Should we go for this? what do people think?

Well the nice thing about "tension" is that it would measure the magnitude of active indecisiveness without revealing the actual vote count; this way you could get feedback prior to voting or considering without revealing the raw votes.

Examples:

++	--	Total vote	tension
100	5	95	low
10	5	5	low
5	100	-95	low
5	5	0	low
100	100	0	high
20	20	0	medium
50	20	30	medium-high

Another phrase for "tension" would be "high interest, controversial".

Matt

Update: grammar, clarity tweaks

Here is a possible implementation of the <tension> parameter.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

my $plus = shift;
my $minus = shift;
my $sum = $plus + $minus;
my $rep = $plus - $minus;
my $mean = $rep / $sum;

#ALERT: semi-empirical formulae ahead
my $tension = (1 - $mean ** 2) * $sum * 2 / (2 - 1 / (1 + abs $rep));

$tension = log (1 + $tension) - 2;

my $literal;

for ($tension) {
    $_ <= 0 and $literal = 'no', last;
    $_ <= 1 and $literal = 'low', last;
    $_ <= 2 and $literal = 'medium', last;
    $literal = 'high';
}

printf <<"EOF", $plus, $minus, $rep, $tension, $literal;
Plus       = %3d
Minus      = %3d
Reputation = %3d
Tension    = %.3f
There is %s tension on this post.
EOF
[download]


 


$|=$_="1g2i1u1l2i4e2n0k",map{print"\7",chop;select$,,$,,$,,$_/7}m{..}g

Yves / DeMerphq
---
Writing a good benchmark isnt as easy as it might look.