I suggest that non-donors should be allowed to vote on comics, but their vote counts as a 'non-donor' score but the existing score on the comic should stay as the donor vote and all votes by donors are the 'donor score'.

Simerlar thing with comic comments, allow non-doners to make comic comments, but a star should be next to all comments by donors. Or possibly have an accept next to non-donor's comments in order to let the user allow certain comments.

Please add any additions to my suggestion.

Why?

I know that sounds all rude and stuff, but you're a donor. You already have access to all this. Why is it that you want this? Just to have someone post more comments and ratings on your comics?

I have no objection to your first suggestion -- the non-donor comic score -- although I agree with chicka that I don't know why anyone would want that.

I do object to non-donor comic comments.  I don't think it would be good to let just any schmuck comment on comics.  Some 14-year-old would go through every one of someone's comics with inane strings of profanities.  It's inevitable.  Plus, being a donor has to keep some of its perks.

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not_Scyess wrote:

Some 14-year-old would go through every one of someone's comics with inane strings of profanities.

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And this is different from normal how?

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ivytheplant wrote:

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not_Scyess wrote:

Some 14-year-old would go through every one of someone's comics with inane strings of profanities.

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And this is different from normal how?

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Well, that's a good point. But there would be more of it if you didn't have to throw Brad some dough to get the privilege of flinging teh poo.

I think also that non-donors rating comics would be okay if it were a separate score as suggested.

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ivytheplant wrote:

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not_Scyess wrote:

Some 14-year-old would go through every one of someone's comics with inane strings of profanities.

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And this is different from normal how?

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...in that there are fewer donors than non-donors so the chances of it happening are lessened.  If there are 10000 accounts and 100 are donors, you've cut the chances of stupid shit on your comic pages by 99%.

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not_Scyess wrote:

Some 14-year-old would go through every one of someone's comics with inane strings of profanities.

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And this is different from normal how?

But how will I get my daily recommended dose of "UR COMIKS FUKIN SUCK GO DIE IN A FIRE ASSWAD OWN3D BITH"?

Well, being a non-donor, I totally agree (obviously), only to the point that I would really like to tell everyone how good their comics are.  I'm not the type of person who likes to rant at random people's comics because they suck.  I just tell them in the forum, like everyone else >.<

It'd be nice, and, as everyone else stated, the seperate score would make it just perfect.  That way, they won't get intertwined and make everybody all confused 'n stuff.  It'll really give the non-donors (the ones who are, at least, nice) a chance to comment on their favorite comic creators.

Again, I totally agree on this.

  ...or you could just donate a couple of bucks, ya cheap bastard.

Plus, donating is easier now that I can just use my debit card, rather than trying to remember what my damned password is for paypal.

Well, I can't donate at the moment, because, currently, I'm paying for Runescape mebership and World of Warcraft (yes, I AM lazy, but that's beside the point).

My lesser and unpointed out point is that it'd be easier for those who WANTED to donate, so they can get a feel or taste of what it's like to donate.  Then maybe more would donate, who knows?  It's just me.

Besides, I just joined this site on Novemberish.  So cut me some slack, 'kay?  I'll bake my cookies later.

Heh, spend a month on gnomz and see if you still want to give non-donors more priviliges.

Well, sorry if they caused yall problems, but I assure you, I'm probably the only one that won't.  Hell, if I get my job back, I'll start donating.  But that's not for another five weeks.

In the meantime, I guess I'll have to live with not having priveleges.  But you know I'll just suggest this again when I START donating :P

And it's weird that a donater actually suggested this O-o

I think donors should get to decide who lives and who dies.

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gabe_billings wrote:
I think donors should get to decide who lives and who dies.

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Hey Brad, can you code a dome into the site for us to sit in? Possibly include thunder.

Well, as that all may be true, it stands to reason that there are few actual non-donors who don't initiate plan 'your comix sux0rs'.

I'm not saying I'm not one of 'em, but...

:D

The problem I can see with this is the whole multiple-user things. I know that a lot of people have gotten rid of their non-donor persona's (or perhaps still have them, or never had them to begin with), but something could happen like what happened back when IRC got taken away and the whole site asplode. A user with multiple accounts downplaying someones comics with a string of "bad" votes, as opposed to only having one time to vote.

