voting-examples
Voting Examples
The Problem
There has been a good bit of discussion relating to how to represent the intent of a link from one site to another as an endorsement of that site or not. See Kevin Marks on voting (Vote Links) for initial arguments for a way to represent this information.
This page serves to document the current list of voting examples from real world sites for the design of a simple voting microformat. - Steve Ivy
Participants
- Kevin Marks
- Tantek Çelik
- Steve Ivy
Discussion/Concepts
(This may belong on a page of its own)
- When is a link an endorsement? - Nathan Ashby-Kuhlman
- Anti-links - linking to things you disagree with and saying so - Kevin Marks
- Vote Links - Kevin Marks
- PageRank is Dead - Jeremy Zawodny
Real-World Examples
Centralized Implementations
- Digg - Digg is essentially a centralized voting system for links. Digg users can "digg" (vote-for) a link, or "bury" (vote-against) it. Links with more diggs float to the top of the popular lists, hence getting more exposure and getting more diggs/votes for and against. Markup is plain html - links and images. However, the semantics of a digg are still unclear - links often get many diggs though the majority of commenters disagree with the content of the linked page.
- Urban Dictionary - dictionary of colloquialisms where users can vote up or down (for/against) terms in the dictionary. Markup is plain html - tables and images.
- Google's PageRank - "In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B." Issues with PageRank's "any link is a good link" model are a major impetus to standardizing on a format for link-intention.
- Slashdot - users can give comments a karma score which affects what comments are seen (comments can be filtered based on the score)
- del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, Technorati favorites - bookmarking sites that more or less represent a "for" vote
Vote Links
There are a few implementations based on the VoteLinks microformat combined with other technologies:
- Distributed votings using microformats from Artweb Design
- Boost Your Hyperlink Power - Jeremy Keith, using CSS to surface vote information
- VoteBack - VoteLink discovery + pingback/trackback
Example: Vote Links
(from: VoteLinks microformat)
<a rev="vote-for" href="http://ragingcow.blogspot.com" title="neat spoof">Raging Cow</a> <a rev="vote-against" href="http://ragingcow.com" title="nasty corn syrup drink">Raging Cow</a>
Existing Practices
- Most example sites, including Digg, UrbanDictionary.com, and Slashdot all use plain text labels or images for marking up their voting features.