Askville Blog

Community Guideline Improvements

Hey Askville,

Based on the great feedback and discussions we've heard, we wanted to share with you some of the changes we will be making going forward with our community guidelines.  At the end of the day, we all have a shared goal to make Askville a friendlier place where people can have meaningful relationships in a safe environment based on intelligent interchange of ideas.  After looking at the discussion it’s clear that we need clearer guidelines, better enforcement, more involvement from the staff and more accountability for people’s actions.

The following is a summary of A) Concrete actions we will be taking and B) Concerns that were voiced by the community that we are still investigating.

CONCRETE ACTIONS WE ARE TAKING:

Harassment
It’s clear that everyone is concerned about issues with harassment and that there have been many forms of harassment taking place using everything from questions to discussion boards to personal messages. 

Based on people’s feedback, especially the concern that harassment is continuing in an endless cycle, we are instituting a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of behavior that demonstrates intent to harass an individual.  This policy will be strictly enforced.  The consequences will be a temporary suspension of a user's account, which will also count against the 4-strike and your out policy, where after the 4th strike, the account will be permanently banned.

Many of you have stated that we should not ignore infractions that have happened in the past.  As a result we are suspending the accounts of 17 individuals based on a review of their past behavior (this list may increase as we continue our investigation).  It is clear that these individuals all engaged in activities with intent to harass an individual or individual(s) in the past.  These members will have their accounts suspended for 7 days effective by end of day today and they will be assessed 3 strikes against their accounts (i.e., after the temporary suspension, if the user continues to harass others, their account will be permanently banned).

Increased Transparency and Accountability
In addition, to support the transparency that people have asked for, by the end of today, if any account has been suspended or banned, their avatars will change to signal that they are currently being suspended or have been banned. 

Fairer Voting and Reduce Gaming
Later this week, we will be rolling out a feature where the answerer's identity will be hidden/anonymous during both the voting period and appeal process.  We believe this should help reduce voting abuse, collusion, and favoritism that is going on in Askville.  As stated in our previous blog entry, we have already cracked down on voting abuse/collusion and will continue to do so.

Multiple Accounts
We already have safeguards in place to prevent users from easily creating multiple accounts.  We have investigated several allegations already and in a vast majority of cases we have discovered that users do not have multiple accounts, but rather they are just friends.  That said, our safeguards are not full proof.  We will be adding additional measures that will help us further detect users who have created multiple accounts.  Once we identify users with multiple accounts, we will ban both accounts, per our community guidelines.

Consistent Enforcement
It was very clear from the feedback that we, the Askville staff, need to do a much better job at consistent enforcement.  We’ve begun focusing more effort on monitoring abuse reports and are working to improve our internal systems for tracking abuse feedback so that we can respond to issues in a more timely fashion.  Having a dedicated Community Manager will have a major impact on this front.  Moreover, we will also be working to make the abuse-reporting system more user-friendly.  We’re especially concerned about areas where abuse is happening, for example in the personal messaging area.

UPCOMING FEATURES RELATED TO COMMUNITY GUIDELINES:

Better Transparency
In the forum there was a clear desire for more transparency of people’s behavior as this creates the foundation of trust and accountability on the site.  The fact that there’s already a good amount of transparency on the site has proven to be an asset to the community.  As a start, we will start working on improving transparency by making suppressed content more transparent by displaying who the person was that created the inappropriate content.   

Ignore A User
To support better self-defense and self-policing we will start investigating ways to build a robust “ignore feature” that will help people better protect themselves from other members when necessary.  This will likely take a considerable amount of work and so in the meantime we would ask that people still rely on the report-abuse system.

OTHER CONCERNS STILL BEING DISCUSSED
People have also voiced some very valid concerns that we share and will be investigating further actions we can take.  Those include:

1) More involvement between the Askville Staff and the community. 

2) More consistent enforcement of Terms of Service.

3) More timely dealing with troll behavior and abusive content

4) Make newbies feel more welcomed to Askville

5) A long list of feature improvements.

