I have discovered the subtleties of “liking” vs. “agreeing.”
I now think that if the site is to keep these things we also need a “dislike” button. As things stand, its is unbalanced and there was a post that I didn’t “disagree” with - but I did “dislike” it.
I think Cartalk is not Reddit, Facebook, or any of the other sites which encourage user-driven post ranking. On every single site I have ever visited that uses “like/dislike” or an analog, “dislike” is universally taken as a synonym for “I don’t agree with you,” and people who make valid but unpopular statements find themselves downvoted into oblivion. Ever since Doctorow wrote the Disney World book, websites have been trying to implement Whuffie in some form or another, and it has been a universal flop as far as an accurate method of weighing the validity of a poster’s input is concerned.
I think the core community at Cartalk.com does not consist of vapid teenagers who require constant reinforcement from anonymous internet strangers, and trying to add features to cater to such personalities will be detrimental to the site.
This is a site for people to come and ask questions about fixing, maintaining, or driving their cars. It is not, nor should it be, a popularity contest or a mutual admiration/denigration society. Or, put another way, just because a large number of sites on the internet are doing it, does not mean you should do it. After all, a large number of very popular sites on the internet host pornography, and I’m fairly certain there are no plans to emulate their practices here 
I could agree with shadowfox on the like button, and sometimes I enjoy a little off topic excursion, but the agree and disagree I think is helpful. Its a quick way to let the OP know which advice/opinions is/are most recommended, even if the voters are wrong.
I’m less annoyed by the agree/disagree, yes. Although I would point out that if you’re asking a question about your $20,000+ hunk of metal, you should probably read every word in all of the answers, which would let you know not only that people disagree, but why. It would also eliminate the situation where trolls “disagree” with things just to be jerks - the way it was, if you disagreed with something, you had to put your name by it, and explain why. Now it’s anonymous and unexplained.
shadowfax, I guess I am looking at this through my very narrow viewpoint. I can’t always leave a post to give an explanation so the agree/disagree is really helpful to me. I guess that I am also optimistic that we don’t have very many trolls to ruin the feature
Then we’ll see those posters who get flag/badge happy and start clicking unneccessarily on anything and everything.
Is it possible to UNclick an oops selection ?
Is it possible to challenge someones selection ?
Someone marked a post of mine ‘off topic’ when in fact it was exactly ON topic. They must not have read it through.
“Someone marked a post of mine ‘off topic’ when in fact it was exactly ON topic. They must not have read it through.”
It actually goes beyond inappropriate use of the “off-topic” link, Ken.
A few days ago, we had a poster who suddenly turned very bizarre and abusive–after we had politely helped him to resolve his car issues, and after we gave him some helpful advice regarding the need to insure his car. In the resulting “back & forth”, I did a little bit of verbal fisticuffs with him, and while I never used any obscenities or any other inappropriate language, I wound up with several “troll” and “abuse” flags.
Clearly that particular poster was the source of those “troll” and “abuse” flags. He is now gone (blocked, I assume), and his threads are even apparently gone. However, the “negative badges” that I received in those threads remain. Surely if the web lackeys can eliminate threads that turn totally negative, they can also eliminate the negative badges that were “awarded” inappropriately by a blocked/banished member.
How about this, limit the buttons to the agree, disagree and flag and allow people to see who has clicked on those buttons. I do not mind if anyone sees that it is me that agrees or disagrees, or even if I am the one who flagged them.
VDC, I would respond to you, but I see by snooping your profile that you have 5 troll points, 2 abuse, and 4 disagrees. I don’t know that I want to associate with such a shady character
Hmm. I do see that you can un-click something you’ve accidentally chosen. It doesn’t appear that we web lackeys have the power to remove erroneous feedback left by others, or retaliatory Disagrees.
I hope this does not lead into a way for one to post just to get a reaction that would turn into “self promoting”. In the past when rating were visible there were some who posted needless crap just raise the score.
Of course it will. If you want to see how this will wash out, go check out reddit.com. 3 million pictures of cats because they get automatic upvotes.
How could I resist that? You’re just jealous that is not all about horses - especially mystical Tolkein ones. I have to assume plenty of likes now (?)
cigroller, I think pictures of cats are the embodiment of the nuances of like vs. agree.
It seems to me that there’s a problem with this badge system when someone like VDCdriver gets tagged so much with negatives and in such a short span of time. No way is that deserved.
How about getting rid of the ‘disagree’ and ‘off-topic’ buttons? That way folks will have to state their problem, which is much more useful to the OP, anyway.
As Thumper said, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all!”
I’d argue that the “agree” isn’t useful either. Without commentary, we can’t know whether the person knowledgeably agreed or not. If 6 people are dead wrong about a repair, then the fact that all 6 agree with each other isn’t very helpful if the goal is to get the car fixed rather than to see who can rack up more points. Really, the reaction buttons do nothing more than pander to the bandwagon fallacy.
There have been a lot of threads on here where people discussed why they agreed or disagreed with something, and then that lead to a correct solution at the end. Putting the buttons up removes the discussion and therefore removes that avenue for reaching a good conclusion.
I dont like this whole facebook style “like” and “Disagree” button stuff.
Very childish.
One person can get upset at you and then go to ALL of your posts and click on “disagree” or “flag” and your rep is totally ruined because of one person.
Thats my 2 cents
There is an opportunity to abuse these tags without collaboration. As far as I know, all it takes to create an account is a unique e-mail address. You could make it tougher to create more than one account by using scripts to detect unique Windows login IDs and IP addresses. These things wouldn’t make it impossible to create multiple accounts, but they would make it harder.
I like the buttons, mainly because I can disagree with someone without getting into an argument about it.
It’s good to see with few exceptions on this site that, at this point in time people are ignoring the checkboxes. If you agree or disagree with a post, you can man up and say so and not hide behind an anonymous checkbox. If this trend continues, it may be possible that the web lackeys will abandon the checkboxes. Other sites that I frequent do not have them and so why should they be needed here? This site rates among the most polite sites that I know and was that way long before the checkboxes.
The checkboxes could be regarded as an insult from the web lackeys who are in effect saying that they do not trust people here to behave.