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edit: This was not meant to be TL being more like Reddit, as I poorly described in the title which should of been rephrased (and immediately spiked some negative feedback), it is about improving the overall experience us users have, by 'stealing' a concept which in this specific example, Reddit utilizes (by maybe altering it to better suit TL).
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Since I'm sure the TeamLiquid community has grown vastly with the success of StarCraft 2, do you think we have out-grown the fundamentals of how this forum works for it's users?
I can find some brilliant OP's, which can quickly grow to 10, 15, 30+ pages, which instantly make me lose motivation to go through unless I really have nothing better to do (I do not mean this in a snobby way, but it can be really time-consuming when I have the choice of spending 45 minutes reading through the same topic, as opposed to going to another blog/thread or actually doing something entirely else).
In the cases where I am bored, or simply really curious/intrigued with the thread, I will gladly start chewing through all the reading material and occasionally and quite oftenly find some very well structured replies from new-comers or long-time respected members, some extremely funny joke which makes me legitimately laugh out loud, or a well-known progamer such as HuK himself, who had a very interesting opinion at the bottom of page 27.
Now this is where I think Reddit does a great job of sorting through the overall quality with their "vote" system. It allows it's readers to quickly get the quality content, without spending much time going through hundreds of users input. I'm not sure at all if this would work if directly implemented into TeamLiquid, and definitely has it's downsides as well, one being where the more "unkown" person such as myself might have less of a word when posting. This is something I like very much about the current methodology - I know for a fact there is a "relatively" high chance that as an example, a progamer I may even be a fan of might fall by this blog and actually READ what this random dude by the name Wordpad has to say from Denmark  . Having a reddit system could maybe sometimes leave a users reply in the dust, despite it being of good quality, simply because enough votes were not taken upon it.
I know we are running a forum, and Reddit can't quite be called a forum, but perhaps we can take some ideas from it, and maybe adapt it so it can work out for us? I know measures have been taken to solve the same issues I am getting into, such as the "blue-poster" feature we now have, but I don't always think it is enough. Perhaps such a vast change as the one I am suggesting, could never work.
Anyway, whatever the result of this, I will not be disappointed if people do disagree, since it was merely a quick idea that just struck me I wanted to share, and I know we have some great people running TL who quickly can assess if my post actually has something to it. Maybe you, the reader of this blog can share another idea which could help towards the issue? Share what's on your mind!
 
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16984 Posts
This has been suggested numerous times in the Website Feedback forum.
The answer is always no.
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Oh in that case, sorry for wasting people's time :/
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On June 29 2011 13:53 Wordpad wrote:
Oh in that case, sorry for wasting people's time :/
It's appreciated that you're making suggestions to better teamliquid, but it's current format has stood the test of time! =]
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Reddit and TL aren't the same thing!
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TL will always be far ahead of Reddit when it comes to SC, so why the heck would we want to be more like them?
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On June 29 2011 14:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
TL will always be far ahead of Reddit when it comes to SC, so why the heck would we want to be more like them?
It's not about being like the "reddit" user-base, it is about changing how our forum works mechanically. The people behind it and what people decide to put into it, would stay the same. It would simply change the way it's viewers used TeamLiquid to read.
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I am not too familiar with Reddit, but from what I have seen (and please correct me if I am wrong here) Reddit also unconsciously rewards those who post soonest in a topic. Obviously the voting helps, but you are more likely to look at something if it has been posted sooner.
The benefit to the TeamLiquid system is that you can have these huge replies, paragraphs at a time, that are actually easy to read (at least for me), whereas the longer replies on Reddit just seem to be a little less likely, a little more difficult to read.
Reddit I find to be much better in terms of banter, and making funny stuff happen. But TeamLiquid seems much more well suited to an ongoing conversation. Unpopular opinions should still be a part of the conversation, if only to make sure all points are responded to.
Also, why make everything the same? Homogeneity does not make things better. I think it is nice that both exist, and that they are different, instead of both existing and being the same.
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I find Reddit's layout horrible. Alot of the good comments acutally never make it to the top, and then when you have like 500 comments or something, its a pain in the ass to read that shit.
