in reply to Giving Non-Node ++?

Folks-

Great responses from all, many thanks! I'll do a general response here instead of having lots of small responses individually. See below for some re-thinking on my part.

johngg and moritz Advocate finding an existing node to ++ This is a good solution (that I didn't think of... duh!), and may end up being what I adopt.

I agree with the general want to avoid -- in this way (and other implied abuse). I didn't intend to advocate a --.

Voting on a monk's home node, for a possible "most useful home nodes" link is an interesting idea, but wasn't my original intention. Nice suggestion johnlawrence!

liverpole makes a great point about where the real reward is (I agree wholeheartedly), and maybe my intended suggestion will fizzle in front of this (which is ok), as the discussion progresses.

Many thanks to clinton and jdporter for explaining about Karma, I had no idea...

Position Clairification: Upon reflection, I suspect I was really asking for more of a thank you instead of a ++.

A thank you doesn't (necessarily) imply access to an inverse function, and fits in more with what my original thinking was. I would envision a simple thanks button on the home node, that each user is allowed to hit, say, once per day per homenode (and it uses a vote). Perhaps there is also a 35-Character (or so) text box that can describe what the thanks is for (this could be abused with sarcasm though).

When you get a thanks, you have the same chance for getting XP as when someone ++'s you, and maybe your home node shows a tally of your thank's-es.

Just my thoughts...

-Craig

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Re^2: Giving Non-Node ++?
by jdporter (Paladin) on Oct 09, 2007 at 16:02 UTC

    Interestingly, Super Search can give a (very rough) picture of how much thanks a monk has gotten in replies. For example,
    people replied to Ovid saying "thank you". (Once you've followed this link, you'll need to click the 'Search' button.)

    A word spoken in Mind will reach its own level, in the objective world, by its own weight
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Re^2: Giving Non-Node ++?
by blazar (Canon) on Oct 10, 2007 at 15:33 UTC
    johngg and moritz Advocate finding an existing node to ++ This is a good solution (that I didn't think of... duh!), and may end up being what I adopt.

    It should be stressed that as good a solution as it is, one should be sure not to pick randomly a node from the given author, but explore a few of them and find the one that most deserves your upvote. Of course in the process of doing so it may turn out that they are all precious to you and you may want to upvote several of them. You can view this is a means to discover interesting nodes @ PM too.

    One strategy is to look at the most upvoted nodes from an author, since they're likely to be good.

    Another strategy is to look at the most downvoted ones, because they may simply be controversial or misunderstood. Or the author may have just slipped on a detail. I for one once used carelessly and naively the word "racism" without thinking of the psychological impact of it and thus conveying a distorted idea about the real meaning of my own post - planetscape kindly retitled it for me to avoid further --'s leakage.

    Other times a good node is buried too deep into a thread to gain enough visibility and gets one or two downvotes out of ad hominem downvoting or some inexplicable reason. Spending your vote to correct the situation is not that bad. (Of course you wouldn't know if the reputation was negative until you vote it, but you can judge for yourself its value.)

    Voting on a monk's home node, for a possible "most useful home nodes" link is an interesting idea, but wasn't my original intention. Nice suggestion johnlawrence!

    Count me for one half-hearted about the possibility of voting home nodes, which ideally I cherish, except for the -- vote which anyway should be there for consistency. Perhaps home nodes could just not gain negative overall XP, or a care should be taken about abuses. But who really wants to be a home node anti abuse cop?!? Instead I'm sure I'd allow replying to home nodes: this was once possible but has been disabled since it was discovered to be. Someone still has a home thread!

    A thank you doesn't (necessarily) imply access to an inverse function, and fits in more with what my original thinking was. I would envision a simple thanks button on the home node, that each user is allowed to hit, say, once per day per homenode (and it uses a vote). Perhaps there is also a 35-Character (or so) text box that can describe what the thanks is for (this could be abused with sarcasm though).

    This has come out before, e.g. in a discussion I started myself. I for one would like lightweight "thanks" nodes, but many see in this the risk of deviating from the KISS paradigm, let alone that someone should implement the beast! ;)

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