Plugin: Feature voting separated from Likes

[riking (Kane York)]

The modal you get if you click on an already voted vote:

There should probably be a hover/focus state there, too, Either hinting that the menu exists, or showing the menu.

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

Would you revoke the regular vote when a super vote is added?

My thinking is that the normal vote would remain. The “super vote” isn’t an extra vote, it’s just a normal vote that got promoted to super. As far as showing this in the interface goes I haven’t tackled that bit yet, but I was thinking it could be something similar to what we do in the standard topic index with Like ratios, i.e. a topic with a high likes-to-replies ratio will show a red replies count.

My assumption is that we would add another section on the user profile that shows a list of your active super votes like we’re doing for regular votes right now. That way you can find your votes easier. Or would we consolidate them into one list and simply put an indicator on them? I would lean towards the latter.

I think the latter sounds best. If possible it’d be nice to have a simple “Only show super likes” toggle, but that’d just be a bonus.

The defaults I’m thinking would be 3 super votes with the value of each being 10 regular votes. Is that fair?

So, as i alluded to when answering #1, I don’t think super votes should add more votes. This wouldn’t be quite like UserVoice.

The closest real-life version of this I can think of is actually Tinder. So, if you’re at all familiar with how it works (you know, like, you have a friend who uses it or, like, whatever), you can Like someone and you can Super Like someone. A Super Like is just a Like with some additional perks. And while you can dish out a whole bunch of Likes every day, Super Likes are very limited. I think it’s 1 per day.

So when you get Super Liked, it’s pretty exciting, because “ooh, this person used their oh-so-precious Super Like on me? I’m intrigued”. And you’re counting on that same effect if you’re sending someone else a Super Like.

I want to replicate a similar effect with Super Votes. And I also think it’s a cleaner separation of data. You get to easily count:

• Number of voices
• Number of passionate voices

In default UserVoice, you can give an idea 1, 2, or 3 votes. I don’t think I’ve ever given an idea 2 votes. I give my 3s to my top priorities, and then I spread some 1s around mostly just to keep track of some other Nice-To-Haves. That’s one extra thing I didn’t want to have to figure out for myself. And if there are people out there using their 2s, how in the world am I supposed to interpret that? In my world, “medium priority” is the same as “low priority” because they both get trumped by “high priority” every single time. Lastly, if a UV idea has 900 votes, that means somewhere between 300-900 users voted on that idea. I’d much rather see up front how exactly many people could be bothered to +1 this idea. Then, layered on top of that, tell me how many of these users consider this a top priority.

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

Aaaand one last thing about the defaults:

The more I think about it, the cooler I think it’d be if ALL voting capabilities scaled together with trust levels. At first I was thinking just limiting Super Votes to an admin-defined TL would be cool, but actually I think it’d be even cooler to reward active users at all stages:

• TL0: 3 votes
• TL1: 6 votes
• TL2: 10 votes, 3 super votes
• TL3: 20 votes, 4 super votes
• TL4: 50 votes, 5 super votes

That’s a big differentiator between Discourse and UserVoice right there: In Discourse, if you’re a positive force in the community you earn your right to a slightly louder voice at certain podiums. This could be a really big difference maker in game communities for instance, where bad behaviour can be a big, big issue. What if your poor behaviour locks you to TL1, effectively limiting your impact on the game you enjoy so much that you make it too personal? I think you’d try harder to be a better community citizen if your “behaviour rating” more directly correlated with your “influence currency”.

It appears I’m in a talkative mood today.

[joebuhlig]

My thinking is that the normal vote would remain.

The more I think about it, the more I agree.

So, as i alluded to when answering #1, I don’t think super votes should add more votes.

I think this is where I misunderstood it originally. So these super votes are changing the type votes over the number of votes. You could set it up to display counts of each when you click on the total vote count. That would also show who did which type of voting at the same time.

I think you’d try harder to be a better community citizen if your “behaviour rating” more directly correlated with your “influence currency”.

Love this idea! Scaling votes with TLs is genius!

[joebuhlig]

I’m working to fix a few of the bugs Sam found in the voting plugin which requires a rewrite from handlebars templates to using the new widget structure. That makes a lot of this easier to build in the end.

But looking at you mockups, @erlend_sh, there’s a link going to “what is a super vote?” In your concept, where does that go? I think an explanation of what they are is necessary but should that be a customizable link? It would require the setup of a topic explaining it potentially.

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

But looking at you mockups, @erlend_sh, there’s a link going to “what is a super vote?” In your concept, where does that go? I think an explanation of what they are is necessary but should that be a customizable link? It would require the setup of a topic explaining it potentially.

Hmmm, I think you should just replace it with the “You have X super votes left”. That makes it more self-explanatory.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

This super-vote thing feels like scope creep to me. Maybe that should be saved for another iteration?