That's just me though. To some it may benefit to have the option of non-donors voting.

What about restricting one vote per email to each account?

Or we could take the Special Olympics route and rate all comics '10' so that everyone is a winner.

And then we could go to McDonald's for french fries and milkshakes.

I suddenly have a hankerin for a McDonalds Milk Jug. Nothing says milk like "May contain vegetable and animal parts."

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myles1890 wrote:
What about restricting one vote per email to each account?

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I think that's a ridiculous idea. The fact is, donating has perks. I kind of wish that we still had the "donate or be invited to forums" thing. If we start giving away all of these donor perks to non-donors, then wtf is the point in donating? The site would be run to the ground because only brad would be footing the bill, and it would make a lot of people sad.

Eh, I'm not arguing anymore.  I gots to gets me some ideas for new comics.

Good luck with this topic, mate.

There was a time when there were no perks involved in donating and you did it out of the goodness of your heart.

I'd say that if you're dying to rate someone's comics and you can't afford the price of a cup of coffee to become a donor then perhaps a nice message saying "I really like your comics." would suffice.

Maybe there are people that live and die by the fact that their comics have been highly rated, but I'm guessing most people don't care that much. I bet a kind word would be, if anything, more appreciated.

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<strong><a href="../comics/HotRodDeathToll" class="ul">HotRodDeathToll</a></strong> wrote:
I suggest that non-donors should be allowed to vote on comics

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and those people who are saying "donate a few bucks" are missing it. the ability to rate will bring exposure to the site and then the added perks of donating will get them to do so. if you think there aren't enough perks to donate if you open up rating to all, you haven't been paying attention to how many new people ask "how do i delete a comic" or "how do i edit a comic"

p.s. one score. not a donor and non-donor score. too elitist and ineffectual. ineffectual because it assumes the donor score will be the more highly regarded one, and this won't be the case since the number of votes for the non-donor score will quickly dwarf the number for the donor score. who gives a shit what 100 people think compared to what 1500 think. the only way to care is to polish up that word elitist. lose/lose proposition

Well, the main reason for the donor-only voting isn't because of quality. It's because of cheating. People will create lots of dummy accounts just to vote their junk up. At least right now you have to pay for your dummy accounts.

I'd love to open it up to everyone but I have a feeling it would create way more work for me and there would be a lot more complaints of stupid voting bullshit.

Though if anyone has any suggestions, I'm definitely interested. 

Say, could you take that donation I just sent and split it up into 30 separate $1 donations, and credit each of those to the 30 dummy accounts I just set up?

Top Rated, here I come!

The easiest thing would be to have a 30 probation period before non-donors can vote, and just run a usermap system. Then come down hard on anyone caught cheating.

As for allowing comments by non-donors- I can see this resulting in little viagra ads below our comics.

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Brad wrote:
Well, the main reason for the donor-only voting isn't because of quality. It's because of cheating. People will create lots of dummy accounts just to vote their junk up. At least right now you have to pay for your dummy accounts.

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i hear ya, but that's pretty sad commentary. i mean, who the hell cares if your comic is high rated if you're the one that put it there? congratulations, you like your own comic. whoopity shit.

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It's true, it's ridiculous. But people will do it just to piss off everyone else. And then your rating system means zero.

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could you do something like one vote per ip? people could still find ways around that but it would probably reduce the problem because they'd have to work for it

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That'd help a bit, though it's not too hard to get around that these days.

One idea I thought of would be to make the ratings/rating history public so that the honest/disgruntled users can track down cheaters instead of it being my job.

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Brad wrote:

One idea I thought of would be to make the ratings/rating history public so that the honest/disgruntled users can track down cheaters instead of it being my job.

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Then you'll introduce the era of retaliatory voting. Get ready for drama.

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mandingo wrote:

could you do something like one vote per ip? people could still find ways around that but it would probably reduce the problem because they'd have to work for it

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The problem with that is if multiple people who live together, not everyone gets a vote. And anyone who shares the same public terminals (library, internet cafe, etc) or are on a campus network would be out in the rain. That's happened a lot in Kingdom of Loathing. Multiple accounts show up on the same IP and all the accounts get hosed for multi abuse, even though it's a campus network and they're different people.

