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Chris,
I'm sure you've probably heard this request a million times over but have you ever considered including a spell checker for either the Message Boards or as part of the submission wizard? Just curious.
Nick Parker
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I'd love to - just need to find a handy, free, low impact spell checker component that works with ASP.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Wasn't there a fellow on here that did just that...?
"An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes in his or her field" - Niels Bohr
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how about this?
1. only members can rate
2. you can only rate a given article once, and you can't rate your own articles.
3. there is a field to enter a (required?) comment when you place your rating
4. you can look back over the ratings and see the comments and (maybe?) who gave them
-c
Smaller Animals Software, Inc.
You're the icing - on the cake - on the table - at my wake. Modest Mouse
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Interested ideas. A few problems that I forsee,
>1. only members can rate
Not hard to generate multiple accounts.
>2. you can only rate a given article once, and you can't rate your own articles.
How would you keep track of this? Cookies aren't much use, storing this info in a database would use up a lot of space.
>3. there is a field to enter a (required?) comment when you place your rating
I think we'd end up with a lot of "ewiorir0ri", "dsdkjakja", "yquwyqu" comments.
Michael 
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ok.
1. only members who have posted articles can rate.
2. i don't know. that's a back end issue. i'm talking about features not implementation
3. yep, with the loser's name right next to it.
or...
4. allow authors to opt-out of ratings.
-c
Smaller Animals Software, Inc.
You're the icing - on the cake - on the table - at my wake. Modest Mouse
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Chris Losinger wrote:
allow authors to opt-out of ratings.
sounds good to me.
At least I wont see red every time some jerk gives me a 1 without even a goddamn comment.
Nish
I am looking for a free racing game. Old style racing game without any complicated 3D stuff. Around 4 MB download. If anyone has such a game, please inform me.
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Nish, I thought you'd gotten use to it. You know from the written feedback that people respect your articles and your technical knowledge. As long as just one person got something out of your article what does it matter if 1000 people give you a 1 rating.
Michael
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Michael P Butler wrote:
As long as just one person got something out of your article what does it matter if 1000 people give you a 1 rating.
I said the same thing to him the other day
James
Sonork ID: 100.11138 - Hasaki
"Smile your little smile, take some tea with me awhile.
And every day we'll turn another page.
Behind our glass we'll sit and look at our ever-open book,
One brown mouse sitting in a cage."
"One Brown Mouse" from Heavy Horses, Jethro Tull 1978
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James T. Johnson wrote:
I said the same thing to him the other day
Yeah, when I read Michael's post I remembered you sayin the same thing on sonork
Nish
I am the Keyboard Smasher
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(speaking for myself here, not for Nish, of course)
when i'm looking through the CEdit category, for example, and i see two articles that sound like they could be related to what i'm after, but one of them is rated 4.4 and one is rated 2.2, i probably won't even bother looking at the 2.2, because i assume it earned its low rating by being unhelpful, confusing, broken, or something else that i don't want to deal with.
but what if the 2.2 is a perfectly good article that has been subjected to political or childish games? in that case, i lose. and, at the same time, CP itself loses by not being able to give me the info that i was after, even though the information was actually there.
if that's the case and if the ratings are so meaningless that we should ignore the low ones, then why should ChrisM even bother maintaining the capability to give them?
-c
Smaller Animals Software, Inc.
You're the icing - on the cake - on the table - at my wake. Modest Mouse
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Chris Losinger wrote:
if that's the case and if the ratings are so meaningless that we should ignore the low ones, then why should ChrisM even bother maintaining the capability to give them?
I think Chris is like us trying to work out the best way to achieve a balance between being a useful feature and being a play thing for spiteful children.
Personally I ignore the ratings, if something sounds like it might do the job then I'll download it and have a look. Even the worst piece of code can be hacked around to solve the problems.
I only get problems when I'm no little about the subject matter. I then tend to rely on the comments to make sure what I'm learning isn't the wrong way. There are of course certain authors who I've learnt that they know what they are writing about.
Michael
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Chris Losinger wrote:
but what if the 2.2 is a perfectly good article that has been subjected to political or childish games? in that case, i lose. and, at the same time, CP itself loses by not being able to give me the info that i was after, even though the information was actually there.
