# Forums platform



## andlima

Just a suggestion for the WR forums' administrators. :c) Have you ever considered running them on a more modern technology, like StackExchange or something similar?

I think features like allowing votes on answers and scoring people's reputation could both leverage the community contribution and make the best content more accessible.


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## swift

Hi Andlima,

In the earliest phase of WR forums, there was a reputation system, but I think it never really worked. The administrator decided to ban that feature because it was unused.

Regards,


swift


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## Muwahid

WR is running on vBulletin 3.x, they recently released a beautiful new version vBulletin 4.0, it looks light years better, I hope they decide to upgrade this forum; check it out here http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/


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## cuchuflete

andlima said:


> Just a suggestion for the WR forums' administrators. :c) Have you ever considered running them on a more modern technology, like StackExchange or something similar?
> 
> I think features like allowing votes on answers and scoring people's reputation could both leverage the community contribution and make the best content more accessible.



Note:  I offer the following as an active forum member, and not as a moderator.  It's just one man's personal opinion.

Those features are contrary to the ideals of a serious, academic forum.  They are the stuff of socially oriented chatboards.  They do happen to be available with vBulletin, and have been for years.  The administrator of these forums turned them off after trying them, and finding them to be of no benefit in terms of the mission of these forums.


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## cuchuflete

Muwahid said:


> WR is running on vBulletin 3.x, they recently released a beautiful new version vBulletin 4.0, it looks light years better, I hope they decide to upgrade this forum; check it out here http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/



If you read the conversations at that site carefully, you will see that the current release of V4 is still very buggy.  I expect that this forum will continue its historical upgrades, but after the code is stable.


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## Muwahid

Yeah, every script has bugs though. It's deemed stable and can operate communities, the most bugs I read were more SEO oriented, or bugs the common user wouldn't encounter,  their main forum is on vb4 so it can't be too bad right?


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## cuchuflete

vB4 was, as of a few days ago, very buggy.  It looks like they rushed the release.  In any event, the pattern the administrator has followed for years is to upgrade fairly soon after a new release comes available, rather than being a guinea pig the day the code is unleashed.

Whether the outfit that sells the licenses thinks it is "deemed stable" or not, many experienced users have concerns, and prefer to wait until it is more polished. Have a look:  http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/foru...Problems-and-Troubleshooting/page2&order=desc

 WordReference is currently on V3.8.4.


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## Vanda

Como o Cuchu, vou falar como forera. Também sou contra votos a favor e contra as melhores - ou até piores - respostas às perguntas, André. Não é um fórum de competição para quem sabe mais, mas de aprendizagem e, no final das contas, todo mundo tem algo a acrescentar. Aprendemos até de quem não sabe nada. 
E agora como moderadora: você não imagina os problemas que temos que lidar - no bastidor - quando alguém começa a agir como 'the best' e começa a aprovar e a desaprovar - fazendo julgamentos pessoais - as respostas dos outros foreros.


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## swift

Hi,

I agree with Vanda: votes are worthless, they promote competition; competition, in turn, leads to contention.

If you really appreciate a translation, an explanation or a comment, you can always send a PM to acknowledge or congratulate its author, don't you think so?

Regards,


swift


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## andlima

Thanks for the feedback. :c)

Well, I think you guys are missing some points, so let me insist a little bit.

The mechanism for voting and earning reputation need not to be that simple, it can include ways of preventing abuse. Maybe you're not familiar with the technology I mentioned before. You must earn some reputation before voting up, even more to vote down (and you actually have to spend some of your own score to do it, which acts like friction), etc. It's proving to be a successful platform for Q&A sites on the web.

The idea is not to create competition in the bad sense... Maybe something like "let's see who runs faster" arises, but it's not quite the same of "let's trip one another." Anyway, the main purpose is to generate better content. Don't you think it's an excellent way of tracking down what the community as a whole prefer or what some reputable people have to say?

Maybe I'm wrong, and my suggestion might actually not fit these forums mission. I just think that's something worth considering. Have in mind there are some successful Q&A user-generated content sites (directed to specific subjects, like WR is) that use this very approach.


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## Sowka

Hello andlima 



andlima said:


> Anyway, the main purpose is to generate better content.