Not that a lot of people on SC share IPs, but there have been a few. Me and boorite, Chicka and Nate, mandingo and Twi, Lucky and Humpenstein, arsg and Cities (i think?), etc.

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choadwarrior wrote:

Then you'll introduce the era of retaliatory voting. Get ready for drama.

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And that's different from normal how? 

Not that it matters, but it's fun for me to mention: Nate has no idea how the voting system works yet. He still needs my help to make a comic. Which is why he hasn't had any new material in a while. Once he discovers how these forums work, watch out.

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attitudechicka wrote:
He still needs my help to make a comic.

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Can he tie his own shoes?

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<font face="verdana" size="2"><font face="verdana" size="2">Brad wrote:
One idea I thought of would be to make the ratings/rating history public so that the honest/disgruntled users can track down cheaters instead of it being my job.

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ivytheplant wrote:
The problem with that is if multiple people who live together, not everyone gets a vote.

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I think making votes public is a baaaaad idea, either it's going to up the agro or result in everyone voting each other "good" so that they don't get a bad rating themselves (which is pointless). As it stands if users want their feelings known they can leave a comment. It's also difficult considering people interpret the rating system differently- In the past I've rated comics "okay" even though I thought they were "good", but didn't feel they were on par with the comics I've rated "good". The other question is should previous votes be revealed or removed (like when the comments went public). The former isn't really fair to the people that voted assuming it was in confidence, the latter will completely screw up the top-rated list. 

A usermap would solve the problems of people that share an ip- basically it tracks every account/ip that has been used in conjuction, and maps out any relationship between them. What Brad does from there is up to him.

No matter what's changed, if non-donors can vote then people can get around ANY system one way or another. Proxy ip's aren't hard to set up. And to be honest anyone petty enough to do this sort of thing is going to be the sort of asshole to go to any length to do it. And it's not people bumping their own scores that worries me, it's some turd voting down other people's work using 30 accounts.

I think what we really need to ask is - What good can come of this, and what bad can come of this?

There's a lot that can go wrong, and the only positive I can see is that it might get us some more regular users. It could also drive away a lot of the current regulars, or even ruin the site for us all. Every now and then a flame war crops up as it is, if this doesn't cause more it'll certainly make it worse when it happens.

The other thing to think about is that short of changing nothing but opening up voting for non-donors Brad is going to have to put in a lot of work making the changes/fixing bugs etc. Even assuming he wants to do this, is this really what we'd most like him to be doing with his time? I can think of a dozen other features off the top of my head I'd rather see- ranging from cusomisable "favourites" drop down in the maker interface to a html editable user profile page to extra panels in our comics.

Brad PLEASE think this through and make sure you know exactly what you're doing before you do it.

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mandingo wrote:

i'd be down for this. it would help with personal accountability so someone doesn't go rating every comic someone did bad just because the guy pissed them off in the forums or scuffed their puma or whatever

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I don't get how that would accomplish any personal accountability.

1) If someone is on a bad-voting spree for one or more users there will be a shitstorm in the forums, on comic comments, and elsewhere, but it won't change the votes. It might even encourage more against people who join in on the turdicane (I just made up that word). How does that hold people who have good comics accountable for bad votes they get because they come to the defense of someone who is getting shit on?

2) If someone votes another comic bad in good faith, but the recipient votes that user's comics bad in retaliation, then how did that hold the good faith user accountable for anything except an honest opinion and the consequences?

3) A troll hell bent on causing turmoil will intentionally vote comics bad just to get attention.

4) This all lead to more complaints to Brad about real and percieved fighting, etc. "He voted me bad because I voted him bad, but I meant it and he didn't blah blah blah BAN HIM!"

5) I think most users vote on comics based on their content and vote on users based on comics/behavior/personality/etc. Making this public would change that and you'd see comic voting take on the same characteristics as user voting. Yes, I know there are people who down-vote comics out of spite, but I honestly think that is a small percentage.