We will continue to discuss publicly and privately how we can further improve the aforementioned concerns.  Every community will have its growing pains, and we realize we are currently going through one right now.  We hope that these actions will improve Askville and make it a safer and friendlier place to visit every day for both old veterans as well as newbies.  To be clear, we haven't made any changes to our terms of service, we are just enforcing them more sternly and reducing the amount of "gray" area with the hopes that it will result in a friendlier Askville.  For everyone's benefit, below are links to our Terms of Service as well as blog entries related to our community guidelines:

http://askville.amazon.com/termsofservice.html

http://askville.typepad.com/askville_blog/2007/05/clarifying-comm.html

http://askville.typepad.com/askville_blog/2007/06/recent-activity.html (last point of blog entry)

http://askville.typepad.com/askville_blog/2007/07/politcs-relig-1.html

http://askville.typepad.com/askville_blog/2008/03/what-would-you.html 

For those interested in our blog entry about Bonus Questions that was posted earlier today, please click on link below:

http://askville.typepad.com/askville_blog/2008/08/bonus-questions.html

One final note: Although we love Askville dearly and would do it voluntarily as all of you do every day, we also need to generate profits for Amazon.  Askville's business model is tied to generating revenues based on the content that is created on this site.  Content includes questions, answers, discussion posts, and even bonus questions.  We will try our best to keep a balance between maintaining a healthy community while also generating profits for Amazon. 

Sincerely,
AskvilleMayor

 

Bonus Questions and Voting Abuse Update

Hey Askville,

As many of you know, over a month ago we launched a controversial feature called Bonus Questions in an alpha lab (feature is only available to a select number of Askville users to get their feedback).  Today, I want to clarify what they are, why we have them on Askville, why they are still in alpha lab, and what we plan on doing with them in the future.

What are Bonus Questions and why do we have them on Askville?
There actually are two features tied to Bonus Questions:
A) the Bonus Question Box; and
B) Bonus Questions

A) Bonus Question Box – is currently available to alpha lab users only.  This is an experimental feature (hence, it is still in alpha lab) that we launched over a month ago.  The original concept of the Bonus Question Box is to give each user questions that we wanted to highlight based on a user’s interests, recent activity, preferences, and other factors (e.g. your friend asked a question that is on page 45, we wanted to highlight that question for you).  In effect, the Bonus Question Box would act as a personalization filter for each user.  The more you use Askville, the more relevant the Bonus Question Box would get.  We felt this would help users discover more interesting questions, faster.  However, due to limited resources and re-prioritization of projects, we haven’t been able to implement the personalization features for the Bonus Question Box (we hope to do this in the coming months), which is why it is still in  alpha lab.

B) Bonus Questions – Absent the personalization features for the Bonus Question Box, we wanted to create other types of questions that could potentially be interesting for Askville members to answer.  Many newbies (as well as many veteran Askvillers) who stumble upon Askville have difficulty finding a question to answer, making their first experience on Askville a frustrating one.  Moreover, certain types of questions that would be interesting to find answers to (e.g. sports, entertainment news, trivia, etc…) are rarely asked on Askville, but we realize would generate interesting answers by our community.  Consequently, with the help of another Amazon business model (mturk.com), we started to create Bonus Questions (henceforth called mturk Bonus Questions).  Knowing that the quality of questions created by mturk.com would range from good to really bad, we decided that mturk Bonus Questions would originally be only visible via the Bonus Question Box (for alpha lab users to see only) and only those that had at least one answer submitted by the community are the only ones that would be displayed to the rest of the community on all the major question lists on Askville (i.e. roughly 80% of mturk Bonus Questions are hidden).  Our hypothesis was that if someone from the Askville community decided to submit an answer to a mturk Bonus Question, the question most likely would be good enough for other Askville members to see, for better or for worse.  Furthermore, since we knew that we would get some poorly written mturk Bonus Questions, we allowed our community to edit any mturk Bonus Question to improve the quality of the question.  Eventually, there will be other types of Bonus Questions once we have built the personalization features for the Bonus Question Box.  Until then, the only types of Bonus Questions available will be mturk Bonus Questions.