This is a very good point Losinger and I have raised it in the past.
Psycologically people would tend to check out a 4.5 rated article rather than a 1.5 rated article.
Nish
I am the Keyboard Smasher
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Michael P Butler wrote:
>2. you can only rate a given article once, and you can't rate your own articles.
How would you keep track of this? Cookies aren't much use, storing this info in a database would use up a lot of space.
What if the rating that you gave autmatically appears in the required comment that you posted, in the title or something. Then I do not know if this is possible, because of the way the site is written or what not, but the comments with scores cannot be modified, that way the sender could not remove the score that was automatically placed by scripts.
Even if someone places the "asdlfjkaslfj" type comments, then you will know how credible that vote was, and you can still see who voted.
Michael P Butler wrote:
>1. only members can rate
Not hard to generate multiple accounts.
You can see how credible a person is to vote on an article by their activity on the site. Unless one person maintains multiple accounts.
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as an illustration of why the ratings don't work:
in the 10 minutes since i started this thread my latest article has generated 8 ratings, all 1's. i admit my article is no masterpiece, but it's no 1, either.
children
-c
Smaller Animals Software, Inc.
You're the icing - on the cake - on the table - at my wake. Modest Mouse
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Two things,
First, I don't think your rating was helped by Nish commenting on it being the highest rated article. (Assuming we are talking about the Font Combobox)
Secondly, I think if we ignore the 'brats' who keep giving low ratings, they'll get bored and give up. The ratings are too subjective to pay any attention to. Some people might rate an article low because all it has is source and a brief description. Some people might rate an article low because they couldn't understand it, or because they found it was telling them something they already know. Concentrate on the written feedback and ignore the ratings.
Michael
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Michael P Butler wrote:
First, I don't think your rating was helped by Nish commenting on it being the highest rated article.
I am the Keyboard Smasher
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Chris Losinger wrote:
in the 10 minutes since i started this thread my latest article has generated 8 ratings, all 1's. i admit my article is no masterpiece, but it's no 1, either.
I would have expected that...
In fact i got a few 1s instantly after I posted some stuff about ratings on your article foruym
Nish
I am the Keyboard Smasher
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I don't care if an article rates a 0.1, if it solves my problem, the author is my hero of the week.
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Roger Wright wrote:
don't care if an article rates a 0.1, if it solves my problem, the author is my hero of the week.
Ok. You want an article on creating toolbars. You see two articles. One of them is rated 4.8 and the other 2.2.
answer me honestly now.
Which one would you look at?
Nish
I am the Keyboard Smasher
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Nish [BusterBoy] wrote:
Which one would you look at?
Both, especially if they seemed to do what I need to get done. The 4.8 might get my first glance, but I would check all the possibilities for the closest match to my situation. An article might rate a 2.2 for any number of reasons, only one of them being the quality of the code itself. It's the code that counts!
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I agree completely. Seldom does a single article completely meet my needs; usually i end up using code from several related articles. The final decision on what code to go with is based on: 1) how understandable the code is, and 2) how close it comes to doing what i need. I imagine there are very few projects out there where a control/method/library is used "as-is"; if the project has any importance at all, the author(s) will want to have as many options and as much information as possible.
Other than a ego booster/crusher in regard to my own articles, i generally ignore ratings entirely.
And if words were wisdom, I'd be talking even more. The Offspring, I Choose
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I think that a better implementation would be:
Create some kinda timer with Javascript that counts the time that the user is reading the article. If the timer elapses 3, maybe 4 minutes the user will be able to vote.
That would give some more guarante that the user readed the article before voting.
Mauricio Ritter - Brazil
Sonorking now: 100.13560 Trank
My latest article:
Pentominos - A C# implementation of the famous Puzzle Game
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That works so long as you don't do what I do... Right Click, Open in New Window then continue looking for other goodies while the page loads, often leaving the page open for several minutes before I get to it
James
Sonork ID: 100.11138 - Hasaki
"Smile your little smile, take some tea with me awhile.
And every day we'll turn another page.
Behind our glass we'll sit and look at our ever-open book,
One brown mouse sitting in a cage."
"One Brown Mouse" from Heavy Horses, Jethro Tull 1978
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