you feel (better or worse) if the numeric values of the ratings
> were not displayed ever to anyone but collected and used by the server only
> for internal calculations, hotlist generation, and personal recommendations
> to you?
It doesn't matter to me.
> 3. How would you feel (better or worse) if the ratings were not even
> collected and collated in the first place? (i.e. the destruction of the
> feature altogether)
Worse, slightly .. The feature does have its benefits.
> 4. Have you ever felt victimized by the rating system? Have you posted
> something which has obtained a low rating and felt uncomfortable or unhappy
> about yourself or about LUGNET because of the low rating? How often?
No. I don't find validation in what others think of my stuff. I ask for
comments for other inspiration and ideas that they might generate. I don't
even ask my wife what she thinks of my stuff.
> 5. Have you ever felt victimized indirectly by seeing someone else's post
> get a high rating? How often?
No. I don't begrudge "good fortune" to others. Not even to Sanjay ;-)
> 6. Do you feel that the article rating system makes it easier for you or
> harder for you to share your ideas? And does this bother you?
It makes it harder only where casual reading material (generated by ratings)
is concerned. It doesn't bother me if the casual reader has an equally
presented way of reading everything else too.
> 7. How does your initial reaction to the announcement of the article rating
> system compare to your current opinion of it?
It's the same..: "I hope it's done right.." (Whatever that is :)
> 8. Do you feel that it is too early, too late, or the right time to address
> these issues?
It's never too late.. cuz the administrator actually listens. Very few ideas
are perfect out of the bag.
> 9. What other areas (besides news articles) can you imagine that a
> collaborative ratings system would be most helpful to you? LEGO sets?
> Websites? Individual web pages? etc...
I don't think displayed ratings attached to those things would be helpful at
all to everyone at large. To me, if the ratings were displayed, it seems that
those with higher ratings would get higher ones (often due to drive-by's), and
low ratings would remain or ever only slowly creep up (unless the content
found in such subjects was dramatically improved, and an effort made to
promote "my awesome new site"). Overall, some will be depressed by it, some
won't care, and others will see it as a challenge to improve.. and there isn't
much you can do to change someone.
CLSotW is like this. If someone's page never wins, does that mean it's not
cool? Of course not. Cool is often in the eye of the beholder(s). But at the
same time, whoever made that site feels a certain way about it, either
indifferent or otherwise. Yet you can't change how they feel.. only they can.
-Tom McD.
when replying, until 1967, spamcake was used in football pads.
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