Giving upvotes/downvotes meaning via integration with the "Topics of Interest".

The ability to upvote and downvote posts has long been a staple of most social based websites, and felt like a welcomed, but long overdue, addition to TD.

However, most other sites implemented such a system to empower users to control the content that they see. Reddit is the unquestionable paradigm of this concept, as the net number of upvotes ties in directly with their algorithms that determine the ranking of a thread. Other sites, such as Youtube, assign less weight to the ranking scheme, as they transiently display the "top ranked" comments before they become lost in the larger pool of responses.

On TD, however, the voting scheme doesn't have any significance...and perhaps that's a good thing. The operational structure of the forum is sound, and it wouldn't exactly make sense (nor would it be feasible) to allow upvotes and downvotes to directly affect the visibility of comments and threads.

Still, the voting system feels rather hollow, and more cosmetic than anything else. If users had some impetus, however slight, to toss out an upvote or downvote, I think the system would see much more use. Additionally, I think users would actually enjoy the fact that they could potentially have the ability to affect how certain content is displayed on the site. Such a system shouldn't directly interfere with the way in which the message boards operate.

There is a "Topics of Interest" section at the bottom of each message board, which lists some of the more popular threads from the past few days. Many boards have their own ToI sections, while others default to the ToI from the OT. The ToI from the Tiger Rant is actually displayed on the homepage of the website. It's not not exactly clear how threads are selected for inclusion in the ToI, although I think this would be a fitting opportunity to use the newly implemented upvote/downvote system.

Essentially, the threads with the highest number of net upvotes would be listed in the "Topics of Interest" section. This would not only give users an impetus to use the voting system, but it would allow them to affect the visibility of content on the site in a rather unobtrusive manner. In the ToI section, each thread could display the number of net upvotes its received, with the highest ranked threads appearing at the top, and the rest proceeding in descending order.




It would be ideal if the system could operate in real time, or close to real time. Some threads, however, would have a chance at accruing a much larger number of upvotes than others (for example, an in game thread pinned to the top). The threads could be reset every ~48 hours or so, thereby precluding one thread from remaining in the ToI for months on end. On the left hand panel, under ">> Member List" at the bottom, there could be a tab for, ">> Thread ranks". This would allow a user to browse some of the highest ranked threads for the past 6-12 months for a specific board.

So, just a recommendation. I think such a system would encourage (and even excite) more people to use the upvote/downvote system, and feel it would add an additional layer of interactivity to the site.