Why are the Bonus Question Box and mturk Bonus Questions still in alpha lab and what are their future plans?
Both features are still a work in progress, which is why they both are considered Alpha Lab features.  That said, mturk Bonus Questions that were answered by at least one Askville member does show up on all the main question lists on Askville.  We realize that there is still a lot of work ahead of us to build the personalization features of the Bonus Question Box and improve the quality of mturk Bonus Questions.  We still believe that once we have implemented personalization on the former and improved the quality of the latter, coupled with adding additional types of Bonus Questions, the Askville experience will improve dramatically.  In the interim, we kindly ask for everyone’s patience as we continue to make strides in both features. 

Are there any guidelines with respect to Bonus Questions and editing mturk Bonus Questions in particular?
So long as the edited mturk Bonus Questions are related to the same topics that were originally submitted, users are able to make whatever changes they want to the questions.  If a mturk Bonus Question is too hard to answer, go ahead and edit it to make it easier for you and others to answer.  We realize that there has been controversy over this issue.  We apologize for not being clearer about this.  We also are okay with users answering mturk Bonus Questions that they themselves have edited.  We enabled this feature by design to make it even easier to submit answers to these questions.  Keep in mind that the primary purpose of mturk Bonus Questions is to encourage Askville users to submit answers to a wider range of questions.  That being said, all other community guidelines, including voting abuse, apply to these questions. 

Voting Abuse Update
We are working on some major changes to our voting system, some of which will be released shortly, based on some of the feedback we have received recently.  We also have banned several accounts due to voting abuse/collusion between members.  Gaming the voting system is a clear cut violation of our guidelines and we will continue to immediately ban members who are colluding with each other with the intent of gaming Askville's ecosystem.  In addition, we have warned/taken action on over 30 other Askvillers who have been negatively voting against certain members of the community.  With our new Community Manager, we hope to stay on top of voting abuse.  That said, please refer to our blog post in March 2007 on Voting 101 to get a better understanding of our voting abuse guidelines:

http://askville.typepad.com/askville_blog/2007/03/voting-101.html

Moreover, users who are negatively voting down appealed Bonus Questions (or voting negatively on any appeals based on who the answerer is and not on the quality of the content) are violating our community guidelines.

Christian, our Community Manager, will be posting an Open Forum question that will allow users to give us feedback on the Alpha Lab Bonus Question Box and mturk Bonus Questions.  Thanks again for your patience and feedback as we work to improve these Alpha Lab features.

Sincerely,
AskvilleMayor

Find Questions to Answer on Askville

Introducing our official Community Manager

Hey Askville,

As our community continues to grow and evolve, we realize that we need to be even more actively engaged in the Askville community.  In the past, we have tried to stay clear of conflicts between community members, with the hope that "people can agree to disagree" and that "people will respect others like they want others to respect them".  However, we realize that some people have taken advantage of certain community guidelines that are "gray" (i.e. subject to interpretation and/or not an obvious clear-cut violation) as well as our limited engagement/involvement in numerous issues.  Moreover, having one person dedicate a portion of their time, currently the Askville Mayor, to monitor and manage the community is not a scalable solution, especially given that the Askville Mayor has a lot of other Askville and non-Askville responsibilities.  Consequently, we will officially be creating a new role within the Askville Team - the Community Manager.

We are excited to have one of the co-founders of Askville, Christian Cabanero, fulfill this role.  The Community Manager will be focused on actively engaging with our community.  Christian will actively monitor Askville on a daily basis and more importantly will actively engage with the community via PMs, discussion boards, and even posting questions to get public feedback, which we hope will generate new ideas on how to make Askville a better community!

