Extremely Negative Posts... need attention getter.

I know this may sound quirky, but you know the original "Post Assignment" gradients and arrows that show a post's AP-balance? Well, I think that it would be worthwhile for extremely-negative posts to have some sort of flashing item or attention getter so that other members of the community can scrutinize them and decide whether they think that the rating is truly deserved. I think this becomes more important with the recent events of AP-balance-dumpage and quick bans.

I took the original images and came up with a little "This post is Ultra-Negative" graphic with which to replace the current extreme-negative indicator.

great idea i think...maybe it's should be even more flashing with other colours and stuff..

Cool, I think that this would be great so more people are aware of the situation.

And as a counterpoint to that... though possibly less useful...

that is a good idea, Terr..
addtionally I'd like to see (with a mouse over) a "this post is xx points away from going suicidal"

What if you only had the indicator flashing? Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good idea, but imho, with all the blinking, moving and flashing things we got, this site is starting to look like some carnival :) But that's just a matter of taste.

Thats a pretty nice idea. BTW what did you use to add the effects? Just wondering. What would be the requirements for getting it to flash or throb?

Guus: If just the little triangle flashes, a lot of people will miss it. At least, I feel that I would, and my gut feeling is that it's just waaay too small to get attention.

KhakisRule: I joined the Leage Of Evil (tm) and used Microsoft Image composer and my original graphic segments to make (for each good/bad) a "normal", (which is already on the boards) and a "flash", and then for the intermediate step took the 'flash' version and made it semitransparent, and superimposed it over the original. The animation was done with Microsoft GIF Animator, which I take was made by some creative employee in their spare time, it's a very frugal yet functional little program. Photoshop, to put it bluntly, sucks for small icon-like doodads, whereas MS Image composer fits my needs much better for iconographic and button-like things.

The 'requirements' would be pretty simple, these graphics would simply replace the current graphics which show the triangle indicator in the same position. I think I made either nine or seven of them... I think it was nine. I'm just providing replacements in this thread for two of those nine, the extreme ends of the spectrum. (Although I care more about the 'bad' indicator being replaced.)

SumDum: That would be nice, but I don't think it would be quite as useful as it sounds, since for a whole THREAD to go suicidal, it may be more complex than just having one bad post. What I would rather see, in that case, is a little alt-tag/tooltip which tells you how badly the last X posts by the user were rated, on average.... not that that would be very useful either, come to think of it... :/

Great idea, Terr. :)

Terr, if I understand you correctly, I think it's a great idea. I think there needs to be some human interaction with the suicide and auto-ban features. They are good, but they could be better, simply by having a little bit of human common sense added to them. I think there needs to be some way to see what and who is being closed/banned before it actually happens. A lot of it seems to have gotten out of control lately, with people with just one or two posts being banned, and good threads being closed by the addition of single posts that get flamed into oblivion. I mean look at the amount of time we had to put up with JRoc, and System_Overload...that was too long, but we all lived. I think that taking a n00b and banning him over one or two stupid posts is possibly causing us to lose very valuable members in the long run. And possibly causing us to become a "clique" of users, that don't welcome newcomers.

JP, I'm not saying that the site isn't wonderful, and I know how much effort you put into it..but I think maybe a little tweaking would be beneficial in this circumstance!

Deb :D

well i dont mind that idea to have some sort of interaction to stop a good post from dying..i personally use proximitron so the little flashing giff is just a static image that looks exactly the same as a normal one.. i am kind of doubting this will get implemented though because from my understanding it was designed with the idea that a person could only get flamed so much for a bad post before it is shut down ...if this idea is put into action it sort of defeats that purpose.that is just my opinion though and im sure there would be exceptions to this as always..

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by debwalin
And possibly causing us to become a "clique" of users, that don't welcome newcomers.

---

just annother little thing i noticed about the clique-ishness here: all it takes is one or two people to give a few points(+ or -, generally doesnt matter) and all of a sudden the points start flying like crazy; posts that are relitavly comon become either the worst posible thing anybody could have said or the most insightfull thing ever. its quite annoying, and i know i personally have been treading lightly recently, cause i know that even with what i have for AP's, all it would take to get me banned is pissing off the wrong 2 or 3 people and next thing you know i'd be gone. personally, i think it stifles conversations a bit as newcomers are afraid to express opnions contrary to what sombody with more AP's has said(although i havent experianced this here, i can see why one would).

over all though, the sight is great. it just(as most things do) needs a little tweaking IMHO.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by destined 2 fail
well i dont mind that idea to have some sort of interaction to stop a good post from dying..i personally use proximitron so the little flashing giff is just a static image that looks exactly the same as a normal one.. i am kind of doubting this will get implemented though because from my understanding it was designed with the idea that a person could only get flamed so much for a bad post before it is shut down ...if this idea is put into action it sort of defeats that purpose.that is just my opinion though and im sure there would be exceptions to this as always..

