Samildanach Posted:

That’s some awesome anecdotal evidence. I’m entirely willing to think that people will upload a submission and downvote everyone else’s. I don’t recall hearing of a preponderance of cases where they upvote one single submission and downvote all others, with the possible exception of the Bashy Bashing fora. Admittedly, I’m new.

In other words, it’s not that I don’t believe the behaviour exists, it’s the “most people” to which I object. Although I also don’t know of any reason why someone with five alts should get 5 times the upvotes, even given the elimination of downvoting.

It’s one vote per submission per registered account, not per alt.

If we’re so concerned about very special amounts of downvotes, the solution could be as simple as tying in what votes count to your voting status.

If you’re a brown nose, your positive votes don’t actually count. You’ll see the number and think they make a difference, but they don’t. Likewise, for whatever the negative version of a brown nose is, your negative votes don’t count.

then favorable and unfavorable would have half of your positive/negative votes count, or will only count them when you’ve voted negative/positive at least once.

Fair voters get normal vote counts.

Another buildr round, another immediate 6 downvotes on both. Cool.

I forgot about this thread!!

Haha this was from back when I card about buildr and about making quality subs to make the game better. *sigh* Those were the days, huh? Now it’s all really ****ty subs because none of the good buildr people try anymore. I hope you guys are happy with the ****pile you’ve turned buildr into.

Also if you eliminate downvoting you’ll probably see a HUGE increase in the quality of submissions received every week. With the downvoting problem still occurring, I think you’ll be hardpressed to find anyone with talent willing to spend any amount of time on a decent submission when they know it’s just going to be downvoted immediately. Enjoy your ****ty buildrs, too bad cause they used to be awesome fun.

Advocato Posted:

Again, ridiculous. The current submission far, far in the lead (for the Van Gogh Tattoo) has clearly been lifted from http://thedailydairy.com/2008/03/she-ate-bluuuuuuuuue-velvet/

Hell, it was the 4th image listed in a google search for ‘bloody ear’. Are people even trying anymore?

Continued again today. 4 submissions were exactly the same picture when I did my voting.

I’ve only been watching itembuildr for like two weeks now, and it’s already glaringly obvious to me that all the things people have complained about in here need to be fixed. The presence of elimination via downvoting, coupled with the fairly heavy level of competition, means that the majority of the worthwhile submissions are eliminated almost immediately. There were a few today that I thought were pretty interesting, but they’re either already gone or well on their way out, leaving a handful of mediocre submissions to win by default.

I understand that humor is a very subjective thing, and I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to what could be considered “funny” in a submission, but it’s a rarity that anything of even the remotest quality survives past the first absurd hour of voting. By the end of voting rounds, you’re lucky if there’s any more than two submissions left in either category, and this is ridiculous.

As it stands, itembuildr is basically a lottery system that rewards people for submitting terrible ideas and, by extension, reduces the quality of the overall content we can expect from Episode 3 when it finally rolls around.

It is hard for me to imagine a less funny itembuildr concept than today’s winner (though it’s apparent that there are people who are much more adept than I am at imagining such things). I think I’m going to give up on paying attention to it altogether now; it’s easier to put up with unfunny content when I am blissfully unaware of what the alternatives were. It’s been a fun two weeks, itembuildr — get well soon, little buddy.

mterek Posted:

To be honest, the description was sort of funny, although the item itself is a lame idea and there were better, non-meta ones available earlier.

Something I don’t understand in the vote psychology is that one has to upvote something, then downvote something. When there’s only one item, theoretically people should vote on it if they like it – they have no alternatives to compare, so it’s not a relative thing at all except for other items on the site. So, why do people mbumively upvote the last item standing?

The part that I always find odd, is that when there are 2 choices left, some people will upvote them both. Same overall effect as not voting at all (with the exception being if one was close to being -5ed. But in terms of relative score, upvoting both choices is kind of a waste. Better to pick the one you like better and help it towards winning as best you can (by upvoting your favourite and downvoting the competition).

When there are more still in the running then yes, upvote everything you like the sound of, because the odds are that your one specific favourite won’t be the winner, so you should help your 2nd/3rd/etc choices get ahead as well. But however many options there are, upvoting every one of them (or downvoting every one of them) does nothing for the ranking between them.

The last-choice upvote spree is just a result of people feeling they should vote, but not having any other option to consider… in that situation I tend to just not vote. Especially if it’s in forumbuildr (subject icons for example often have only one choice for quite a while) because then I can save my vote until there’s actually a choice to be made.

BobTheSqueakyWeasel Posted:

It is hard for me to imagine a less funny itembuildr concept than today’s winner (though it’s apparent that there are people who are much more adept than I am at imagining such things). I think I’m going to give up on paying attention to it altogether now; it’s easier to put up with unfunny content when I am blissfully unaware of what the alternatives were. It’s been a fun two weeks, itembuildr — get well soon, little buddy.

I was disappointed… my sub was doing pretty well, almost looked like it was going to take it in the last hour of voting, but then it lost. I thought it was a better idea than what we’ve got, but evidently the voting population disagree. (I take this as proof positive that democracy was a Bad Idea™)