Minuses Be Gone!

Andrew Boon posted 2nd of September 2010 in . 41 comments.

...because the world is better with a little less negativity.

Starting now, Unity Forums and later Dolphin Forums will no longer have "minus" button. Instead, there's only a "like" button (sounds familiar? ;) ) and "bury" link. The "bury" link hides the post for the viewer, but doesn't affect the post's total score. So, the idea is: don't like it? - skip it. Report link is still there of course, but it won't affect the total score either.

Oh, and the same is planned for every other piece of content around here. Like it or not, you'd have to either like it, or skip it.

Why?

Many social networking gorillas figured it out some time ago... Negative votes are useless - they either feed trolls or discourage good posters. They do no good. Facebook doesn't have "dislike", Digg doesn't have "undigg", and most of the commenting system now dropped minuses for good.

We clearly realised how evil minuses are when we found some "contestants" of our Birthday Competition voting-down their rivals. Sheer disgrace.

And...

we nulled all "minuses" for Unity Forums. Something similar will soon happen with comments, and posts.

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Adminmysite

Adminmysite•2nd of September 2010

Great Idea

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deano92964

deano92964•2nd of September 2010

Excellent. Needed to be done.

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Nathan Paton

Nathan Paton•2nd of September 2010

I don't think you should be using the new Digg as a template...

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Andrew Boon

Andrew Boon•2nd of September 2010•to Nathan Paton

...and we don't. Digg, however, never had minuses.

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Reggie

Reggie•2nd of September 2010

Awesome idea............ Keep it up!!!

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houstonlively

houstonlively•2nd of September 2010

I'm glad we now have cutting edge, like button technology around here. Is there any chance this technology can be ported to the Boonex shout box module as a "Delete Shout" button? I know it's a pretty radical concept, but why not take a leap of faith and give it a try?

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Andrew Boon

Andrew Boon•3rd of September 2010•to houstonlively

I haven't checked, but do we have a ticket for that? If not, please post one with your specific ideas, like how do you see it done, and we will add this in short order.

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UFO360

UFO360•2nd of September 2010

Sweet

if this going to be add on the new forum for Dolphin 7.0.3

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Andrew Boon

Andrew Boon•3rd of September 2010•to UFO360

There already.

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Stuart038

Stuart038•3rd of September 2010

Excellent idea! Innovative is good :-)

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Stuart038

Stuart038•3rd of September 2010

Heck, I just gave myself a minus vote...

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Andrew Boon

Andrew Boon•3rd of September 2010•to Stuart038

Fixed :)

See, how bad they are.

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UFO360

UFO360•3rd of September 2010

Nice the new forum is going to be rock

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houstonlively

houstonlively•3rd of September 2010

RE: "I haven't checked, but do we have a ticket for that? If not, please post one with your specific ideas, like how do you see it done, and we will add this in short order."

http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/ticket/1250 (Entered 11 months ago)

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tomakali

tomakali•3rd of September 2010

OMG! if i ask/talk about trident nobodys gona negate me... huh!!!
"like"

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Nathan Paton

Nathan Paton•3rd of September 2010

@tomakali: He said forums, not blogs. There's still time.

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hd4real

hd4real•3rd of September 2010

Awesome. Finally. This is how it should be.

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Diddy

Diddy•3rd of September 2010

positivity brings a smile on everyone's face :-)

Cool :-)

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mchauhan

mchauhan•3rd of September 2010

great. so we are heading towards positive things. great

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Zarcon

Zarcon•3rd of September 2010

Definitely a great idea !!

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Nathan Paton

Nathan Paton•3rd of September 2010

I'll be honest: I prefer allowing both positive and negative voting. I'd hope you at least make it a configurable option.

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LeatherSportB

LeatherSportB•3rd of September 2010

I would prefer to score a post or comment like /. does.

Funny
Insightful
Interesting
Troll
Off Topic
Redundant
Flame-bait

http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml

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CALTRADE

CALTRADE•3rd of September 2010

Oh, I have said this forever. So you have a minority opinion - 10 people love it, but 12 (or their stand ins) don't. So you get the "minus" 2 display on Boonex that makes it look like you have done something terrible. It seems like you listen to my opinions, and act on them, but you do so a year or so later :-)

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dolphin_jay

dolphin_jay•3rd of September 2010

Its about time..

