People's album Helpful/Unhelpful votes

[paladisiac]

So i've listened to a lot of albums and ranked and rated nearly all of them hear on besteveralbums.com . Sometimes I feel compelled to leave a comment about an album. Sometimes I peruse other people's comments. There are comments not only for albums, but songs and artists as well, but I'm just going to address album comments in this poll.

Underneath BEA album comments is this "Helpful? Yes/No" option which i'm mystified by. To me, an album comment is helpful if it gives me insight, preferrably detailed insight, into an album, its genre, its historical significance, what it sounds like, its tempo and musicality, etc. An unhelpful comment to me is the opposite -- something like "Great album!" (???). What mystifies me is that many people end up interpreting this voting option to state whether or not they agree with the commenter's personal opinion (of whether they like the album or not). To me, that's not the purpose of this "helpful vote".

Are the "helpful / unhelpful" comment vote tallies helpful to you at all? If so, why? If not, why not? What's your take on that BEA feature? Am I alone in the universe?
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[bobbyb5]

To tell the truth, I've never even paid attention to them and I never even looked at them . But now I'm curious about it. In general when I see helpful/ unhelpful on any kind of site, like Amazon etc, I just think it's kind of useless. But I really like reading the comments comments that people on BEA leave for albums, artist, tracks. I like seeing what everyone has to say. I find it very interesting.

[theblueboy]

I agree very much with the opinion opening this thread.

I find it kind of sad when someone has taken the time to write a thoughtful comment and it gets rated unhelpful, (presumably because others don't agree) That puts me off writing comments on album pages a bit and doesn't exactly promote conversation.

Oh well, maybe I'm just being a bit sensitive and old-fashioned. This is the internet after all and you take your chances when you post your thoughts and feelings online. I just prefer it when BEA is a bit more sociable and inclusive. There are certainly a number of users I could thank for making it feel that way in the forums

[paladisiac]

[manurock]

I'm going to be very sincere here and say that I vote "helpful" when the comment agrees with what I think of the album/track and "unhelpful" when it doesn't. If it disagrees a little but I find it a fair point I don't vote or I can even vote "helpful". I only do this on albums I am very clear I love or hate in comparison to the band or genre's other albums.

I don't mind if the user has done a historial and musical analysis if the album or track makes him feel the opposite as I do. I respect his opinion but it hasn't been a helpful comment for me because, if I had followed the user's comment, I would never have listened to that album if he dislikes it or I would have bought it at first sight if he finds it is the ultimate masterpiece. May sound harsh but it's the truth.

[Sqez]

Generally the function is misused and not very helpful. I have seen many insightful comments get no vote at all or downvoted and like you said, 'wow, great album' get upvoted. I will admit though, I am guilty of posting comments like that on some albums with lots of comments or some tracks for point farming, but BEA's point system is a bit annoying hence why I did it. Thankfully there is no points system, it's just simply 'unhelpful' or 'helpful', so it's not a massive problem. I do think by default the 'viewing threshold' function should be removed though when there is -3 votes, with the option to turn it on later. Someone could go against the tide and make a really insightful comment, and have -6 votes, and not have their comment appear.

[albumceleste]

I upvote content that I find helpful whatever I agree on the stance or not, AND also sometimes comments that reflect my view on the album that are in the opposite direction of the majority of comments. e.g. if I think an album is really overrated and the people that express that same impression get 5 negative votes I try to even it up by givin a positive vote.

But yes, in the end it mainly works as a LIKE/DISLIKE button.

[albummaster]

Those buttons were always meant as a way for people to bury troll content, and allow users to upvote the most informative comments so that the best comments could be surfaced to site visitors. The burying of troll comments is fairly effective, it's just the second part which is less so. I appreciate the functionality isn't really being used in this way by most people, and may need to think of a better way of doing this.

[theblueboy]

[Repo]