Making Weight Weenies a Better Place

[Slowman]

To state the bleedin' obvious, at least for suspension forks, the listings are ancient. I don't think I found anything more recent that 2008!? What am I missing?

[exaqt]

Hello

Add E-mtb forum and fix the search function. I cannot find stuff because i cannot search like KG, build, e-mtb because they are common or too short. Makes it impossible to find threads among the 200+ pages

[SK5]

To make it a better place you should be able to block trolls so they can't respond to you . Simply hiding their comment achieves nothing as they can still put hateful comments on your post .

[fatpinarellorider]

What trolls?

[EtoDemerzel]

Is it possible to add "like/disagree/informative/funny" buttons to posts?
I would think this cleans up discussions allowing people to agree or disagree without adding a redundant post.

attached an example

[maxim809]

Hello Eto, thanks for the suggestion.

It's possible, but overall I'm personally not in favor of this. I've been very interested in social behaviors all my life, including the cultural behaviors that manifest online based on the systems in place.

The benefit of an emoji button is as you state. Redundant "I agree" posts are reduced, and it's a very low-friction way for users to express approval or disapproval. It's also possible to leverage the disapproval rate to collapse, hide, or even eliminate posts deemed unworthy by the community.

Drawbacks are that low friction emojis do not come with context. If someone disagrees, I believe that the disagreer owes a "why" so that a rebuttal can be made, and it also gives lurkers food for thought. If someone agrees, by forcing a post it gives a chance for that responder to add new context. A low friction click steals the chance for the conversation to evolve.

Secondly, something I have a love and hate relationship with emojis is that while it can help percolate the subjectively 'best' answers to the top and push the subjectively 'worst' answer to the bottom, it also carries risk of turning into a popularity contest. On a platform where you just need the objectively best technical answer quick so you can get your work done, an upvote system lends itself well. But on a hobby forum like WW where the stakes are not so high and many things are subjective, it not only risks turning popular and convenient answers to rise to the top, but it also distracts from the opportunity of the forum readers to read each comment and think critically on whether they accept or reject the premise.

An emoji system allows the people to vote democratically, but a no-emoji system allows people to think and respond democratically.

I think this is one of the biggest shortcomings of Reddit's format, and why the topics in many cycling subreddits don't always have the best answers. I know industry folks who work with GT professionals and are respected in the industry as leading minds on tech and aero, who when bored, periodically replies with extremely thorough and thoughtful replies on those subreddits. Any hyper-enthusiast can easily discern who that industry person is based on the tone and details being shared. But 10 out of 10 times, their response has 0 to 2 upvotes while a popular, jokey, very easy to digest, or meme answer has 50 upvotes. This kills me deep, and I don't want this type of social behavior to impact WW.

Put simply, I don't like the end-games that an emoji system creates. I'd rather let comments stand on their own merits, and let every reader think critically. And if something really needs to be responded to, then gather the energy and just go for it like a hill sprint or a balls out FTP TT, pain and all. Thinking and responding critically on a forum is becoming a lost art, and I think low-friction, low-effort systems contribute to it.

Lastly, here's an example of one of the endgames of a forum that took a different philosophy, along with the mod's justification. I'm just a different kind of mod, on a different kind of forum.
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/t ... s.1190046/

[warthog101]

Is it possible to add "like/disagree/informative/funny" buttons to posts?
I would think this cleans up discussions allowing people to agree or disagree without adding a redundant post.

attached an example

I am on a couple of other forums that have this feature.
It works well and is a positive.
Less argumentative than this forum.

[maurice1]

I dislike such voting systems as they create echo chambers and discourage "dissent"/controversial takes.
Sometimes it's a great way to express gratitude for a helpful post without polluting the thread with a whole message, but I would much rather have people express an actual rebuttal in an argument than just leaving a dislike in frustration and moving on

[warthog101]

The forums that I am on that have it don't have a "dislike".
Variations of thanks. A thumbs up, a tick, a smile, a laugh, a sad, an angry. Not a thumbs down or a dislike. Generally a reaction of appreciation, agreement, or emotion.
If a comment is not well regarded or agreed with it just wont get much reaction.
If someone wants to disagree or post a different perspective then they just do so.

[EtoDemerzel]

@maxim809 good points I had not thought about. I'll expand on my defense of the emoji buttons below:

@warthog101's suggestion of a "like/positive" only and no thumbs down seems pretty good. As well, his take that it's less argumentative and quells the urge to respond with redundancy.
That's how youtube is, where the thumbs down is meaningless and only the thumbs up is counted (I think only the user that pushed that icon sees it). Getting rid of the downvote altogether sounds alright to me as well.

On the flipside is, the "thumbs down" can signal trolls that this isn't a forum for that kind of thing. Meaning the general tone, the "regulars", have a easy way to say "nope this isn't the place". A bunch of downvotes on a troll, and a post by someone saying "go away or shape up" with a ton of upvotes- kills that pretty quick. TBH, I think this scenario would happen more on WW than a popularity contest.

Regarding the popularity contest, I've found that can happen in forums without emoji's- just filling threads with pseudo-logic glad handing each other.

Especially in heated topics, where a reaction button may simply de-escalate things by giving people a way to react instead of adding to page counts.
A lot of people won't post bc they don't want to get into a tit for tat, but would like to signal approval or disapproval. This may deflate these tit for tat arguments that go on for pages and derail threads.
IOW, echo chambers occur no matter if there is a button of approval or not.

It also may allow people to interact, wade their foot in the pool type of thing.
In all honesty, I haven't experienced much negativity with the emojis in forums that have them. I really do think it streamlines threads and leads to a more positive space.

Ok, that's my speil, thanks for considering!

[maxim809]

Nice points. We’re discussing internally. Stay tuned.

[bedampft]

Some quick and simple idea, or more a addition that would benefit all of us here and make everything a bit more orderly:

Add another sub forum for "general bike tech".

Computers, Saddles, Mounts, Adapters, Pumps, accessories in general, are scattered everywhere. Would be nice to have it a bit more sorted. Maybe even move some older threads to the new sub after opening it.

And as you know, users here are not able to name their Threads properly. So if you're searching for something specific, it often times won't show up or is buried under a ton of others things.

[MichaelK]

Sub forums aren't the way to correct that... you've only got to look in Road and see countless Tyre, Kit and Aero threads in the wrong place.

Short of moving to a better forum platform with tags and better search, I wish the Mods would be a little more active in placing threads in the right subforums and maybe even cleanup the threads with tags in the title. So throw something like [Parts], [Discussion], [Question] etc. to the front of the topic title so people can quickly glance at what's going on inside.

[maxim809]

Good feedback. One thing I've been considering, is to kill the Watts Weenie board, and instead go All-In on the Road board. I hear you on multiple duplicate threads across several boards. My guess is that killing boards will help consolidate, and reduce copycat threads.

One way to address this, is to micro the merging of topics, moving threads, and locking threads. The other mitigation is to reduced the boards completely. I'm in-between ideas but definitely have had shower thoughts. Any further feedback is welcome.

[GaBa]

I'd prefer less boards. Watt weenies is in the end mostly related to road cycling. Some topics would be appropriate for tires board and some for kits, but I see no need for a specific board since all topics could be put into some of already existing boards.