 
In my opinion, this is based on the assumption that today, without such a voting system, we would *not *generate the best content. Why should this be the case? If everybody writes what he or she knows and thinks at a given point of time, supporting their views with the best sources they can think of -- this *is *simply the best content that we can come up with at that time.

And that's what we are doing. 


> Don't you think it's an excellent way of tracking down what the community as a whole prefer or what some reputable people have to say?


 
I think that such a rating system could be rather misleading. A suggestion that is lowly rated because few people would prefer it in general might be the best choice for your specific translation problem. If you saw the rating, you might not even consider this variant and thus miss your best chance.


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## swift

Sowka said:


> I think that such a rating system could be rather misleading. A suggestion that is lowly rated because few people would prefer it in general might be the best choice for your specific translation problem. If you saw the rating, you might not even consider this variant and thus miss your best chance.



 Good point !


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## cuchuflete

Sampling error is a statistician's term for all that can and does go wrong when there is no control over sample selection in a universe of potential respondents.  The problems with 
"...what the community as a whole prefer..." are manifold:

1) The universe is heterogeneous, with skills and knowledge levels ranging from accomplished scholars to raw beginners, native and non-native alike;

2) Those who participate in any given thread are a non-random sample of that ill-defined universe: they are not representative of the universe, or community of members;

3) Those who might choose to vote, or award points or demerits to a post or thread are
a non-random selection from the unrepresentative sample described in #2, above.

4) Many people might read a thread, see what they believe to be a superb answer, and then either:

a. give a vote of approval to a wrong answer that is glib and well-presented, or
b. nod their heads with an approving smile, and not bother to vote for a great answer nor condemn a terrible one
​And on and on...

The fundamental flaw with such community shows of "like/dislike" are that they are in no way representative of the community as a whole, much less of the better qualified members of the community.  They are nothing but an unrepresentative, and relatively minute, record of those few who care to express any opinion at all, whether well-informed or ignorant.


Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?


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## andlima

Hi, Sowka.



Sowka said:


> Hello andlima
> 
> In my opinion, this is based on the assumption that today, without such a voting system, we would *not *generate the best content. Why should this be the case? If everybody writes what he or she knows and thinks at a given point of time, supporting their views with the best sources they can think of -- this *is *simply the best content that we can come up with at that time.
> 
> And that's what we are doing.



It's not just about the community doing its best. It's also about this content's visibility. As an analogy, Google's search engine have not surpassed Altavista's because it indexed more sites, but because it made it easier for people to get the information they wanted. That's what I call better content.

Put the same community we have here, with competent people trying their best, on a forum with different features, and you could end up with a better or worse content.

WR is the best language forum online available, but there's always room for improvement.



Sowka said:


> I think that such a rating system could be rather misleading. A suggestion that is lowly rated because few people would prefer it in general might be the best choice for your specific translation problem. If you saw the rating, you might not even consider this variant and thus miss your best chance.



I agree that eventually it would be the case, but I don't think it would be so often as to make the threads poorer in general.

On the other hand, in the current forums there could happen that one would not see the perfect suggestion just because it's on the 7th page. On the other system, such a good answer could be more visible for having a good general approval or because it was pointed out by a highly reputed person.


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## andlima

Hi, cuchuflete,



cuchuflete said:


> Sampling error is a statistician's term for all that can and does go wrong when there is no control over sample selection in a universe of potential respondents.  The problems with
> "...what the community as a whole prefer..." are manifold:
> 
> (...)
> 
> The fundamental flaw with such community shows of "like/dislike" are that they are in no way representative of the community as a whole, much less of the better qualified members of the community.  They are nothing but an unrepresentative, and relatively minute, record of those few who care to express any opinion at all, whether well-informed or ignorant.



You gave a very sound argument on why a vote system is hardly representative of a community's preference. However, my point has little to do with that. Sorry for the inappropriate "what the community as a whole prefer". I meant it in a very rough sense.

What I don't agree is that such systems will necessarily fail to give a better overall  vision on merits than a system that simply ignores it. Bringing again my previous example using Google: there's no guarantee that better ranked pages are actually better just because more (better ranked) pages link to it, but it's acceptable, what we want are better answers.

