Applaud or smite?

[thepancakeman]

I'm kinda curious what criteria or philosophy people use in choosing to applaud or smite someone?

Personally I try to go easy on the smites limiting them to those who post with personal attacks or vulgarity.  There are times I'm tempted to smite someone who has such a polar opposite opinion from me, but as along as the discussion is kept productive and not personal I try to refrain.

Applauding for me is for people who make a particularly useful or insightful post or make me laugh.

Also, what would people thing about an "audit trail" for applauding and smiting, such that people have a level of accountability for their social interactions?

[candyman]

I have to admit that I don't use it often. But it really makes sense to use the applaud on all 3:

applaud someone who makes me laugh
applaud someone that provides good technical info
applaud someone that makes a good point

I don't like smite. But it makes sense to use a smite on someone that is rude or insulting. I think in that case the smite is better rather than to respond on the rude post. Because that will only cause the thread to go down in the wrong direction.

Just my 2cents

[distant.star]

Honestly, I don't like the whole setup. I don't see the point. I also don't understand why the number of posts you've made on a particular forum have any meaning.

And the idea of tracking how people judge others seems like a GDR nightmare scenario to me. DPReview does that to some extent so I don't participate there.

I read what everyone here has to say -- and take it for what it's worth.

Thanks for asking.

[unfocused]

I have to admit that I don't use it often. But it really makes sense to use the applaud on all 3:

applaud someone who makes me laugh
applaud someone that provides good technical info
applaud someone that makes a good point

I don't like smite. But it makes sense to use a smite on someone that is rude or insulting. I think in that case the smite is better rather than to respond on the rude post. Because that will only cause the thread to go down in the wrong direction.

Just my 2cents

I applaud you.

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Here is my opinion

The smite should be used sparingly, perhaps for someone who does not contribute or continually makes inane worthless posts.  Just be cause you do not agree with someone is not a reason to use it.

The applaud, on the other hand should be used to indicate helpful and intelligently thought out posts, not again just because you agree with it, but because the poster is contributing in a positive way to the forum, even if you do not agree, if its a well thought out contribution, encourage it!.

[JR]

Here is my opinion

The smite should be used sparingly, perhaps for someone who does not contribute or continually makes inane worthless posts.  Just be cause you do not agree with someone is not a reason to use it.

Then again isn't subjective sometime whether or not someone contributes to a discussion?  A particular comment might be useful to some and useless to others since we all come from varying level of understanding of technology and photography...

I understand and agree notionally with your suggestion, but I have not seen this situation very often in the CR forum, after all, it is an open forum and everyone is intitle to participate .

That said, I am totally for smite when someone is rude or disrespectful...

[AprilForever]

I got a lot of smites from the 5D mk III thread... it seems people get smitten sometimes for disagreeing...

[AG]

Agreed. Smitten for disagreement, posting a spec list someone doesn't like or voicing a personal opinion is kinda wrong.

Smiting a blatant troll, eg someone who comes into a 5D thread and just goes on about how much better the Sony or Nokia is without contributing to the discussion at all, i see as justified.

Although there are people that don't even add to the discussion that see the thou have posted and will smite out of past disagreements.

Maybe make it that you have to pass XXX posts or Applause before you can smite or Applaud. That way if someone does something good or bad its recognised by their piers and not just someone that has 50 posts.

[thepancakeman]

I got a lot of smites from the 5D mk III thread... it seems people get smitten sometimes for disagreeing...

Yeah, that's kinda what I'm trying to understand.  One of the reasons I joined this forum is because in general it seems to be less contentious and have fewer trolls that most forums.  However just today I have 2 new smites and I have no idea why (nor do I know the reason for my today's applaud), but I can guarantee you that I'm not insulting anyone.

If the idea is that being smitten (smited?) or applauded helps encourage or discourage certain behaviour, not having it tied to a post or having any other feedback with it seems to make it somewhat less than useful.  This is especially true when you have a troll show up and just start smiting people and thereby possibly discouraging or scaring off productive members.

[LuCoOc]

I think having karma and the number of post gives you a good feeling for how much knowlege the user has and how helpfull his/her comments were for other users. I also use applaud more often than smite, but if I smite it's usually because someones rude or seems super stupid.

There's another thread about karma that might be helpfull, especially because scalesusa commented:

http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php/topic,1584.msg36052.html#msg36052

[Ryusui]

I don't see that the applaud/smite function really has much use here.

In regards to a person's "karma" it could be handy to know who around the forum seems to provide mostly useful and productive info and who's just here to troll.  Unfortunately, without a moderation and tracking system, anyone can be applauded or smitten for any reason whatsoever and it would completely throw off their apparent worth.  Worst of all, when you choose to applaud or smite someone, there's absolutely no filtration system.  I think it would help to deter system abusers if when you chose to applaud or smite someone that you had to fill out a short, but purposive survey.  I think a person who just wants to mess with someone would be less likely to do so, plus it would provide info for a moderator to refer to in the event that the user who was smitten wants to appeal.
Which is also what's missing - appeals to remove a smite.  But that can't happen anyway since there is apparently no way to track them.

I think the karma system in its current state is somewhat handy.  To a small degree.  But overall it's pretty much useless.

[DanoPhoto]

I am fairly new to this forum (< 60 days) and did not understand the feature until recently.
 
I think it is a great feedback device for the site, but like everything, if abused or not used as intended, the outcome is worse that not having it there at all.
 
I have smited a few times when I felt that the post was mailcious or ill spirited.  The threads will inevitably wander off topic, from time to time, but that is also the nature of a forum and open exchange of ideas.  I subscribe to the philosophy that honest disagreement is healthy and should not be the sole reason to smite.
 
I have applauded numerous times when I felt that the post was valuable to me, for whatever reason (humor, insight, knoweledge, etc.) or contibuted to the discussion in a meaningful way.
 
Unfortunately, there are miserable people out there who have nothing better than to share  their misery with others.
 
Hopefully I will not get too many smites for these "feelings".
 
Dan.

[dstppy]

Unfortunately, "smite" is usually used when you express an opinion and someone disagrees with it . . . post an opinion on a polarizing topic (that there isn't really a wrong answer on) and your reputation will go down.

Honestly, I haven't seen anywhere on the internet where it's not really abused.  One of my car clubs pages has "thanks" and "groan" -- but you're more likely to get groans for bad jokes than anything else.  One self-policing thing is that everyone can see who thumbs-up/thumbs-down posts, and your own avatar has a list of how negative or positive you are.

The deals website has positive only, and 'power' users get more rep points, which seems to work better.

But, as with bigger sites (slashdot, amazon) you get both roving packs of bots and just weird people that give you a real thick skin . . .

I've tried to ignore it lately; look at the admin (lots of smites) and it's amazing that certain *super helpful* posters here have *ANY* negative reputation -- That's at least what I tell myself.

[dr croubie]

Sometimes the 'smite' button does get used a lot more than the 'appluad' button for certain things, eg I wrote something on the first page of the "c300 announced" thread along the lines of "can canon please get back to making stills cameras for the rest of us who don't care about video". Not a good idea to 'insult' video in a thread likely to be frequented by videographers, 14 smites within about 20 minutes (and it wasn't even meant to be an insult to video, I just don't use it and would rather my engineering r&d money be spent on better stills. Some people just can't take a joke or sarcasm sometimes, anywhere on the net). Still, I don't mind, it's just a number, that day I was actually laughing to myself about it, that people care that much.

Still, I don't much care about my rating, does anyone else though? Would you feel more inclined to listen to the advice of someone with more or less karma? The numbers don't have any bearing on how much I believe what others write, I make my own mind up.
What I'd rather see (and i've already asked a Mod, and they've said it's too much work and not going to happen), would have been to see exactly 'which' posts for which i'm getting applauded/smited, behavioural-reinforcement discipline only works if you know when you're doing good or bad. But yeah, not gonna happen.

As for my doling out, I'll applaud for good humour, i'll applaud when the OP actually gets answered with helpful advice, I don't tend to smite except for blatantly antagonistic behaviour (or for people going way off-topic in saying things like "you should just get a 5D2" in threads asking for opinions between 550 and 600D, for example)

[dppaskewitz]

However just today I have 2 new smites and I have no idea why (nor do I know the reason for my today's applaud), but I can guarantee you that I'm not insulting anyone.

If the idea is that being smitten (smited?) or applauded helps encourage or discourage certain behaviour, not having it tied to a post or having any other feedback with it seems to make it somewhat less than useful.  This is especially true when you have a troll show up and just start smiting people and thereby possibly discouraging or scaring off productive members.

+1