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

Not sure what you mean. The plugin is already functional. This is the other iteration

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

Oh… Well, then… Carry on!

[DeanMarkTaylor (Dean Taylor)]

I’m very aware this plugin is still in “meat & potato” mode of development, but a garnish idea to keep in mind…

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After reading both Feature Voting thread and the spec thread…

And seeing the recent video of it in action currently…

I’m a bit uncomfortable with “super votes”, the interface User Voice uses of “1”, “2” or “3 votes” is easy to understand… super votes I’m still struggling with.

I’m just imagining having to to describe it to users the value of a “super vote”, I wouldn’t have to describe the value of a “like” or “regular vote”.

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This might be a throw away thought - but perhaps…

… something “informational”, less “massive buttons with loads of text” could be put in the interface to indicate that “Super Votes” have more value and perhaps a little UI animation gimmick:

• Get rid of this:
• Make this smaller too - I call it a tooltip:
• Informational tooltip - really just asks:

Is topic important to you? Next time, hold down the vote button to make a Super Vote.

Holding down on the vote button could perhaps animate the “Star” in the same way as “Facebook’s BIG thumbs up”:

I’m imaging a small amount of discover-able functionality…

Regular vote

1. Were the user taps / clicks the “vote button”
2. A small star would animate behind the vote count
3. The small star would disappear
4. vote count increase
5. the button text change to “voted”
6. A tool-tip would then appear to the right of the voted button, text similar to the following:

• You have X votes and Y super votes remaining.
• Is topic important to you? Next time, hold down the vote button to make a Super Vote.

Removing a vote

It’s pretty well understood that clicking a “like” or button - removes that like.
I don’t think it “Remove Vote” popup option is needed, just click the “voted” button.

Super Vote

As mentioned in the “regular vote” description above - the Super Vote is discovered via the tool tip.

1. Holding down the vote button should animate a star behind the vote count
2. Holding down for too long will make the star “pop” and clicking vote not be counted.
3. Letting go of the vote button after it has gotten to a reasonable size would…
4. The large star would remain behind the vote count expanding to a set size
5. vote count increase
6. the button text change to “voted”
7. A tool-tip would then appear to the right of the voted button, text similar to the following:

• You have X votes and Y super votes remaining.

Holding down on a “voted” button

I think this is part of the discovery…
The user would then click the “voted” button and it would remove the vote - even if they hold down on it - yes just maybe slightly unexpectedly if they have just been told they can “hold down on ‘vote’ button to super vote” but…
… the user would then discover that’s how to remove a vote…
… and then have the ability to add the vote, or hold and add a super vote.

[joebuhlig]

I think there’s a lot of value in this, @DeanMarkTaylor. But I always seem to think about how to implement these ideas when they come up and the one sticking point I have with this is mobile use. Any time there is a hover or a “press and hold” feature, you have to assume it won’t work on mobile. I can’t recall ever being able to do those actions on my phone.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

Press and hold is how you select multiple photos in the google photos app on android.

(But I’m the one who is pushing to keep things simple here, so don’t let that encourage you too much).

[Jenn_Briden]

We have been using this plugin in our internal forum, and I have a few feature requests from my peers.

1. Add support for votes to be overwritten/updated when you merge two threads. For instance, we often see duplicate posts and end up closing all but one. However, the other threads often have votes on them that we want to be in the master topic.
2. Enable the option in Settings to sort the forum threads in the list view by the number of votes.

[joebuhlig]

Enable the option in Settings to sort the forum threads in the list view by the number of votes.

You should be able to do this with a query string already. Just append ?order=votes to the end of the url.

Add support for votes to be overwritten/updated when you merge two threads.

Great note. I hadn’t thought through that piece yet.

[Jenn_Briden]

You should be able to do this with a query string already. Just append ?order=votes to the end of the url.

Yes, we are manually using that now. However, I’d like the default view for forums with voting enabled to be this view. We are actively using the voting to prioritize features.

[joebuhlig]

I’d like the default view for forums with voting enabled to be this view

Makes sense. Two things:

1. I don’t know how feasible this is with the current codebase. It sounds like something that might not be worth the extra work.
2. My opinion would be that the ability to do this manually through the query string forces it to fall down the ladder of upcoming features.

[Pad_Pors]

is it possible to add enable/disable voting for tags, just like categories?

the way we defined tags in our forum, some of them need voting, while voting is meaningless for others!

[joebuhlig]

I like the idea, but I would say it belongs further down the priority list.

[kgish]

I would like to include an extra column in the topics overview list displaying the total number of votes the given topic has received.

What is the status of the “Show vote count in topic list” wish?

If still not implemented, what’s the proper approach for implementing this feature, in other words, are you looking for a volunteer to do this?

If you could provide some minimal guidance and point me the way for the first steps, I’d be keen on giving it a go.