Report Story/Down Vote - Your input needed

[kbeeveer46]

Thanks to AshDigg, Pligg has a simple "report story" feature working in the latest SVN code. Currently, it uses a simple formula for testing purposes. The formula we tested so far is $reports > $votes * 3. This means that after a story has 1 vote and 4 reports it will be discarded. This works well for stories with small numbers of votes, but what happens when a story has 20 votes? It will require 60 reports to be discarded. These are the types of things we have to work out.

I made this thread to get your ideas about the formula used for this feature. The more minds we get together the better we can make this. Please post any algorithms you think that we could use to make this feature better.

For right now we just want to get a simple reporting feature working. We will try to incorporate it into Karma at a later time. So please, if you provide any algorithms or formulas that you think we should used, leave karma out of it right now.

[Geoserv]

When you say discarded, do you mean deleted?

If you do, I wouldn't want any deleted, kept in unpublished yes, but not deleted.

Geoserv

[kbeeveer46]

There are three different status categories in Pligg

1. Published
2. Queued
3. Discard

A discarded story still exists in the database and can be viewed by an admin at /discarded.php but cannot be seen by any users.

[Geoserv]

I prefer to have the story float around in the unpublished area.

Geoserv

[dollars5]

I would suggest to use the user karma to play some part into reports, say if a creditable user is gonna report -it must be true, but if a relatively new user reports - it should be considered for a while - I would write the formula as

($report > $vote*3 || $reporters_karma_average > $report_threshold)

But dunno how much it is feasible.

If you want to strict to simpler formulas - I suggest to use
(($report > 5) ? ($report > .25*$vote) : ($report>$vote*3))

if there are more than 5 votes, use a 25% rule, else use a votes count rule.

[onelessthang]

Dollar5 -

I like where you are going with your simple formula.

I am a little concern about 6 reports discarding a story that has 23 votes though.

Your karma suggestion seems like a very logical approach.

I suggest using the ($report>$vote*$vote_count_to_publish) until a story is published(Since pligg masters have the ability to adjust the publish count this will allow them to effectively adjust this formula. Once a story is published I think

($report-$vote_count_to_publish^2>$vote)

The reason I like this formula is because $vote_count_to_publish^2 is the max number of reports it would of taken to discard a story before it was published

In the case of the story with 60 Votes it would take 70 reports to discard it(if the vote count for publish is 3), plus this avoid a story from being discard once it is published if you moved to a ($report>$vote*.25) formula once it is published.

I do not know how doable this is, but I think it is a fair equation. It requires more reports than votes to discard a story , but not a huge amount.

I like working of constraints like these, so if you want to chat about it I would like to hash it out.


Onelessthang

[dollars5]

Good point onelessthang, I was thinking of various parameters for weight and ended up into karma and differential weights and almost forgot the adjustable $vote_count_to_publish - was quite busy with a mobile project that forced me to get my concentration out from here

I was just against the idea of getting more reports to discard a story that has more votes.

Since AshDigg has thanks both our comments he too is thinking something in this line itself, so we will wait and see for his thoughts too.

[revolver]

Maybe there should be a separate unique status for stories that have been 'bumped down' so that they can easily be identified and not confused with false starts and other discards.

A unique status may also make it easier to identifiy in a user's profile how many 'bumped down' stories a user has submitted or voted for.

[revolver]

Is there any technical difference between the 'report this' feature that is being dicussed here and an up down (+ - ) voting system (like on reddit.com)?

Conceptually a + - voting system seems tighter and easier to grasp than a separate 'flag this' feature. With the + - system it is more obvious that the down vote is directly affecting the vote tally and at first glance it seems to be the same sort of mechanism technically (he says not knowing a thing about what AshDigg has rigged up)

[onelessthang]

Revolver makes a very good point. I would assume that there is a distinct difference.

With that said, I do not feel a story should be 'discarded' if it is just 'voted against'.

I cannot wait to see what AshDigg has put together.