Below is a quick message that Christian wanted to send out to the community:

ChristianC (Chumpboy)

Hello, I'm one of the co-founders and have been with the Askville team since 2006 as the Sr Manager overseeing the Askville software development team.  It's been an incredible experience seeing over the past year and half watching our community evolve.  It's clear that there are things that people really love about the Askville community, but also things that people wish would change with the community.  This will be my primary area of focus for the foreseeable future as well as figuring out how we, the Askville team, can do a better job serving as hosts to all of you.

Ultimately, I'm here to serve you and so I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts about Askville.  If you've got thoughts, concerns, complaints, an urge to vent, or anything else you'd like to share I'd love to hear from you.

You can send me a personal message through my profile page.  Any correspondence with me will be kept confidential.  I'm looking forward to serving as your community manager and hope to hear from many of you.

We hope that having a dedicated person focused on actively engaging and interacting with the community, will help provide clarity on some of the community guidelines that are "gray", while also help resolve some of the conflicts that are going on within our community.  Ultimately, we hope that this will help generate better community guidelines and also drive new features that we hope will help keep Askville a great place to come visit every single day!

To kick-start Christian's new role, he will be posting a question or two that will ask the community how we can improve Askville.  We also will be posting another blog entry this week on a controversial topic: Bonus Questions!  In the interim, please look out for Christian's question and please continue to give us feedback!

Sincerely,
The AskvilleMayor

Find Questions & Answers on Askville

Raising the Bar for Asking a Question

Hey Askville,

As many of you know, we had introduced a feature that allows newbie users to ask a question by simply typing in an email address.  We were hoping this would lower the bar for asking questions and for encouraging newbies to participate in our community.  While we have achieved this goal, we also realize that it introduced "fly-by-night" askers who never come back to our site.  Moreover, based on the feedback we have received from the community, we have elected to remove this feature.  Consequently, newbies who want to ask a question will now be required to go through the full registration requirement just like it used to be - i.e. you need to make a purchase on amazon or verify your identify via a cell phone.

Why did we do it in the first place?
Askville is still a young community that is growing and it is still in beta.  While Askville is in beta we are introducing features that may or may not work.  In the end, we want to create the best ecosystem and community that will generate the highest quality questions and answers on the web.  Some of the features we introduce are immediately successful (e.g. appeal process), while others need more work (e.g. bonus questions), and some are just bad ideas.  Reducing the bar to ask a question would fall in the last bucket.  We will continue to tweak and improve those features that are "works in progress" and will continue to think of ways to improve Askville.  None of this can be done without your continual feedback.  We rely on your feedback to tell us what is working and what is not working.  We apologize if we aren't moving fast enough, but we are definitely trying our best to make sure that Askville is a great place to ask... answer... meet... play!

Sincerely,
-The Askville Team

Find Questions to Answer at Askville

New Alpha Lab Feature Launched - Askville's Bonus Question Box!

Hey Askville!

We're excited to launch the new Askville Bonus Question Alpha Lab!  From time to time we'll be previewing exciting new Askville features in our Alpha Lab.   Alpha Lab features are experimental features that we want to get your feedback on before they're released to the general public.  Consequently, we've invited a select number of Askville members to try out our latest Alpha Lab feature - "Askville Bonus Question Box"!

Askville Bonus Question Box
The Askville Bonus Question Box is located at the top of every list page (Newest, Popular, Active Questions).   Any question that you decide to answer from the Bonus Question box will automatically multiply your gold payout by 2x (positively or negatively).  For example, if you answer a question through the Bonus Question box and earn 3 stars, instead of receiving 1 gold for your answer, you would earn 2 gold because you answered a question from the Bonus Question box.

Any "Bonus Question" that gets an answer will show up as a "new" question, just like any other question asked on Askville - i.e. Bonus Questions do not appear anywhere on Askville except in the Bonus Question Box, until someone decides to submit an answer to that question.  Furthermore, we've added a question rating feature. If, in your opinion, the question in the bonus box is not a good question, then you can flag it and we will no longer show it to you.

To be clear, only questions that are answered from the Bonus Question Box are eligible for the 2x bonus gold multiplier, so if you see a Bonus Question on any list and you answer that question, you are not eligible to receive the 2x bonus gold multiplier.  Conversely, if 5 people see the same question in the Bonus Question Box and they all decide to submit an answer to that question, they will all be eligible for the 2x bonus gold multiplier.

