Very good points. Even if you do implement this feature, it is possible that users may start out rating messages and then drop off down the road due to the time involved (afterall, some stop or never even started marking messages also). It is likely that some users may check quickly those messages already marked as thumbs up only and if no one has marked any messages as thumbs up, what is there to view? Those users will be relying on other users doing the work for them and adequately marking messages as either thumbs up or thumbs down.

However, if I mark messages as thumbs up I would enjoy the possibility of when doing a search on the UT and selecting to view only those that I marked as thumbs up or other users have. That could be a useful feature. Hmmmm, but wouldn't that be the same as searching only those messages marked either as the solution or as help though?

Tracy


Tracy

>>I aggree with Steven Balck that it will be useful for members to be able to rate messages like the MSDN KB articles. Why not keep the existing point system (it has some disadvantages, however it works!) and add additional ability to rate messages being not orignator of the thread.
>>If you add filtering ability to your search engine to show messages rated thumbs-up from above ... users this may reduce the trafic of your site when someone searches for a specific area solutions.
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>This can be easily implemented. However, I would like to raise a few points in order to collect more data from this suggestion.
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>The approach would be to rate messages. As to the type of rating, it can be on various forms, such as tumbs up/tumps down, a specific range 1 to 5, etc. This also can be easily implemented based on what members would think is best.
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>But, one situation to consider is that rating a message is different from rating an article. For example, we have seen rating articles in a lot of places on the net. We also had it here but only kept the Downloads area for such purpose. Rating an article, for example, is much more likely to get participation as the time invested from someone to read it is much more than reading messages here. The lack of participation from members would be shown as when people come here, they want to read a bunch of messages, and will probably not take the time to rate some. Probably only a few members would use it and not that much data will emerge from it. So, basically, it could result in having about one message rated out of each 75 for example. And, then, in those rated, it could be one or two rates. So, the question is, how far would the data gathered by useful. Remember, messages are not like articles. When you take 10 minutes, for example, to read 3 to 4 pages of an article, such as
>UTMag/RapoZine magazine, it could be interested for the member to rate it at the end as this represent only a small percentage of its time as oppose to what he already invested (10 minutes). I'm just trying to know how much would this be used.
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>I also would like to be able to stats those data gathered and obtain an interesting list of messages, based on some criteria, to know which ones have good rates. But, if no one participate, what would it be implemented for.