Our hope for the Freethought Forum is to cultivate an environment with the maximum free expression for every member with a minimum of conflict. To that end we have decided to forgo the rigid rules and behavioral guidelines common to discussion forums of this type in favor of providing each member with total control of his or her own experience.
It is fundamental to this goal that every member actively uses the Post Voting system. If you read a post that you find particularly well-argued, articulate, informative, witty, illuminating or otherwise brilliant, please give that post a plus vote. We ask that you keep these standards in mind and take particular care not to vote a post up just because the author is your friend or even sillier, the enemy of your enemy.
By the same token, if you read a post that you find particularly badly argued, shoddily structured, rich in rhetoric but poor in substance, deliberately inflammatory, crassly self-aggrandizing, vituperative, harassing or otherwise crappy, please give it a minus vote. Again, we ask that you make a concerted effort to avoid voting posts down just because you don't like the poster or his ideas.
Here are some specific examples of the kinds of posts we want to see voted down:
Spam: Advertising, excessive personal promotion, repetitious posts
Logical Fallacies: Sometimes hard to spot, sometimes very blatant. Always annoying
Hate Speech: Promotion of racism, sexism, homophobia, and other broadly offensive speech
Egregious violations of netiquette: Anything from virtually unreadable, paragraphless screeds to graphic pictures embedded in a post without warning
Here's a basic rundown of how the Post Voting system works:
Every new post is given a starting value of 25 points. A member can vote one time only for any one post. Every time a member votes (+) or (-) for a post, one point is added or subtracted from the post value. Members can then select to filter posts based on the point value, either by setting a default point value Member Options / Edit Custom Filters, or by selecting "Filter Posts" (which overrides the default setting) in the thread itself.
Every time a member receives or loses a point for a post, his or her "reputation" is impacted accordingly. For every 10 negative points the member loses one point of reputation. Members may choose to filter posts based on the poster's reputation, and if a member's reputation gets dismally low he or she will lose access to the arcade, journals and chat. We want to provide a warm, interesting environment for members who contribute quality content to the community, while giving them every opportunity to avoid those who don't.
The idea is to vote for the quality of the post, not the poster. If a member writes consistently awful posts, he will feel the chill a bad reputation can garner. Redemption is always possible, of course, but it requires consistently good posts to counter the history of glurge. Getting a few cronies to throw reputation at you and bump you back up is not possible here, because the default vB reputation system has been modified so only post votes can affect it.
We believe this system will not only allow the individual members to determine a preferred signal-to-noise ratio for their own reading pleasure, but it will empower the entire community - Admins, prolific posters, occasional participants, readers with zero postcounts alike - to create a culture of civility and respect amidst the free and open exchange of ideas, while actively discouraging behaviors which can cripple discourse and poison the atmosphere.
Through the Post Voting system, everyone has a voice here, even those who choose not to speak out loud.
Last edited by viscousmemories; 07-20-2004 at 02:25 AM.
Freethought Forum Voting System
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