Armchair GM voting - what gives?

I always put negative votes for positve comments about Barry, personally.

Yankees Suck.

Barry Bonds is a cheater. He does not deserve recognition for this accomplishment. Somewhere, some chemist should be congratulated for Bonds tying the Babe.

It is an accomplishmet to achieve something as difficult as hitting 700+ HRs. If it took no skill and only the best "chemist," then why did Bonds still stand head and shoulders above the rest of the players? Did no one else use steroids or did Bonds just happen to receive the best batch? It is a crime to not recognize and appreciate the talent Bonds has always possessed.

My favorite was when I wrote a comment about how scouts questioned Kazmir's durability as a small guy when he was in the minors and I received 3 negative votes. Silly me, I was trying to add something intelligent to the conversation.

I agree with you bball. It sounds rediculou, but sometimes I actually think twice about what i write so as it won't affect my +/- too much.

Personally, if someone says something amusing or informative they get a +. If they come off sounding ignorant or say something stupid then get a -. So, no matter how much the Yankees might suck, I wouldn't give a Yankee fan a - just because he's rooting for the Yankees. Unless he says something absurd like "Derek Jeter sure did deserve that Gold Glove he got"

Bball, you post about how intelligent you are but yet you defend Barry Bonds, the indefensible. Very simple. Does he break any records without the use of steroids? No. Your point is that Barry Bonds on steroids is better than anyone else on steroids and therefore we should care when he ties or breaks the records of someone who didn't cheat? And you complain about a negative score?

I'm a bit of an armchair junkie but I don't care too much about my comment score, at least not enough to censor myself.

"Derek Jeter sure did deserve that Gold Glove he got" - LOL

I wasn't complaining about a negative score, I was adding to the conversation this post prompted.

I also wonder about the +/- a lot. I give someone a plus if I think the comment was intelligent, a minus if it's dumb or rude. If it just doesn't add anything to the debate, I don't put a +/-. But you're right, as we've seen here - people basically just give a plus if you insult the team or player they hate, it doesn't even have to be a smart comment.

MJD...I don't think any of my posts have ever been under the topic: "My Intelligence." If you would rather I did not share my own knowledge to the topic actually being discussed, then I am missing the point of this site.

"My favorite was when I wrote a comment about how scouts questioned Kazmir's durability as a small guy when he was in the minors and I received 3 negative votes. Silly me, I was trying to add something intelligent to the conversation." And this post wasn't singing the praises of your intelligence and/or critisizing anyone who didn't agree?

Bball, you post about how intelligent you are but yet you defend Barry Bonds, the indefensible. Very simple. Does he break any records without the use of steroids? No. Your point is that Barry Bonds on steroids is better than anyone else on steroids and therefore we should care when he ties or breaks the records of someone who didn't cheat? And you complain about a negative score? How did that post get a -7? Everything in it is perfectly correct. You should add a feature that allows people to post a comment along with ther +/-.

i never pay attention to my comment score, and never allow it to affect a comment i might post (as evident by the many moronic/nonsensical/non-sports/homophobic/trying to be funny/ posts i have throughout the site)

"My favorite was when..." I was not singing the praises of my intelligence at all. You did not understand what I was saying. My post was referencing what many scouts (not myself) had said about Kazmir. I was adding a FACT, not my OPINION, to the conversation and it was given negatives. I saw a negative vote as a misunderstanding that my comment was a key piece of information that added to the conversation. I did not include my "own intelligence"; therefore, I was not singing the praises of my intelligence.

Your post got a -7 for two reasons. First, not everyone has as intense a hatred toward Barry Bonds as you are so eager to display in all your posts. Second, you acted rudely toward me, which users have shown not to be fond of rudeness.

Its not hatred for Barry Bonds, its just the truth. HE CHEATED. What is there to root for? If I wanted to competitors made in a lab I would watch that robot show on Comedy Central. Barry Bonds has disgraced himself and continues to disgrace baseball with every swing he takes.

Well put, MJD. To use another, somewhat less controversial, example: before it was revealed that he tested positive, I liked Rafael Palmeiro. I thought he was a good, hardworking, underrecognized player who it would've been nice to see get a WS ring at some point. Since it was revealed that he not only cheated, but lied about it before Congress (like Barry), he went to the top of my "Top 10 List of Players I Dislike", joining Bonds as one of the few non-Yankees on that list.

I tend to agree with MJD on the Barry Bond's point. He had the oppurtunity to duck out of the public spotlight with his knee injury last year, but had the balls to come back for his personal glory, while he knew that it would be bad for all of baseball. He should have left the game when he had the chance, not cheated to become the second all-time HR hitter in baseball history. As for voting . . . I have a simple test. If I like it, I vote +, if I don't like it I vote -. If its a blah comment, its a blah comment.

sLooking in the DB, about 50% of the comment votes are annonymous fanatics (or someone signed out)...which is strange bc it seems that lately more comments are from logged in users...i wonder if we should require a user to be logged on to comment vote..thoughts?

also, i can tell that out of my 500 comments, Xinoph is my least fan with 50 minus votes, and DNL is my biggest fan with 37 plus votes...does anyone think this would be kinda fun to know, or is the annonyminity of the voting what drives it?

Pean, how are you able to look at who scored your comments the most, etc.? Is it just an admin thing?

