Forum voting scheme is unclear

[humanengr 45]

As an occasional user of these forums, I did not realize there was a 'voting' scheme separate from the 'like this' feature and suspect that most users don't either.

I've searched for discussion of this and haven't been able to trace that to anything helpful.

Why aren't 'likes' the same thing as 'votes'? What's the point in having two such similar mechanisms?

As it stands, who gets to set up a voting scheme and how?

[DTLow 5,681]

1 hour ago, humanengr said:

As it stands, who gets to set up a voting scheme and how?

Posts in the feedback forums have voting buttons and counts in the upper left corner.

There are also sequence options for these forums; you can see posts ordered by vote count

This forum is also similar and is described here

 

[humanengr 45]

7 hours ago, DTLow said:

Posts in the feedback forums have voting buttons and counts in the upper left corner.

There are also sequence options for these forums; you can see posts ordered by vote count

It seems few understand this. E.g., here, people 'Like this' but don't realize that's not a vote. Ranking ideas seems helpful, but this seems a poor design choice for such a mechanism as it doesn't properly capture idea approval.

[DTLow 5,681]

3 hours ago, humanengr said:

It seems few understand this. E.g., here, people 'Like this' but don't realize that's not a vote. Ranking ideas seems helpful, but this seems a poor design choice for such a mechanism as it doesn't properly capture idea approval.

I think it all counts, even if you add a +1 post

However, the most efficient method is the vote on the request topic.  "Like" is more specific to individual posts

[humanengr 45]

2 hours ago, DTLow said:

I think it all counts, even if you add a +1 post

On what basis do you say that? EN (the company) is evidently under stress, needing to raise fees, releasing versions without adequate testing, removing features. From my interactions on tickets, I know employees are competent, eager, and helpful.

But I don't expect them to have time to monitor these forums with an eagle eye, especially since the link you pointed was explicitly for creating a mechanism (Voting) that would reduce such load for them in the future. It seems they know they can't absorb suggestions properly with the current setup.

As for the load itself, many posts on that thread, e.g., are off-topic. And a bit above your post on that page, another member asks

Quote

please don't pollute the topics with simple '+1' posts. You can now up-vote the request.

I responded yesterday to that thread with further thoughts on the voting mechanism.

After decades of searching for good tools and settling on EN as a key part, I'm very concerned about the direction things are headed and want to provide (as I'm sure you and others do) feedback to correct the course. If the feedback mechanisms are not appropriately managed, there is no hope for that. 

[DTLow 5,681]

29 minutes ago, humanengr said:

But I don't expect them to have time to monitor these forums with an eagle eye

As I said, I consider the voting mechanism is the most efficient method of indicating user support
I always encourage users to use the voting buttons

[humanengr 45]

15 minutes ago, DTLow said:

As I said, I consider the voting mechanism is the most efficient method of indicating user support
I always encourage users to use the voting buttons

It's nice that you encourage users, but unfortunately that's not an effective mechanism.

E.g., as I indicated above, people commenting here did not use the voting mechanism. Which makes it extremely frustrating to spend time participating here.

Your considering it to be the most efficient does not make it so if it's not properly implemented -- and it is definitely NOT properly implemented, as I discuss on the Introducing the new feature requests area thread.

[humanengr 45]

5 hours ago, DTLow said:

I always encourage users to use the voting buttons

Also the fact that you feel it necessary to encourage shows how poor the design is.

[jefito 5,586]

Replied elsewhere: 

Short form: not all "likes" are for approving feature requests. Votes are expressly for that purpose. It's not *that* hard.

[humanengr 45]

Note to others following: discussion continues at link Jeff posted: