It seems halfbakery takes the difference of positive and negative votes and shows one croissant for each 4 if the difference is positive or one fishbone if the number is negative.
So I can have a pretty stupid idea, attract a lot of attention by including words such as "nuclear" and if I have 308 positive votes and 300 negative, I get two croissants.
Someone else with a nuclear idea has gets 299 positive votes and 303 negative and he gets a fishbone.
This doesn't seem fair, does it? The ideas are actually very similar in popularity.
Wouldn't it be better to use the ratio of postive:negative votes rather then the difference?-- jmvw, Aug 17 2006 ideas with more than 15 conflicting votes http://www.halfbake..._20conflict_20votesThat is, with more than 15 votes for and against. On first observation, if you're aiming for conflict, sex will get you further than engineering. [jutta, Aug 17 2006] 1/0 = infinity buns.
0/1 = undefined bones.-- daseva, Aug 17 2006 0/0?-- methinksnot, Aug 17 2006 Ideas are rated on a logarithmic scale, not linearly. Consequently, the effects of this "unfairness" diminish a bit as you get towards higher numbers - most ideas with a lot of croissants would have those in both rating schemas.
Since a very slight swaying to the positive or negative side gets displayed, both ideas in the poster's example would display differently in either case.
Other than that, I think you're right. Can anyone think of a reason *not* to do this?-- jutta, Aug 17 2006 Plus, and I may be kinda wrong here, but it seems that the community tends to balance the overall votes to reflect the general consensus towards an idea. For example, If an idea has equal votes on both sides, but I can clearly make out from the annos and my own discretion that the idea is bunworthy, I will bun it assuredly. That is, there are those who cover the autoboner, and, dare I say, autobunner??-- daseva, Aug 17 2006 Ooh, ooh, I just thought of a reason not to do this: not drawing attention to voting in general.-- jutta, Aug 17 2006 //if you're aiming for conflict, sex will get you further than engineering.//You noticed that, huh?-- angel, Aug 17 2006 //Ooh, ooh, I just thought of a reason not to do this: not drawing attention to voting in general.// - and lots of ideas which would be affected by this - i.e. those with lots of votes - have fairly random voting totals anyway, following the Great Crash of September '04-- hippo, Aug 17 2006 [GumBob] Do you change your vote if you see that the balance swings to the bun or bone later on? Interesting that people can change their votes. I wonder if this would be good or bad if we did this with elections for government: elected officials would never be able to take unpopular measures.-- jmvw, Aug 17 2006 I don't think that anything is unfair here. We are all here on our own free will (and addictions), so whatever jutta decides is the right thing for this place will be the right thing.-- xandram, Aug 17 2006 I'd be happy if we just had one 'Vote' button which arbitrarily assigned the vote to + or - thus making it obvious that votes are pretty much a) meaningless and b) not really what the site is about.-- angel, Aug 17 2006 Just explain to all new visitors to the HalfBakery that the number of croissants or fishbones above an idea is proportional to the logarithm of the absolute difference between positive and negative votes for that idea, shown in croissants if the absolute difference is positive and fishbones if negative, and then everything will be clear... :-)-- hippo, Aug 17 2006 The Halfbakery isn't about voting on ideas, is it? It's about the comments and suggestions, I hope. This proposed change would put more emphasis on voting, if only by drawing attention to it.
We could eliminate voting altogether, keep the annotations, and still have the Halfbakery we know and love and are obsessed with. If we eliminated the annotations, and only had voting, this would just be some crazy place for wackos with odd egos.
Having raved that, I'll just say that I see no need to change the vote/symbol allocation. I won't object if [jutta] does it, either.
(I assume that changing would have to work retroactively on old ideas, as they still get votes now and then. That may affect the croissants of some cherished ideas.)-- baconbrain, Aug 17 2006 I think linear is better than ratios at low numbers of votes, before the voting pattern has credibility. Like if an idea is -1, +4, is that truly a +400% croissant ratio? Better to conservatively assign it a half-croissant until the votes have more statistical significance.