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Ah yes I can definitely see some major flaws with that system, it could not work. I don't use Reddit that often myself, but I found it quite nice how it worked when reading through topics that I quickly could find the most useful replies. Damn I was hoping it could be a useful "fix" to those few grey-hair I sometimes start to grow with 50.000 word threads I click into  .. But comeone guys/girls, keep thinking for a bit, can you toss in some other idea's on how we perhaps could find a balance? Brainstorm a bit instead of just denying me
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I've actually been spending a lot of time on reddit, and I have to say that I like the reddit system very much for the comments in a thread, but as for the threads themselves, I'd much prefer them to stay as they are now. I don't like sifting through threads, especially now that TL's "all" feature is gone. I think the reddit style comments would be an interesting experiment though. However, reddit's design is much more of an aggregator than a forum. A balance between the two would be best.
Another problem I see with reddit's system is that most of the time, karma is based only on the opinion of the post, rather than how constructive it is, though this may not be a problem on TL.
A lot of the 'problems' with reddit are not because of the upvote system it uses, but because of the (lack of) moderation, and the fact that anybody can make an account within seconds. The users/community ultimately make the difference, and I think TL's community is radically different in many ways than the reddit community. The one liner comments and memes like "and my axe!" are comments that would get you banned on TL.net for anyways.
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The only think I'd like TL to lift off of reddit is the idea of highlighting the OP's posts in his/her thread. I think it would be super useful especially in long threads like SOTG.
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On June 29 2011 14:08 Wordpad wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 14:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
TL will always be far ahead of Reddit when it comes to SC, so why the heck would we want to be more like them? It's not about being like the "reddit" user-base, it is about changing how our forum works mechanically. The people behind it and what people decide to put into it, would stay the same. It would simply change the way it's viewers used TeamLiquid to read.
Well in that case, the way the threads are set up look ridiculously unprofessional and are a clear step down from TL. Things aren't organized as well, and the white background makes it look aesthetically displeasing too.
I see no reason to change TL in any huge way, let alone towards reddit.
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no i hate the vote system. i'm not sure if you can vote down or not, or if it's just vote up since i never visit. anyways it creates this huge group blobbing(best way i could put it). people are scared to challenge the positive comment. everyone should be weighted the same, and if you respect or like their opinion go defend it instead of adding +1 to it
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On June 29 2011 14:13 FragKrag wrote:
I've actually been spending a lot of time on reddit, and I have to say that I like the reddit system very much for the comments in a thread, but as for the threads themselves, I'd much prefer them to stay as they are now. I don't like sifting through threads, especially now that TL's "all" feature is gone. I think the reddit style comments would be an interesting experiment though. However, reddit's design is much more of an aggregator than a forum. A balance between the two would be best.
Another problem I see with reddit's system is that most of the time, karma is based only on the opinion of the post, rather than how constructive it is, though this may not be a problem on TL.
A lot of the 'problems' with reddit are not because of the upvote system it uses, but because of the (lack of) moderation, and the fact that anybody can make an account within seconds. The users/community ultimately make the difference, and I think TL's community is radically different in many ways than the reddit community. The one liner comments and memes like "and my axe!" are comments that would get you banned on TL.net for anyways.
Exactly I think that is some very nice input, I don't want people here to compare the 2 websites, since that is not what I wan't this to be (should of rephrased blog-title). I know that as you mention, one-liners and lots of other crap can typically be found in reddit, it is more the mechanics behind it which may work out for us, considering the tight rules we have and that people are 'generally' good at obeying them, and the good moderation that we do have that Reddit does not.
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I think an easy way to make it fit would be to disable downvotes. I think the main purpose of downvotes is to get rid of the content that is offensive/badly written/not content, but unlike reddit, TL.net has the benefits of a full, dedicated moderation staff.
Another advantage of the reddit system imo is that you can branch comments. Huge chains of quotes are fucking annoying, and it's really hard to keep track of who said what in quote chains more than 5-6 quotes long.
The branching comments also allows many different conversations to go on at the same time, instead of all being garbled in a single chain.
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On June 29 2011 14:14 Zim23 wrote:
The only think I'd like TL to lift off of reddit is the idea of highlighting the OP's posts in his/her thread. I think it would be super useful especially in long threads like SOTG.
This is a very subtle change but could indeed be a very nice thing to "steal". We don't even have to go as far as to highlight it, but at the very least have an icon in the title which indicated that the person was the the thread creator.