6) I agree with everything Injokester said.

Things have been relatively calm for the past few months. I'd like to see it stay that way.

I agree with Choad and Injokester. Personally I like the way the voting works at the moment, and like Injokester said, I'd rather Brad spent his time adding new and awesome content rather than changing something that really doesn't need changed.

As someone who only VERY recently changed from scumbag non-doner to doner I would say that it was the incentive of cool things like voting and editing that did it. If it had been a non doner thing I probably would not have done so.

I also agree with Injokester. About everything. The site is one of only five I bother looking at these days on a regular basis due to its intelligence, humour and ease of use. To be honest, unless something is VERY wrong/the level of income is just not worth it any more I'd say leave it as it is.

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How does that hold people who have good comics accountable for bad votes they get because they come to the defense of someone who is getting shit on?

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Yeah good points. Public voting is a super bad idea, melodrama city.

I already record all IPs just about everywhere. But as you can see with the trolls that get through (or maybe you can't, the moderators do a great job of swatting them down), it's still a pain in the ass.

And not to mention there's no real incentive to be a dumbass troll but lots of people do it. Having a voting system is like having a troll scoreboard.

How about public voting for current donors just as an experiment (on user rating and comic rating)?

This will result in a smaller shitstorm and give you more data to um, process?

Then you can create a 5-strong panel of invigilator adjudicators with a high comic and moral fibre, mmyers jes lawson etc.

The reason for this would be that if someone thinks they have been rated badly they can 'alert' it to these panelists who can overturn the bad rating if they think poor judgement has been exercised.

Only when each of the 5 panelists have agreed that an unfair vote has been made will the rating be reversed. So resolution on each query will take time but we have plenty of that anyway.

That's Numberwang!

What about converting the current ratings system for comics to five stars rather than an arbitrary score?

Also I agree with a comment made earlier (I think by injokester) about good/okay/bad not really covering what I think about certain comics (rarely if ever would I rate a comic bad, I would probably just not rate it, and some of the comics I have rated okay seem to justify a higher rating.) Whilst no ratings system will ever be perfect, a marks out of ten contributing to an overall star score would be my suggestion for an improvement.

I agree the good/bad/okay system is kind of dumb. I've been toying with the idea of removing the okay and bad ratings to eliminate downvoting. I don't think I ever vote anything okay or bad, I only really care if a comic is good.

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Brad wrote:
I've been toying with the idea of removing the okay and bad ratings to eliminate downvoting.

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I think that's a solid idea.  Then a comic can be "top rated" based on the number of "good" votes it recieves.  Great taste, less drama.

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Brad wrote:
I agree the good/bad/okay system is kind of dumb. I've been toying with the idea of removing the okay and bad ratings to eliminate downvoting. I don't think I ever vote anything okay or bad, I only really care if a comic is good.

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The only downside there is we won't ever see a lot of change in the first page of the toprated- people leave and new members will still vote on the older comics.

What are the chances of having a second toprated list just for comics made in the last month or so? (Then tack on the previous months list below it so it's padded out a little).

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Injokester wrote:
What are the chances of having a second toprated list just for comics made in the last month or so? (Then tack on the previous months list below it so it's padded out a little).

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Pretty good, here you go.

It's not actually just the comics in the past month but instead tallies up votes recorded in the past month and displays that. I can look into the other way if it's an issue. I figure this one actually gives an impression of what people are voting on now.

I'm in agreement with instead of making voting public, we should just tweak the current system. I also get stuck when voting on comics because I'll see one that's good, but not as good as others I rated good, and I'll see one that doesn't deserve a bad, but not quite an okay. Usually I end up just not voting when that happens, which sucks because I'd like to give good votes.

At the very least, if the current rating system could be more synchronized with itself, that would be excellent. There's only 3 choices currently available and yet it maps to a 1-10 rating. That makes my organizoholic mind run screaming. Switching to a 1-10 rating would add more flexibility (or even a 1-5). That way, comics people think are the best thing ever can get 10 votes, and comics people think are good, but not the best thing ever can get whatever varying vote they see fit.

I think someone said all that before, but I'm starting to forget my own name lately.