---

Proxomitron essentially makes the very first image static, from what I understand... (I used it to personally implement the changes to the AP displays before it was adopted by JP) So I'll just change the ordering of the images so that the image is still somewhat attention-getting.

I was a little afraid for this, flashy things aren't good if over used, but the verybad.gif looked like it wasn't too harassing. Verygood.gif blinked too much but I was just going to suggest something like that before I read Terr's next message which then introduced it.

And sumdumguy, I don't think there is a fixed amount of negatives when the thread goes suicidal so your idea about that wouldn't work.

I changed the ordering and timing of the images, the ordering should make them display at least somewhat uniquely when gif images do not cycle.

Here's the other one... I know these messages are short, but remember, a picture is worth a thousand words! Although perhaps less, if you use unicode.

Good idea Terr, but I don't think having one for good posts is a good idea. Not only would there be flooding (lots of things flashing) but also with the inherent problem of people getting AP points for all the wrong reasons (like asking for help, just posting, etc), it would be incorrectly flashing up posts that are 'extremely positive' and full of crap.

On a side note, I would suggest also putting in a cap of positive AP points on a thread. I mean, after so many negatives, the thread is locked but nobody is prevented from putting pile upon pile of positive AP points into a thread as long as it's positive. Suggestion would be to make it reach a certain level of positive points for the thread then lock out the AP ability after that. Might sound stupid or whatever but hell, it's only 7:33 right now.

Wavy colors are always an eye getter, darker more evil colors are good for the negitive and lively colors work good for the positive. I say rock on, and keep up the good work.

nice idea, I noticed that the "verybad" does not flash as much and is less visible. The "veygood" is good though. I like the idea, it makes you just read the good stuff. BTW: I how annoying is this, I typed this in capitals, then had to rewrite it! ;-(

Prankster

I just mention alltheweb had an MP3 section that I thought was nifty, and I got neg 50 ap points for that one post.

Vorlin: I wasn't advocating the usage of the extreme-positive graphic, but I've added it in just-for-the-heck-of-it so people can take a gander at it. It certainly won't help too much in finding quid-pro-quo ap-whoring.

Prankster: Hm... unless I goofed with the saved versions, both images should have the same number of frames and the first two attachments should have the same cycle-rates, and the last two attachments should also have the same rate between them.

Vorlin: The idea of locking a thread out that has had too many positiv AP's applied might actually help the balance. But at what point would it be fair to consider a thread locked? If there are thirty posts to a thread VS. A thread with only ten posts... obviously the larger thread is going to have a higher positive (or negative) AP count...

Perhaps using the number of posts to a thread to decide when the thread dissalows positive AP... if more people post after the thread has been locked perhaps the thread can then reopen for positive AP's again?

Terr: I hate graphic thingies... but really it does sound like a good way to let the fair people know when excessive AP's have been applied the positive thing would tend to light up some posts like a christmas tree, but the negative counter would give a clue as to the general idea of a post at a quick glance.

On another note, a simple thread summary, or even a flag to point out how popular a thread has been tagged to each thread would allow one to decide beforehand whether its worth it to view a thread in the first place. (some of us minimalistic types dont come out of our shell often) If it were possible to turn this feature on or off for each user, it would definately be of some use to those of us who are short on the time it takes to sort through threads daily.

just my $1.50......

i think it`s a good idea terr good job with the graphic`s 2

hmmmm all this talk about flashing..... i dont see any flashing here....... just a blowback of using non-M$ compliant browsers i guess ;)

good point deb.i just think some people tend to post stuff and only realizing afterwards that they have faulted but by then it is to late to do something about it.i think sometimes they are so eager to get their first post up and see a reply being posted,that they overreact.

Here is a suggestion.Why dont we put it to the vote?
regards
v/man

Greetings all,
Terr, this is just a suggestion.What if the arrow was to change colour from one side to the other for example...as it moves from left which is close to being a gonner the colour is red, and as you gain antipoints it will change from red to light red to yellow to orange to light green to dark green.I don't know if this is even possible but it is just a thought.

regards
v/man

Van: I suppose I could add that, but it would take a few more frames of animation to make it look good, and I want to appease those who are jealous of the few kbytes that it would take out of their bandwidth before it was cached :)

Also, I recently viewed an old thread on IE on a pretty fast machine at the library... Ton of ram, nice 2ghz+ processor... and it wasn't at all evenly displaying my avatar's frames, it had to concentrate on so many blinking and/or animated items at once... Not that it really bothered me, but I'd like to avoid the minor irritation problems like that may cause.

Greetings:

How could I possibly resist such nifty little icons? Heh, thanks Terr, suggestion taken, and up live.

Thread Closed.