On June 29 2011 14:27 FragKrag wrote:
I think an easy way to make it fit would be to disable downvotes. I think the main purpose of downvotes is to get rid of the content that is offensive/badly written/not content, but unlike reddit, TL.net has the benefits of a full, dedicated moderation staff.
Another advantage of the reddit system imo is that you can branch comments. Huge chains of quotes are fucking annoying, and it's really hard to keep track of who said what in quote chains more than 5-6 quotes long.
The branching comments also allows many different conversations to go on at the same time, instead of all being garbled in a single chain.
You should take over my blog, that was a great idea and you have some very valid points
On June 29 2011 14:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 14:08 Wordpad wrote:On June 29 2011 14:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
TL will always be far ahead of Reddit when it comes to SC, so why the heck would we want to be more like them? It's not about being like the "reddit" user-base, it is about changing how our forum works mechanically. The people behind it and what people decide to put into it, would stay the same. It would simply change the way it's viewers used TeamLiquid to read. Well in that case, the way the threads are set up look ridiculously unprofessional and are a clear step down from TL. Things aren't organized as well, and the white background makes it look aesthetically displeasing too. I see no reason to change TL in any huge way, let alone towards reddit.
Just to discuss with you (I am not trying to be biased, this is just for the better of our forums and just want to give some examples), what if we changed absolutely nothing with the organizing, the background and everything else, simply what threads looked like inside when you clicked into them? I don't want anything you mention to change and I think you dislike reddit which I can completely understand, but think some more about the sole feature by itself, which I am referring to. It could possibly be for the better. We will never be anything like reddit and I dont want it to either!
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After reading the Title, i shout a loud and booming NO!
After reading the actual post, and as stated by everyone else, there are some good things about both forums, but i really love the TL look, and the way it just works. Answer is still, imo, NO!
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I've read these arguments and suggestions about TL being like Reddit thousands of times, so I generally have nothing more to add than the fact that TL is already like a belated Reddit with all the topics almost always coming from reddit (and the same comical/witty remarks).
That's the closest you'll get to TL being like Reddit :3
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Personally, I think forcing people to read an entire thread before posting a comment allows people to digest things, before chiming in with any comments of their own. And this a forum, where you should be allowed to voice your opinion, no matter when you joined or how many posts you have. However, in the strategy section there are highlighted viewers. Maybe in limited sections like strategy and tech support knowledgeable users could be highlighted, but as a whole, I disagree with any system like this implemented.
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Both systems have its pros and cons, and I visit both TL and Reddit regularly.
The biggest issue I have with reddit is the hivemind mentality. Since there is little to no moderation, its easy for polarized opinions to get out of control and a lot of ESPORTS figures get a lot of hate from time to time, and then the entire community forgets about it the next day. The upvote and downvote system is suppose to remove spam, but most of the time people just downvote the opinions that disagree with them.
A clear example that comes to mind is that some people were having issues with the NASL Open, and Xeris came to comment in the thread about the situation. He was then downvoted to oblivion even though he was giving a statement on behalf of the NASL tournament. Even though you may agree with his reasoning or not, I thought it was a bit out of hand because you should at least up vote these opinions for everyone to see, not silence them.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
No
Cause we get memes and shit all over the place.
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I find reddit like a labyrinth where you can get any overview between comments, you have to folow those tiny lines to see which post that post responded to, which makes it unlikely that people will read the whole thread which is allmost allways a necessary thing.
Thumbs system would just make me annoyed as hell. Idk why, it just would.
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To be honest I don't visit reddit, so I don't know. What I will say, is that if you are going to ask a question, provide a poll so you can get an answer.
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I don't really feel that the topic is a complete waste of time, but I'm quite sure this is never ever going to happen. I personally would be exceptionally disappointed if it did.
I feel that some sort of up/downvote system would perhaps be acceptable, as long as it didn't reorganize the order of the posts in the thread in any way. I'd go about listing the pros/cons but most of them have already been written in this thread or elsewhere.
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On June 29 2011 14:53 krndandaman wrote:
I think having a thumbs up/thumbs down option on comments would be nice.
Like for example if I post something in tech support and some guy posts advice but I see a million thumbs down, I'd safely assume the guy had no idea what he was talking about.
R1CH is way ahead of you!
