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Wow Forum Users have been Duped!
Scot
Member LegendaryPosts: 24,469
Wow Forum Users have been Duped!
It is a proven leadership tactic that when you want to introduce something unpopular, you first pretend you are going to introduce something even more unpopular. Then you rescind the really unpopular change leaving the one you wanted to get through. Happens in government and business all the time.
A ratings system is going to be unpopular, we have had threads on here before as to why, so I won’t pad this post with reasons. So how do you sell this to the forum users? You pretend you are going to publish their real names with their posts. After the furore erupts you then reconsider and decide not to show the real names. But the ratings system is still going ahead. With a triumphant power to the people feeling WoW forum users have agreed to a ratings system.
One of the best sucker punches I have ever seen in the gaming industry, I wonder how long before MMORPG.com decides to follow suit?
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Shhh. The Jerkoffs might get angry at you for calling out them on their jerking off and abuse the system by rating you down en masse like the jerkoffs they are.
It happens all the bloody time with rating systems. If there's a large enough group of people, they weaponise it like their own personal banhammer. It happened on youtube in debates between atheists and theists (the theists getting a little too banhappy by misusing the copyright infringement flag rather liberally), and it can go just as poorly for WoW if two or more polarized groups get vocal and abusive enough.
All in all though, it's more commonly the case that it gets underutilized, or the jerkoffs are too busy jerking eachother that they can't organize well enough to be a right proper jerkoff mob.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
nm
Take a look at massively.com and wow.com for an excellent example of how ratings systems on forums produce ratings which have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of your post, and everything to do with the popularity of your opinion.
Back in the early days of the MO forum, I and many others would make some unpopular but perfectly valid and non-trollish posts, only to have absolute morons deduct rep points (for those that don't know, it's a forum feature that allows people to give and recieve positive or negative reputation points. In reality, it's used for complete dumbasses to give eachother virtual fistbumps while knocking out dissenting voices).
So now, rather than posting the example of literary genius we know as "your a idiot" in response to something that flies over the dumbtwat's head, they'll get to rate you down.
Believe it or not, though, I see a lot more reasonable people on the WoW forums than on the site of a niche, hardcore game like MO, so maybe this won't be a problem. Government of the people, by the people is great when you include the wider demographics of a nation, but sucks horribly when the majority of those who can affect your rep or ratings fall under the pubescent douchebag category.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Out of curiosity, how do the stars under usernames here on MMORPG get generated?
I think it's posting frequency. Once, I got up to all stars lit, then took a break for a month or two, and when I came back I was down to two stars. I believe the more active at any one time, the more stars. Has nothing to do with a peer rating system, AFAIK.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
I agree. I felt Allakhazam's rating system limited trolling quite well. Not only that, but it encouraged actual content to be produced because content-heavy posts would get big boosts in rating.
Also feel that forums should let users opt-out of bumping the thread when they make a given post. Half of trolling's effectiveness stems from the fact that bad ideas/topics generate way more discussion than good ones, but that the very act of debunking increases the visibility of the bad idea far more than the visibility of the debunking post (and since there's no way of measuring the validity of any given post, simply letting users post without increasing the visibility of the bad post is a great solution.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
ye, rating has its pros and cons. some of the cons I can think of for the rating system is for "noobs". Not everyone understands the first time things like "faq" and such, then people troll them down "ah my gawd u n00b, lulz, use search" bla bla, so instead they rate them down and they won't post at all in the end.
aside fromt that back to the ops thought on the deliberate announcement of something worse which acutally never was meant to be introduced - fascinating thought and I could imagine that there is some truth behind it. but will we ever know? probably not.
Welcome to the tin-foil hat reality, where politeness is seen as weakness and there's always someone out to screw you over. Mistakes are never accidental and Blizzard is trying to take over the world, one dupe at a time.
Jeez guys, seriously, get a grip.
People said thank you to show politeness, and acceptance that Blizzard acknowledges that their idea was flawed. That's called "offering an olive branch". It shows that people are being mature and rational about the situation.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
Well, the case of Allakhazam is very specific:
it's heavily content oriented as in content is the do-all be-all of the site,
said content is right, wrong or irrelevant and there's little room for subjectivity here (unlike on a site like wikipedia, for instance, where a lot of comment pages are just flame-fests)
A more general discussion forum is a totally different beast and, yes, ratings of the latter tend to be more about stating popular opinions than bringing useful insight.
@OP: spot on, almost missed it but that's probably because I look at WoW from afar now.
Well the C&C forums have shown a rating system has flaws. While most trolls ended up having 1-2 stars so did some good posters. Why? because if you posted casualy you just needed to be given a rating of 1 star by some trolls for you to end up with a 1-2 star rating. I myself posted quite frequently so i had an average of 3 stars .
There was almost no one with 4-5 stars simply because there was always a troll giving 1 star to anyone who disagrees . And don't forget the 5 stars some posts could get simply because someone else agreed, even if the post was extremely poor and actually, simply crap.
