h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Or am I seeing things on my screen?



Is there not a whole sentence starting "ChooseaRating" and a weird "This is a reply to" thingy wotsit?

I'm confused?

I think I am going mad.

Someone explain?

*quickly uploads a fixed stylesheet*

No, you're definitely imagining it. Really. Pay no attention to the drop-down behind the curtain.

Can't trust you government types.

Now what was that REALLY? A glimpse into the future?

Possibly - it was a demo I did to show what content rating might look like in a forum (for internal BBC people) and I forgot to take it out when I updated the skin earlier today.

It's not likely to happen very quickly, and not necessarily on h2g2, but rating of conversation posts is something that's been asked for by people who would like to use DNA on their sites, but would like to have rating on comments.

I see. Seemed a bit cr*p really, if you don't mind me saying. But t'is your job, so I won't blame you...

Seems like I was the only one who saw it though *conspiracy theories*. Are you sure you aren't just messing with my head?

So you can rate individual posts? interesting idea...

It would be good to have an article/entry/vision rating system (ala onthefuture) implemented in the DNA database. you could do queries like seeing the average vote/rate you've given.

No it's not! It's rubbish! Everyone would just click *Moronic* all the time. It changes the ethos of h2g2 completely...having people judge your posts all the time would limit WHAT you post. Too much peerpressure...

Which is why it's almost certainly not appropriate for h2g2. However, think about a conversation on the News site - it would be useful if people reading the conversation could look at the most recent 20 highest rated posts, rather than have to trawl through a lot of off-topic rambling.

Different sites need different things. And the 'Moronic' one was a joke on my part...

Oh, I agree, it wouldn't work for h2g2...

Yep, good point.

That's a good idea brain.

We need an smiley.

What would it look like?

I have absolutely no idea.

One site where such a system works, and arguably quite well:

http://slashdot.org

For those of us on digiboxes ()... Slashdot gets something like 250,000 hits a day... each article posted gets something like 300-500 comments, and invariably some of those are trolls and some are detailed and intelligent.

The rating system -- they call it moderation -- works by randomly giving out moderation points to members of the site. You get five points -- not many -- which you can add to comments you think are worthy, or take away from comments that are offtopic or trolls.

The whole system is protected in at least three ways; firstly, you only get mod points if you've been visiting the site fairly regularly (but not *too* regularly) for a while, have posted some sensible comments, and so on. Secondly, you can't post to a conversation you've moderated, and vice versa. And thirdly, moderation is vetted -- meta-moderated -- so that anyone moderating stupidly is weeded out.

I tend to view the site with posts marked '-1' removed, and posts marked 4 or 5 highlighted; but you're always free to view all the posts. You can also single out particular people to have their posts appear to be ranked higher or lower. Oh, and posts are categorized... 'interesting', 'insightful', 'funny', 'offtopic', etc...

Anyway ... it's been around for a while, and it works quite while. Seems horrendously complicated, but, well, nothing wrong with that ... it isn't really something that'd work for h2g2, but it is a rating system that works...

I'd be quite interested to see a rating system for the DNA sites

*waves at fellow digibox user*

I was only really talking about it in relevance to h2g2...but I get the whole point of it too...

oh add to you personal space

This is going way back in the backlog to post 15-ish, by way of preventing any more trouble!

Jim said about the rating box:

"...It's almost certainly not appropriate for h2g2. However, think about a conversation on the News site - it would be useful if people reading the conversation could look at the most recent 20 highest rated posts, rather than have to trawl through a lot of off-topic rambling."

There's a conspiracy going on here, isn't there? When we moved to the BBC, you accidentally left in a pullquote-style tag that looked like BBC News' pullquotes. Now you're giving the News site as an example...

Logical conclusion: You want BBC News to move to DNA entirely to secure more funding for more tech people and so on...

Whoami?

I would *love* News Online to use DNA. Their current attempts at connecting with the audience are frankly pathetic. People effectively email their comments, and someone in News has to take all those emails, edit them down, and put them up on a page. It's awful and, frankly, embarrassing. But News seem to be petrified at the thought that their audience might actually want to talk to each other. They still think they're in broadcasting, and worry a lot about their 'editorial standards'. Something no amount of technology would fix - it's all politics.

Also, I'm told, 90% of all comments are rejected. It's hugely labour-intensive and terrible for the users.

The answer is, Jim, to get the News Online Team to come along to an h2g2 Meet - perhaps in the summer - and we could have a chat with them. I think it would be ideal if DNA looked at their syndication thingy and they looked at DNA and some swapping took place.

Come on Jim, let's convince them!