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Martinglobal

Martinglobal•4th of September 2010

Good idea.

onmybloq.in

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fugum

fugum•5th of September 2010

Ok, this is getting just a bit silly now. I do not see why it would be bad to have a minus vote. What would be cool, is that you could see who made the minus and plus votes (just like FB with being able to see who likes something). Why is everyone trying to make FB features (like button) the norm for future products? There will be a point in the future that FB falls on its face and has no new users. Their user base is actually not correct in the first place. Most users have multiple accounts see more

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Andrew Boon

Andrew Boon•6th of September 2010•to fugum

1. We tried showing who voted - that only brought more problems and reasons for arguments - something nobody RALLY needs.

2. The "how to build a Facebook clone" is like a workshop. You're not supposed to build a Facebook clone, but you're offered a structured tutorial on how to transform your site and utilise Dolphin package and Unity extensions to reach your goal.

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Nathan Paton

Nathan Paton•5th of September 2010

@fugum: You've won the game!

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Nathan Paton

Nathan Paton•6th of September 2010

You're really starting to make my blood boil. It's either I give someone a minus, or start yelling at them with profanities.

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eaa-boonex

eaa-boonex•7th of September 2010

I love it :)

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fugum

fugum•8th of September 2010

What Boonex really needs is someone to handle their public relations. Then, they could actually sit down and do what they are good at. Programming...

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naluv4u2

naluv4u2•12th of September 2010

Excellent idea as I am going through that problem of a evil troll obsessed with down starring my content. It's a shame these type of people have nothing else better to do with their time. Losers. Great idea.

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Nathan Paton

Nathan Paton•12th of September 2010

I'll be looking into re-adding this feature after Dolphin 7.0.3 is released and will be making a tutorial for those who like this feature. It may be the redditor in me, but I prefer being able to downvote crap just as I upvote gold.

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PravoNetwork

PravoNetwork•13th of September 2010

My concern is that too much Facebook terminology is placed in the Boonex product. For example, "Wall" is a trademark of Facebook. Facebook is aggressively hunting TM and R violators. Any site acting as a social network that uses the registered trademark "Wall" in the same or confusingly similar function as how Facebook applies "Wall" can be sued.

I haven't found any registered trademark for "Like" but that doesn't mean that Facebook hasn't listed it as see more

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Nathan Paton

Nathan Paton•13th of September 2010

@PravoNetwork: I think you're going a bit too far with how much Facebook actually owns.

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PravoNetwork

PravoNetwork•13th of September 2010

Hopefully you are right.

However, they list their trademarks on their terms of service. You can also find the scope of the trademark "Wall" at the www.uspto.gov.

My concern is that site owners have a lot invested in this product. The more anyone adds similar terminiology or functions the possibility that they can be pursued by Facebook as they become more and more aggressive in pursuit of intellectual property infringement.

I'm not sure if anyone here has the money to show a see more

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PravoNetwork

PravoNetwork•13th of September 2010

Also, it isn't that Facebook currently owns the social networking world. They just have the funds to claim that they do and they are beginning to flex their financial muscle against other sites.

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Nathan Paton

Nathan Paton•13th of September 2010

In my opinion, anyone trying to mimic Facebook or <Social Networking Site Name Here> deserves anything Mark and Co. can throw at them. I honestlly hope everyone with a Facebook theme on their site sees nothing but disaster for their site.

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mrpowless

mrpowless•15th of September 2010

I've got beer who wants one?.... coding too hard lately.

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iced

iced•26th of September 2010

i come from a different school. All internet users have the right to "like" or "dislike". the like button on fb is defunct! Oh just imagine ebay not having the ability to have a negative voting system! New people need the ability to quickly know the good commenter from the bad. Also when did boonex start following the SNS herd of sheep? To be truly unique, there needs to be a true differentiation strategy! Having a negative and positive voting system can be part of that strategy.

Rather see more

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buckmcgoo

buckmcgoo•28th of September 2010

So when Facebook adds a "dislike" button will you bring the minuses back? Is "boonbook.com" taken? Or "facebookex.com"?

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