Yeay, me! Tell me that's not just because I'm a Red Sox fan, Pean. C'mon. With a straight face.

Oopsies, I got logged out. That was me above, obviously

Again with the logging out. My cache is acting strangely tonight.

Or wait, is that the person who's voted against you the most? I might have misunderstood that.

haha...yeah, im a developer...but dont worry i dont pad my rankings (as evident of not being in the top 25 haha)

yeah out of my comments, you are 2nd in votes against them (1st is an annoymous fanatic with around the same number as you Xinoph..hmmm..haha)

Wonder how that happened... Actually, I'm not the only person in my household who reads AGM, she's just a lurker and hasn't registered yet. Given that we're both Red Sox fans...Actually, I tend to pos-vote you for good comments, Pean. But as you admitted recently, you do tend to make a lot of dumbass comments as well, and I go off on those. Cheers! :-)

I can't help but be curious about the specifics of this voting thing. Call it a vain thing or whatever, but I pay attention to those things, and I die a little inside whenever I get a negative vote.

My +/- thing isn't working, so it seems that no matter what I comment, it doesn't register with my user stats. I think that the voting should not be based on personal ego, i.e. a Yankee fan downvoting a Mets fan. By nature of a comment, someone will like it, someone dislike it, so if you wanted to score a lot of plusses, you should say something that people want to hear (N.B. not what you think they want to hear). That way you will have a score. But I agree with Pean that you ought to be logged in to post a comment, or vote.

Yankees Suck!

Mets Suck!

Red Sox Suck!

Any Other Team You Root For Sucks!

yeah, I think votes should be public. some accountability at least.

I agree with Darrell.

alex, your stats should be coming in now

I wish I could at least see which of my comments got the pluses and minuses. Right now I can only get a total, and unless I can remember where I posted comments, I can't find the individual comments to see what their +/- scores were.

BRG -- its in the works

I totally agree with the idea that you have to be logged into vote. I'm looking at a debate I'm having on another topic, and I have 2 minus votes on EVERY comment I've made, but I've only been arguing with one person. Seems like the same thing Pean was talking about. I vote that you have to be logged on to give a +/- vote on an article.

Hm...minus two voes again, and it's when Xinop is logged on. By the way, on Xinoph's article, I just got another -2 on my comments. That's childish, Xinoph. Cut the crap.

I'm sure, just like any message board, there are lurkers who follow the discussion but don't comment, so I wouldn't obsess about that one. There is a possibility that someone else in the vast world of the internet might disagree with you. I also tend not to worry too much about my comment score; I post what I post, even if I'm usually not as lewd as Pean ;-) My only concern with locking out too many features from the unregistered is that this site then becomes a bit more elitist, but I think on this one limiting it to registered users is probably a good idea. Though I wouldn't support thte idea of making all votes public (i.e., who voted for or against who); I think more often than not it's fairly clear, and making it public might lead to less voting.

Someone's feeling a little paranoid today. Can't stand the idea that more than one person disagrees with you? Geez, talk about childish.

One other suggestion I would make on voting features - though I don't know if this is possible or not, Pean, you'd have to answer that - is that we not be able to vote on our own *articles*, that leads to inflated scores, I think. But it's not really a big deal.

That one was me. For some reason my browser loves to time out my logins on this site. Drives me up the bloody wall.

do you click "remember me" when you log in?

yeah i think its possible to do

Presidential candidates can vote...

Yeah, I did click remember, Pean, but my browser seems to have trouble remembering. Most sites like this it's fine (like Wikipedia, for example), but here it sometimes gets wonky. Don't know why. That might have relevance, Corey, if anyone here were running for President. (Nobody is, right? I mean, Hillary Clinton isn't the source of all our anonymous Yankee fan comments, right? Just checking.)

Personally, I find the act of doing a negative vote just because you disagree with someone silly. You should add a negative vote only if they say something in an inflammatory manner or similar.

a·nal·o·gy Audio pronunciation of "analogy" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (-nl-j)

n. pl. a·nal·o·gies

1. Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.

2. A comparison based on such similarity.

Xinoph, I didn't give you a negative vote because I disagreed, I did it because you brought up Hillary Clinton. :)

Yeah, but i did it in a sarcastic, largely negative light, you gotta give me props for that. :) Oh, and BTW, these two things are so dissimilar that no analogy makes sense. All voting is not alike. So there!

It's not that I can't stand the idea of more than one person disagreeing with me, it's the curious fact that when you're logged on, I get two minus votes almost simultaneously. No more than two, no less than two. I just find that very curious.

You are easy to vote negatively for Aswaff. You have a lot of antagonistic things to say.

Careful, Patrick, he'll think you're me, or that you're bitter and overzealous, or whining, if you start disagreeing with him.

Not so. I have many positive things to say. I'm only antagonistic when I think the things that other people are saying are ridiculous.

If by "ridiculous", you mean "have a different opinion than ASwaff", then you're absolutely right. The only way I was "ridiculous" was that I thought differently from you. I backed up my arguments with facts. Unlike you, I didn't constantly misinterpret what the other person wrote for the purposes of winning the argument. Unlike you, I didn't resort to personal attacks when my leaps of logic failed to convert everyone to my cause. You know, it's OK if people disagree with you occasionally. You can try to be civil in arguments; this is sports, not religion or politics. Calm down, take a deep breath, and act like an adult.