devrant shitification - The future of devrant: Thanks for the ++ ! Thanks for the ++ ! Thanks for the ++ ! Thanks for the ++ ! Thanks for the +

Ranter

CWins

4811

Comments

4

codepoet

3529

7y

Spot on!
1

xalez

1937

7y

respect
27

linuxxx

145468

7y

Oh excuse me but the second I reach 50K I'll surely write a thanks rant!
1

nbamaral

3528

7y

Pretty much :/
2

iSwimInTheC

42007

7y

Lel, I've been here since day 1, it's been a wild ride to see how this place has changed.
2

awnumar

293

7y

Hey thanks for the ++
7

CWins

4811

7y

@linuxxx
Takes one more user with that script. The total number of ++ on the most approved rants is nothing compared to the number of ++ that can be generated by using a script on comments. It devalues ++,even more than the trend of sharing ++ via voting the comment list does. Usually inflation hits rich people the most, so while you might look like a winner with your ++es, you're still winning with a number that loses it's value.
7

awnz

569

7y

Too much duplicate code. You should have written a function for it.
2

CWins

4811

7y

@awnz
The type of comment i love devrant for :-)
3

linuxxx

145468

7y

@CWins I honestly am not getting what you mean :/
3

jamescodesthing

3076

7y

You missed the obligatory posts about how to improve devrant.

I’m certain devrant will one day be the ideal platform for discussing improvements to devrant.
3

CWins

4811

7y

@linuxxx
Okay, I'll try to explain it a little different.

When ++ is used to show that you like something, your almost 50k means, that almost 50k times, someone thought something positive about what you wrote. Thats impressive.

The rants we see lately, with someone thanking someone else for a lot of votes, changes ++ing into a game to gain attention and game up the counter by sharing votes.

I've seen this happen in a different community where a score system was created to motivate people into creating useful posts. It failed when the same thing happened, that happens here. People voted everything from others to increase each others score. Near the end, they even made votepartys with the purpose of spamming and collecting votes.

This of course changed the meaning of the score. It changed from meaning "this user writes useful things" to "this user is a spammer and an attention-whore".

What do you want your soon 50k to mean?
4

dfox

42827

7y

I don’t think we’re interested in policing upvotes and telling people when they can upvote content. Our one rule is it can’t be scripted, otherwise, do as you please. Do we encourage people to only upvote content they like? Sure, but very difficult to enforce.

As for the “thanks” post - it has literally nothing to do with a devRant trend and I’ve seen it 20 times before. A new user upvotes some people, they get excited and post some rants. Nearly all of the posted rants were marked as reposts anyway...

And then in a couple of days “thank you” rants will go back to being 1/250 rants per day for a few months.

The “trend” of people posting thank you’s is completely non-existent. It’s a cycle that occurs from time to time and then stops. Like when there’s an Apple event and you get a few people who whine “omg stop with all the Apple posts!!” even though everyone else can see they will stop naturally in a week or two :)
3

dfox

42827

7y

By the way, just to drive home my point and as an experiment, I’m going to comment on this rant two weeks from now. And you can give me an honest assessment on whether the amount of “thank you” posts has drastically decreased or not.
1

CWins

4811

7y

Let's hope you're right, @dfox.

Btw. whats your position on scripted upvotes?
1

dfox

42827

7y

@CWins like @Alice said, it’s happened many times. Not sure why it would be different this one time as opposed to the 20 other times.

And I clearly stated my view on scripted votes in my post above. Scripted votes = account delete and we’ve legitimately done that in the past to any and all accounts that have tried it.
1

dfox

42827

7y

One more thing on upvote policy - towards the end of this post there’s a pretty thorough rundown of policy and explanation: https://devrant.io/rants/675086/...
1

iSwimInTheC

42007

7y

@dfox You must feel like a God seeing all this data!
2

dfox

42827

7y

@iSwimInTheC haha, we definitely have some interesting data.

We used to do some infographics of interesting trends but haven’t had time to in a while :/
2

linuxxx

145468

7y

@dfox Awesome explanation!

@CWins Oh right I somehow thought you were attacking me for the amount of upvotes I have 😅
0

CWins

4811

7y

@linuxxx
Two people are hardest to find:
the love of your life and your arch enemy. I'm neither of them for you. Sorry :-(
0

nbamaral

3528

7y

@CWins
I didn't even wanted to post on this rant, because I had to talk seriously, something I don't usually do on devrant.
I completely agree with you. I hope @dfox is right, and I know he means well and prefers the "benevolent dictator" role. In a way, by the small size, devrant is a great social experiment, a lot can be learned from its evolution.
But some of us were there when Slashdot didn't even had login. We've seen great sites like kuroshin crushed into nothing. We've seen the digg turn into shit.
Gaming will happen and people will abuse until they can't.
Great sites suffer from this kind of growth and most never make it to teen. A notable exception is Slashdot of course, but it took a lot to rescue it and was probably too late.
So, sincerely dfox, and you have absolute power to shift things into different paths, at any time, I hope you're right and this doesn't turn into childrant or a giant piss contest.
Peace, and back to usual mood 😛
0

dfox

42827

7y

@CWins so what’s the verdict? Checking back in :)
1

CWins

4811

7y

@dfox
You were right, and I'm happy to say that 😋

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