The importance of the Jester Award

[UrbanMech]

The jester award deters a vast majority of all perceived "negativity" (I still say it is not negative but that's not the point here) to itself from the other awards without destroying the other awards that are better needed/fit. Without the jester another award would take its place. This is just a guess but I could definitely see the jester award being the last one to be added when discussing which awards should be in. Partly because we already have hilarious for funny post. jester is kind of redundant. Technically they are different but they could both be used correctly on a funny post but jester would be more specific in detail. So we have jester added to take the shot to allow us to have awards like Deep Thoughts in correct context and not sarcastically. Yes it happens still to the other awards but it is not standard.

The jester award keeps it all together

[peppermint hollows]

Most complaints threads about the jester are just poorly disguised award farming. It's impossible to tell the actual intent of any award most of the time. The only time I ever actually feel like I can truly assume an award is "sincere" is when I get one like "Extra Helpful" or "Gotta Have It" on posts where I'm giving someone technical or game help. And usually the person thanks me in a post anyway.

Even with the Jester any award can be "sarcastic" so I simply refrain from assuming the intent and take the points. I advise other people who are genuinely upset about what an award on their post means to start doing the same.

[Unn4m3d (♥AUT♥)]

The Jester award is exactly as meaningless as all the others. They are points, nothing else.

[Haruspex]

Negativity is an important part of discussion. In fact, I don't think the jester is a negative enough indicator. If we had more negative indicators without any positive effects for the receiver (points), ignorance and trolling could be more easily denounced.

As much as people like or dislike the Reddit approach, I have to say their upvote/downvote system is useful. Comments on the internet typically stand on the same level. Ignorance stands eye to eye with knowledge. The problem with this is that it's very easy to churn out ignorant garbage, and it's difficult to disprove ignorance or post actual well-researched facts in comparison. The ignorant troll can rattle off lie after lie after lie while the good-faith poster is still working on gathering links and citations to disprove the troll's first lie. To the outside observer, this would appear like the troll has "won".

With the upvote/downvote system, people can quickly express their positive and negative reactions, sending the good stuff to the top while the crap sinks to the bottom. If you want to see who "won" an argument, you can glance at the votes. It's not without problems, of course. It doesn't necessarily show who is "right", only who's argument is more popular. Still, it's a useful metric.

It can be frustrating when you're in an online argument and your opponent churns out unverified false fact after unverified false fact. You answer their points, but your own counter-arguments seem to get completely ignored. It's satisfying watching your own points get upvoted while your opponents get downvoted. Without it, there's no way to tell if anybody heard or cares, and you feel like the troll has won. It can get discouraging.

[peppermint hollows]

Originally posted by Harusp3x:

Negativity is an important part of discussion. In fact, I don't think the jester is a negative enough indicator. If we had more negative indicators without any positive effects for the receiver (points), ignorance and trolling could be more easily denounced.

As much as people like or dislike the Reddit approach, I have to say their upvote/downvote system is useful. Comments on the internet typically stand on the same level. Ignorance stands eye to eye with knowledge. The problem with this is that it's very easy to churn out ignorant garbage, and it's difficult to disprove ignorance or post actual well-researched facts in comparison. The ignorant troll can rattle off lie after lie after lie while the good-faith poster is still working on gathering links and citations to disprove the troll's first lie. To the outside observer, this would appear like the troll has "won".

With the upvote/downvote system, people can quickly express their positive and negative reactions, sending the good stuff to the top while the crap sinks to the bottom. If you want to see who "won" an argument, you can glance at the votes. It's not without problems, of course. It doesn't necessarily show who is "right", only who's argument is more popular. Still, it's a useful metric.

It can be frustrating when you're in an online argument and your opponent churns out unverified false fact after unverified false fact. You answer their points, but your own counter-arguments seem to get completely ignored. It's satisfying watching your own points get upvoted while your opponents get downvoted. Without it, there's no way to tell if anybody heard or cares, and you feel like the troll has won. It can get discouraging.

No thanks. It only has the opposite effect of what you say it does; there's no need to argue with someone and provide actual points or citations if you can just downvote them until their opinion is by default hidden. But even if we assume that an upvote system works, Steam would first need to actually care about the forums and be strict about ban evasion and alt account usage. As it stands now though, they don't do that. For whatever anyone's opinion on Reddit is, they are at least quite harsh on both ban evasion and upvote manipulation. However Valve first needs to prove they actually care enough about the forums to not only implement that system but also make sure it is not actually abused.

As it stands now though, they've proven that the exact opposite would happen.

[UrbanMech]

Originally posted by Harusp3x:

Negativity is an important part of discussion. In fact, I don't think the jester is a negative enough indicator. If we had more negative indicators without any positive effects for the receiver (points), ignorance and trolling could be more easily denounced.

As much as people like or dislike the Reddit approach, I have to say their upvote/downvote system is useful. Comments on the internet typically stand on the same level. Ignorance stands eye to eye with knowledge. The problem with this is that it's very easy to churn out ignorant garbage, and it's difficult to disprove ignorance or post actual well-researched facts in comparison. The ignorant troll can rattle off lie after lie after lie while the good-faith poster is still working on gathering links and citations to disprove the troll's first lie. To the outside observer, this would appear like the troll has "won".

With the upvote/downvote system, people can quickly express their positive and negative reactions, sending the good stuff to the top while the crap sinks to the bottom. If you want to see who "won" an argument, you can glance at the votes. It's not without problems, of course. It doesn't necessarily show who is "right", only who's argument is more popular. Still, it's a useful metric.

It can be frustrating when you're in an online argument and your opponent churns out unverified false fact after unverified false fact. You answer their points, but your own counter-arguments seem to get completely ignored. It's satisfying watching your own points get upvoted while your opponents get downvoted. Without it, there's no way to tell if anybody heard or cares, and you feel like the troll has won. It can get discouraging.

Assuming you are serious, I disagree. Steam awards don't show anything related to an argument nor does that website show anything with its upvotes and downvotes. That's all ad populum.

My point was just that the jester award moves incorrect award messages else where with a redundant award that perfectly draws people into it. Do these messages matter either? No not really. But it makes the system work that was put into place that was meant to be used. I think Valve put good thought into it if this was intended.