So at the end it may not be that bad but has its flaws. Sure the trolls were often labeled with a low rating but so were some honest and good posters who just happened to have a different opinion than the low-rating-giving trolls.
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.
Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.
The trick that the OP mentions is without a doubt a very good one, particularly because most people lack the skills or insight to see through it when it happens (so it's definitely a trick I'm gonna keep in mind for future RL occasions
)
Whether it is the case in this situation with Blizzard retracting their decision, that isn't proven and remains to be seen. Even if I'm critical of the whole move they'd planned, I'm not going so far (yet) to suspect that it was all planned from the start.
I didn't swallow Blizzard's argument though that it was purely or mainly because of troll decrease on their forums as so many were eager to believe: it always seemed a weak reason to me, and not making sense considering other alternatives that could've worked better as a solution.
When I look at the measures Blizzard have taken lately, the direction they're heading towards and the comments their top people are making, then the real names on forum seem to be far more likely to be part of a larger strategy to 'Facebookize' WoW and Battle.net, and to move them towards a social network gaming platform in the style of or in cooperation with Facebook.
The idea is a pretty good one (even if one disagrees with it), the way they're moving towards it in the steps they're taking are dubitable.
I guess 'wary' and 'watchful' is the best description for my stance towards Blizzard's execution these days of their strategies for the (near) future
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
so why should i care a flying fecal matter about somone rating me down. I have never botherd with it on any other forum thatv has such a feature so why should i care in WoW
This have been a good conversation
Sites like slashdot and digg have had a good amount of success with ratings systems.
You do tend to get a little groupthink going on, but the flip side of groupthink is that you form a consensus culture and it forces people to pick their battles as to where they want to burn karma rather than being constantly argumentative.
Although tinfoil hat theories are logically impossible to ever completely rule out (everything could be a trick, anyone could be a part of it), I find it very difficult to believe that Blizzard would deliberately do something so unpopular that it makes the mainstream press just to alter the culture of its forums.
it's just the...
.
.
FORUMS!
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Just wanted to point out that it's page 3 already and the OP hasn't replied to any responses. Just sayin. Yknow. Could be a troll y'think?
I can also roleplay the tower in a chess game and shout "is that a peasant at the horizon I see? I will smash it I will! Oh damn I broke one of my merlons!". -- maji
Still page one for me; my settings post 50 replies a page I think it is? As the OP you start the conversation, you don’t comment on every comment, but as I was asked, I will dip in. What Blizzard did is an example of expectation management. Which is what your mum did to you when she told you that you were going to Auntie Jane’s on the weekend, Ok you don’t have to but you have to tidy your room right now.
Problems with a ranking system:
Fnorby – I have just pressed ‘thumbs down’ on your post, you and me can now start a ranking war. Well we could if we had that sort of system. The flame and trolling a ratings system is supposed to stop becomes a ratings war instead.
Fanbois rule and because of that the MMO loses serious criticism of the game. Remember most people don’t use the forums, just because the fanbois like it does not mean most of the player base will like it. This leaves the company running the MMO with no feedback apart from that of yes men.
Did you join this forum to become popular? Or did you do it to find out about MMO’s and tell us what you think about them? A ratings system favours the former, no ranking favours the latter.
With speed of light i would leave such forums simple and never comeback unless they chance system.
Im here to find out about mmo's and vent opinions or read opinions about all kinds of mmo's and mmo gaming world, if its popular or not.
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Sorry, Scot, my bad. I didn't intend to start a flame war or anything like that. It just seemed to me, no offense intended, a silly thing to get worked up about. LIke saying Real ID is "new coke" all over again. I posted before I noticed that your post count makes you an unlikely candidate for a troll, but it did seem to be to be comically unlikely to be a serious post.
Think what you like though... I don't care one way or the other about ratings systems, so I wouldn't consider it evil enough to warrant finding a sneaky way to implement. Back in my /.'er days, I didn't pay any attention to my "karma" or whatever they call it. I've been a totalfark subscriber (premium Fark.com account) for years and never once had a submission greenlighted, and frankly I think people who worry about their greenlight rating or digg score or number of facebook friends or twitter followers are sad and pathetic. But that's just me.
I do see it as a way for some sites to give users control over how much and what degree of stupidity/trash they have to put up with. It works well on /., in my opinion. I've seen it work well on other sites. The idea that it could have a political motivation was (and still is, frankly) a surprise to me.
I can also roleplay the tower in a chess game and shout "is that a peasant at the horizon I see? I will smash it I will! Oh damn I broke one of my merlons!". -- maji
i wore my negative rep with pride
my infraction too!
I only ever notice the stars even here when I get a warning for telling some douche bag that obviously he's being a douchbag and there's a lil' wee bit of the star missing.
It's recovered a little bit!
Plus I'll reiterate.. Who of sound mind, would ever go to the WoW forums? For anything?!
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Its never cool to kid about violent crimes. Please edit your post.
Please continue all discussion concerning Real ID here.
Fortune favours the bold.