i like the boo or yay thing. it would help me decide whos giving me good info and who is full of bull.
..but it wouldn't. Unless you know how to address the problem I wrote about above -- statements that sound truthful -- and consequently get lots of "yays", but aren't supported by facts.
Facts and science are NOT democracies. They don't change based on popular opinion. They have to be supported by evidence.
So, in order for this to work, you have to have a team of knowledgeable people read every post and judge them all based on their good info. And, then, you probably need another another team of reviewers to review the first round of judgments because people can make mistakes, and well, sometimes (oftentimes!) in science the evidence isn't all that clear-cut, so you have to make sure that if both sides of an argument can be supported, that they both get fair "yays".
You see how this is just an impossible task?
Besides, there are many posters on here -- including myself -- who post a lot of information that isn't popular and often hurts someone's feeling or they take it personally. Speaking only for myself here, unless I qualify my statements with something like "this is just an opinion..." or "I don't know, but I think that..." my replies are based on the best evidence I have to date. Evidence based on books I've read, based on articles I've read, evidence based on the the previous posters in threads have said, and I proceed based on that. A lot of times what I have to say goes against what several other people have posted (back to my first point in this post -- that a lot of things that sounds truthful, aren't). And sometimes heated disputes arise. I wouldn't want to get a bunch of negative reputation points just because of an argument or debate. Like I said above, sometimes the evidence isn't so clearcut -- if both sides have decent supporting evidence how do oyu decide which is "bull"?
Tolak has the best idea. If you are unsure about a person's post, read their old posts and the thread's reactions to them. I know it is more work than looking at a rep-meter. But, a rep meter is almost useless. Just about as useless as a post count. A number, based on amateur judges, carries very little weight.
Now, if you can solve the problem of have impartial fair judges, then this idea has some merit. But, unless you plan on paying several people full-time salaries to read the fish forums all day, good luck in trying to solve the impartiality problem.