Do you think StackExchange's system is particularly poor? Or do you think that systems which try to track reputation are inherently worse than those which ignore it?


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## cuchuflete

andlima said:


> Hi, cuchuflete,
> 
> 
> 
> You gave a very sound argument on why a vote system is hardly representative of a community's preference. However, my point has little to do with that. Sorry for the inappropriate "what the community as a whole prefer". I meant it in a very rough sense.
> 
> What I don't agree is that such systems will necessarily fail to give a better overall  vision on merits than a system that simply ignores it. Bringing again my previous example using Google: there's no guarantee that better ranked pages are actually better just because more (better ranked) pages link to it, but it's acceptable, what we want are better answers.
> 
> _* Do you think StackExchange's system is particularly poor? Or do you think that systems which try to track reputation are inherently worse than those which ignore it?*_



I think that systems which track "reputation" are inherently irrelevant in attempting to assess the quality of a contribution to a forum.  As I explained above, participation in such assessments or assignments of reputation scores or rankings suffers from sampling bias, including non-participant bias.  People, both the competent and the not-so-competent (and these classifications cannot be based on the votes of either or both of these two categories!) will not consistently or uniformly review all threads and posts.  Nor will they express preferences in all threads they read.

In statistical terms, we will have a scatter diagram on a multitude of axes.  A regression line, if one could be drawn, would offer no useful insight.

I'll risk offending or amusing some readers with an analogy.  The universe of potential participants are the citizens of voting age in a democracy with a multitude of major and fringe political parties.  Some choose to register to vote.  Some do not.  

Of the group that registers to vote, some cast ballots; others sit on their thumbs. Of those who cast ballots, some choose a candidate based on his or her appearance, while others focus on attempts to evaluate the quality of promises made.  Still others vote for the candidates best known to them.

When the elections are over, the chosen members of parliament include some who are quite good, many who are barely competent.  A few scoundrels and horse thieves sit side by side with the many average parliamentarians and the few especially good ones.

Elevating—or reducing, if you will—this process to mouse clicks doesn't change its fundamental flaws.

----------------------------

Now let's look at this from an entirely different perspective, that of the user groups.  These forums serve a diverse clientele.
Some readers are beginning students of a second or third or fourth language.  Others are highly advanced, near-native in languages other than their mother tongue.  Still others are monolingual.  They come to the forums for such varied reasons as dictionary look-ups for simple terms, in search of explanations of arcane points of grammar, for help with pronunciation of
a word in one or more dialects, etc.

Assume, for a moment, that a ranking system were rational, logical, balanced and fair.  Some very long and complex threads with a wealth of nuance on the fine points of an expression might rank very highly.  Those same threads might be off-putting or even useless to many students.  

What improvement in the quality of the forums might we expect from such misleading 'reputations'?  Another analogy comes to mind:  Some would-be owners, together with automotive journalists, mechanics, and safety experts join together to rank car brands.  Audi, BMW, Cadillac and Volvo (in alphabetical order) all score highly.  A customer for a basic family sedan reads the scores.  She snorts with bitter mirth.  Another customer, this one needing a pickup truck that can haul logs and plow snow, reviews the rankings and mutters something spicey.  

I suspect that more precise thread titles would do a lot more to improve the usefulness of forum discussions that any elaborate ranking system.


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## TrentinaNE

cuchuflete said:


> I suspect that more precise thread titles would do a lot more to improve the usefulness of forum discussions that any elaborate ranking system.




Amen!  Along with cleaning up multiple threads (some of which are utterly useless) about the same phrase. 

Elisabetta


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## mkellogg

We had a thread rating system.  It was quite basic.  People would create a thread, then immediately vote it five stars to give it five stars.  If they feared that it would get low votes from others, they would write all their friends to rate it five stars as well.  In the end it was meaningless.

I think andlima is referring to votes on posts/"answers", not threads.  In theory, I like the idea, but in reality, I don't think it would work that well.  The main problem is that many of the people who actually vote are "not very bilingual" and might not choose well.  Maybe someday, I'll find an implementation that I like and try it here.

Mike


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