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=215432
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On June 29 2011 13:53 Wordpad wrote:
Oh in that case, sorry for wasting people's time :/
no problem
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Reddit's system is cool in it's own right, but I prefer TL's format over it any day.
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On June 29 2011 15:29 Kipsate wrote:
No
Cause we get memes and shit all over the place.
This is more a victim of the people who are doing the posting/upvoting rather than the system at fault.
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On June 29 2011 15:49 Danjoh wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 14:53 krndandaman wrote:
I think having a thumbs up/thumbs down option on comments would be nice.
Like for example if I post something in tech support and some guy posts advice but I see a million thumbs down, I'd safely assume the guy had no idea what he was talking about. R1CH is way ahead of you! http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=215432
The wizard strikes again!
Very very nice...
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Posts worth viewing will almost always get bumped to the top.
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Ehh, maybe if only people who have been here for over a year, have over 500 posts and havent got banned can Upvote/Downvote posts.
Otherwise, no
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My argument against this is always that if people are capable of writing bad posts, they'll be even more capable of voting for bad posts.
It will be even worse because all the people who don't usually post will get to express their opinion in a cheap and easy way by just voting. If you want to have an input or express your opinion, you should at least have to make an effort to actually present your arguments in words. Because otherwise, why would we care? Unargumented (apparently this is not a real word, wtf? ;P) opinions are really not worth anything.
On June 29 2011 15:12 atombombforpeace wrote:
Personally, I think forcing people to read an entire thread before posting a comment allows people to digest things, before chiming in with any comments of their own.
Better start with this one then. 
How can you force people to read something in the first place? There's no technical way you can confirm they read it before you let them post.
On June 29 2011 15:54 Vequeth wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 15:29 Kipsate wrote:
No
Cause we get memes and shit all over the place. This is more a victim of the people who are doing the posting/upvoting rather than the system at fault.
The system gives people the ability to vote/downvote that they wouldn't otherwise have (in a different system).
Ultimately the fault is still in the system.
EDIT (unrelated to posts I replied to above):
I just took a peek at reddit's Starcraft section, and these are the topics that are on top of the page:
- IdrA (you can guess what this is about -_-)
- Email from the father of the kid who DDOSed Destiny
- Destiny announces on stream that the producer of Judge Judy wants his case!
- Friday 9:30PM EST CombaT-EX VS Idra BO7
- Who here watches Starcraft way more than they play?
TeamLiquid (and this is only SC2 General, usually the worst threads appear here):
- [Int] GSL July Code S Ro32 D1
- [Zerg Master league]Blade Replay pack
- Can you name the GSL Champions?
- Change of control groups worth it?
- ESL announces Extreme Masters VI (IEM)
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On June 29 2011 15:54 Vequeth wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 15:29 Kipsate wrote:
No
Cause we get memes and shit all over the place. This is more a victim of the people who are doing the posting/upvoting rather than the system at fault.
The question is, do voting systems that let people influence what gets seen while lurking lean towards content like that inherently with any large community, or does it entirely depend on the community in question?
It'd be an interesting (temporary) experiment, for sure.
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OP raises a valid point, TL is getting rather big and reading through popular threads is a day's work. For the problem interactivity versus useful information, I've seen 4 solutions:
- Forum with heavy moderation on OPs, no or little moderation on comments. Example: Teamliquid. Pros: Useful info in the OP. Cons: Garbage in the comments.
- Forum with heavy moderation on OPs plus a moderation system of comments. Example: tweakers.net (Dutch IT/consumer electronics/games website) Pros: Useful info in the OP. Cons: Getting the right people to vote; if a bunch of noobs start voting, it'll be the same shitfest as #1, but then along social lines. If you allow many people to vote, quality decreases, if you limit the vote, the majority of people will get angry because they've got no power.
- Forum without moderation plus a moderation system of comments. Example: Reddit. Pros: Freedom of speech, if your message is downvoted it's everyone's (i.e the posters for not fitting in) fault, not just the mods'. Cons: Disinformation and loss of coherence in the forum structure.
- Forum with heavy moderation on OPs and comments. Example: Elitist Jerks*. Pros: Good information in OP and comments, little hive-minding**. Cons: Many users feel bad because they are noobs and never get to say anything.
* Not really familiar with this myself, but judging from what I've seen and heard.