Once there are 30 votes you can assign it full credibility and switch to ratio analysis; at intermediate stages perhaps a weighted average of linear and ratios can be used.-- phundug, Aug 17 2006 // sex will get you further than engineering.// A good rule for life, I feel.-- moomintroll, Aug 17 2006 [jmvw] People do change their minds about things. One of my ideas had 2.5 croissants once and a few weeks later had gone down to 2. Seeing it wasn't a recent idea, I was puzzled at first. All I can think of is that someone changed their mind about their original vote, but it didn't change my invention or any annos. I would like to see this happen with government elections so I'm giving it a bun!-- xandram, Aug 17 2006 ////That may affect the croissants of some cherished ideas.//... which shouldn't be a problem since its not about voting, right, [baconbrain]? //
Right. For me, at least. I didn't say that I was the one cherishing the ideas. Some folks might be concerned, though, and I wanted to point out that it could happen. Thanks for emphasizing that.-- baconbrain, Aug 17 2006 //Once there are 30 votes you can assign it full credibility// why does 30 votes represent a credible idea.-- jhomrighaus, Aug 17 2006 I picked 30 because it takes a significant amount of time for an idea to amass that many votes. Most ideas receive fewer than that and then get buried under a pile of newer ideas, and must get "re-bumped" before they acquire more votes and hit the "30" mark.
But you have a point... maybe the credibility should be in terms of the idea's age, not its vote count.-- phundug, Aug 17 2006 phundug: Aren't we in entirely the wrong place to be talking about an idea's credibility?!-- DrCurry, Aug 17 2006 Uhh... that's kinda what the standard purpose is, right?
I don't see anywhere in the help file that a submitted idea must contain incredible elements. Indeed, this is discouraged.-- daseva, Aug 17 2006 Well, I guess we could spend a few pages finely parsing the meaning of "poorly thought-out"...-- DrCurry, Aug 17 2006 Are there really 608 users?-- jellydoughnut, Aug 17 2006 Hmm... Ok, then. Previous anno partially rescinded.-- daseva, Aug 18 2006 Hah, Voting Eh? It's just a waste of time. You would never catch me voting. Why would I want to do that? Fish [-].-- Ling, Aug 18 2006 PS I didn't actually vote.-- Ling, Aug 18 2006 Couldn't care less +--- DrBob, Aug 18 2006 I like both the low emphasis on the voting and the fact that it's there. It's a mild indication of how people like an idea. The total amount of votes also tells you something about the interest the idea generated. Of course none of this necessarily means it's a good idea.
[Braubeaton], you said it well, but would you remove the voting altogether? If not, would it be bad to (possibly) improve it a little bit by using a ratio, at least at higher vote counts?-- jmvw, Aug 18 2006 //There might be room for a third voting icon... the hanging chad, where everyone who views and doesn't vote racks up another "point".//
I would like this option. There have been many ideas that I have voted +/- that I wasn't really 100% on my vote. A "I voted but my vote is neutral" would be a nice touch.
//Do you change your vote if you see that the balance swings to the bun or bone later on?//
I have never changed a vote because of "swing", but often have changed my vote as the idea becomes clearer by annotation or edits. I have voted against an idea because it was unworkable and then come back to thoughtful annos that clarify and change the idea. I will change my vote to [+] based upon those factors.
Oh, [+] on this idea.-- Klaatu, Aug 18 2006 A variant of this Idea would note that the "logarithmic scale" that [jutta] is only being employed on the NET number of plus or minus votes. This seems to me to be a distortion of the "vote value" respectively assigned to croissants and fishbones.
Consider that if 5 positive votes yields a full croissant, while only 4 negative votes yield a full fishbone, then, logically, one negative vote really equals 1.25 positive votes. Therefore an Idea that has one of each type of vote should display a half-fishbone --not be a neutral display. Technically, a neutral display would be the result of 5 positive votes and 4 negative votes, see?
So, based on the above logic, the way to control the display of croissants or fishbones is to multiply negative votes by 1.25, and subtract the total from the positive votes, and use THAT "net" to pick the appropriate image (and the picking would now be equal, because of the multiplication-- 5 of those "net" negative votes would yield a whole fishbone).-- Vernon, Dec 08 2014 random, halfbakery