Yeah, yeah... another ratings diary.
I was just commenting in one of the front page stories when the following idea for adding nuance to the comment ratings system came to me: I would like to add a way to balance recommends (say, an "unrecommend" button) and a way to balance troll ratings (say, an "un-troll" button).
Users would no longer have to use recommends to balance out troll ratings, and they would have the ability to express their disapproval over a comment without troll-rating it. The comments would then display the net numbers of recommends and troll ratings, with some appropriate ratio of net recommends to net troll ratings hiding the comment.
Go below the fold for the details.
The detailed idea is as follows: when a trusted user views a comment, four radio buttons will appear where currently there are two: recommend, unrecommend, troll, and not troll. The default state of these buttons will be "off." Trusted users will have the opportunity to choose up to two of these buttons: they can choose to recommend a comment or unrecommend a comment, or do neither (but not both); and likewise, they can choose to troll rate a comment or un-troll rate a comment, or do neither (but, again, not both). Regular users will only be able to recommend or unrecommend a comment.
Essentially, in mathspeak, what we are doing is allowing every user to assign a two-dimensional vector to each comment. The first component of the vector corresponds to recommends, the second to troll ratings. The components of the vectors can take values 0, +1, or -1. The breakdown would be something like this:
(0,0) No Opinion on Recommends, No Opinion on Troll Ratings (default)
(+1,0) Recommend Comment, No Opinion on Troll Ratings
(-1,0) Unrecommend Comment, No Opinion on Troll Ratings
(0,+1) No Opinion on Recommends, Troll Rate Comment
(+1,+1) Recommend Comment, Troll Rate Comment (very unlikely)
(-1,+1) Unrecommend Comment, Troll Rate Comment
(0,-1) No Opinion on Recommends, Un-Troll Rate Comment
(+1,-1) Recommend Comment, Un-Troll Rate Comment
(-1,-1) Un-Recommend Comment, Un-Troll Rate Comment
Trusted users would be able to use all nine possible combinations. Regular users would be able to use only the first three.
The top of the comment would then display the sum of all of these vectors for all users. The result would be that the first number listed would be the net number of recommends, and the second number would be the net number of troll-ratings. A user could click on this pair of numbers just as before and see now four lists of names: the recommenders, the unrecommenders, the troll raters, and the un-troll raters.
For the purposes of hiding a comment, these two numbers would work just as before, with the additional rule that, if a comment has a net negative number of recommends (i.e., more unrecommends than recommends), then for the purposes of comment hiding, this comment would be treated as a comment with zero recommends would be treated in the current system (otherwise we would have to deal with negative ratios). Likewise, a comment with a net negative number of troll ratings (more un-troll ratings than troll ratings, though why that would happen I don't know), would be treated just like a comment with no troll ratings would in the current system for the purpose of comment hiding (presumably meaning that it wouldn't be hidden). For example, a comment with the following profile:
3 Recommends
4 Unrecommends
5 Troll ratings
2 Un-troll ratings
would be displayed as (-1/+3), but for the purposes of comment hiding, would be treated as a comment with zero recommends and three troll ratings would be in the current system.
The basic premise behind this suggestion is the following: sometimes I want to balance out the recommends on a comment, but I don't believe a troll rating is warranted. In the current system, I have no recourse but to ignore the comment. With this new system, I can click on "unrecommend" and do exactly what I wanted to do in the first place, i.e., balance out the recommends.
Similarly, sometimes I think that a comment has been unfairly troll rated, but I strongly disagree with the comment and do not think that it should be recommended. Right now, the best I can do is recommend the comment and write a reply that clearly states that I do not in any way condone the message in the comment. With this new system, I simply click on "un-troll" and voilà, I've balanced out one of the troll ratings without in any way indicating that I agree with the comment.
I suppose that under this new system, someone could simultaneously recommend a comment and troll rate it. I can't think of a reason to do so off the top of my head, but someone else might think of a reason why this combination is appropriate, and that's the fundamental point being addressed with this suggestion: recommends and troll ratings are basically independent of each other. Now clearly some of the combinations of recommend/unrecommend and troll/un-troll would be far more likely than others, so the two are not completely independent, but they are far more independent than the current system (or even the old 0 to 4 system) allows.
Anyway, I hope that this suggestion makes sense.