** Hive-minding is, imho, not endemic to a certain system, but to a critical mass of users. It's a social thing on the extreme end of the scale: more people, more hive-minding.
Imho, the problem is finding the balance between 1) spreading information and 2) user participation. Spreading information works best with a top-down structure, user participation is more egalitarian. There are of course some modifiers, like rewarding people who put in valuable info (e.g. user icons for staff of various plumage, liquipedia contributors), valuing that people lurk more and stfu about stuff they know nothing about, or a raging hard-on for freedom of speech which will guide the forum in question the opposite way, but I think that it basically boils down to these two choices.
On a personal note, before someone tells me to stfu as the guy who always goes "LEEEEEEEEE JAAAAEEEEEEEEE DONG!!!!!!!!!!!!" in live reports threads, I tend to do that (especially as he's stopped slumping for a bit recently), but I stay the hell away from strategy threads because I can barely beat the AI. Fangirlish screaming won't hurt anyone but the other guy's fangirls, and for the 'random news section' in general, I couldn't care less so I don't post there either. It's like in real life, in the stadium scream with the thousands, but discussing the merits of anaesthetized butchering with 50+ random people on a starcraft forum: No thank you!
And of course my personal experience brings me to the solution of balancing the spreading of information and participation: Moderate the informative sub-fora like Death with a light-sabre, make live report threads DMZs*, kill the general forum**. This way you keep the forum clean while giving people a chance to participate.
* At least Idra fans won't club you to death with their "post" buttons.
** Whatever good ever gets posted in general?
Does it show I should be writing a paper? TT
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I'd rather see something like Slashdot's system.
Slashdot offers veteran posters the chance to moderate their choice of a one threads, and they get to go through the thread and up or down-vote 25 of the posts in them.
Who gets to moderate is random, but selective, and moderators are those more likely to have had their posts highly rated.
Then, there's a second stage of "meta-moderation" where anyone can look at moderator's votes and vote on whether they thought the moderation was fair or unfair. Meta-moderating a lot makes one more likely to be picked to moderate.
This system is structured in such a way as to make it less likely for people to give positive mod feedback to bad posts with which they happen to agree.
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Calgary25980 Posts
TL sucks because you can't find good posts.
Reddit sucks because you can only find the same posts.
They both have their advantages. TL is not going to switch to upvote/downvote so there isn't really anything to discuss.
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Germany2896 Posts
I for one would like an up/downvote system. It should not reorder the posts, and there should be no counter. It should just highlight highly upvoted posts and gray out highly downvoted posts.
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On June 29 2011 18:19 MasterOfChaos wrote:
I for one would like an up/downvote system. It should not reorder the posts, and there should be no counter. It should just highlight highly upvoted posts and gray out highly downvoted posts.
Meh. Part of TL's charm was its simplicity. Getting a vote/highlight system would just add more clutter, which IMO is not necessary.
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On June 29 2011 18:19 MasterOfChaos wrote:
I for one would like an up/downvote system. It should not reorder the posts, and there should be no counter. It should just highlight highly upvoted posts and gray out highly downvoted posts.
This reminds me of the thing they implemented on the wow forums where you could just rate OP's (maybe posts as well - not sure), so it would be highly or low rated etc.
But that kind of thing doesn't really seem necessary as most poor OP's are closed anyway.
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My problem is that things likely to get upvoted are cheap one liners, memes and funny pictures (at least this is what happens elsewhere), so i don't think this system is without flaws.
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Reddit is a great website. However, IMO it has many users who post stupid shit or comments in an attempt to accumulate karma. It can be pretty hilarious sometimes, but it also brings bad results of people failing to be funny and getting lots of downvotes and creating more spam as well as decreasing the discussion of the topic. The moderation is very lax, which is understandable for that kind of website, but turning TL into a site filled with useless comments would be horrible.
That and your proposed voting system cannot work here. I like your idea of improving TL, but I'm afraid this will not work.
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On June 29 2011 18:19 MasterOfChaos wrote:
I for one would like an up/downvote system. It should not reorder the posts, and there should be no counter. It should just highlight highly upvoted posts and gray out highly downvoted posts.
This highlighting system is used on another sports forum I frequent, it's really nice. If a post gets enough "+1s" it simply gets a different color to set it apart. Makes for much easier thread skimming without altering the order of posts.
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EPT