Just like any other question, you are allowed to appeal any question you've answered from the Bonus Question Box and the 2x gold multiplier will count after the appeal - e.g. If you originally received a 2 star rating (-5 gold) you would lose -10 gold due to the 2x gold multiplier; however, if you appeal that rating and the final rating becomes 4 stars (+5 gold), you would instead earn +10 gold.

One important aspect of the Alpha Lab is that we’re asking you for feedback on our new and developing features. Your feedback will help determine how we refine these new features before they’re launched for the general public.

Have fun and please give feedback on this new feature if you are in the alpha lab.  Remember as a member of Askville's Alpha Lab, your opinion counts!

Regards,
The Askville Team

Increasing Appeals to 50

Hey Askville Neighbors,

Increasing Appeals to 50

After reading some of the feedback on discussion boards about some frustration with "default 3-star" ratings, we have increased the total number of appeals you can have from 3 to 50.  We hope this will help alleviate some of the issues with "default 3-star" ratings.  Moreover, please be patient with newbies, especially since they may not know the rules that govern Askville.  For better or for worse, the rules and guidelines we have created on Askville are not simple to grasp (try to remember when you were a newbie) and are still evolving.  We realize that voting is still not ideal and it is far from being perfect.  We hope by increasing the number of appeals to 50 will help with unfair voting while we work towards a fairer system down the road.

-Askville Team

Find Questions to Answer at Askville

Want to answer a really old question? Go ahead!

Hey Askville neighbors,

Ever stumble upon a question that had closed with zero answers that you knew the answer to?  No need to worry, because you now will be able to submit an answer to that question even if it was asked 12 months ago!  We've changed our rules so that the 7 day period to answer ANY question will not start until after the 1st answer is submitted.  So any question that still has zero answers, whether it was asked 1 day ago, 7 days ago, or 1 year ago, is still "Open" for new answers!  Only after the 1st answer is submitted will the 7 day period start and all normal rules will then apply (see example below of question that was asked 26 days ago that is now open for new answers):

Q: How about voting?
A: the same voting rules apply - i.e. anyone who posts an answer and the asker are allowed to vote on the question.

Q: For really old questions, the asker probably won't vote so what can I do?
A: Couple of thoughts:

1. We will email the asker that he/she got an answer to their question, so hopefully they will vote on your answer.
2. You can always appeal your final rating, just like always, and get someone to re-rate your answer.
3. With our new homepage, all recently answered questions will show up under the ACTIVE list.  So as people start answering old questions, they will "bubble up" to the top of the list.  Hopefully others will see that old question and will answer it as well, in which case you'll have other Askville users voting on your answer.

Q: When does voting start?
A: Voting occurs just like any other question - i.e. asker/answerers can vote as soon as they see a new answer to vote on.  Voting period will end 3 days after the 5th answer has been submitted or after 7 days have passed, which ever happens first.

Q: Can I use my coin multiplier on these old questions?
A: Absolutely!  All questions, new and old, will adopt this new rule change and the coin multiplier will work just like always.  P.S. we've *finally* fixed all known bugs related to the coin multiplier so if anyone still sees problems there, please send us feedback ;o)

Q: Can I answer a question that was asked a long time ago that had just 1 answer?
A: Unfortunately, you still can't answer questions that were asked a while ago that had at least one answer.  However, you can post your answer in the comments/discussion boards since that question is now "closed".

We hope this will help people find new questions to answer that were previously "closed" and give everyone more ways to share your knowledge to all of Askville :o)

Pagination for you Private Messages has arrived!
Another new feature we've added is pagination for all your private message!  So, now if you want to go back to really old messages, you'll be able to page through them (previously we would only display the last 200 messages).  To go to the next "page" of private messages, just scroll down your messages, like you normally would do, and at the bottom of the panel you will see the paging option.  We've also implemented some performance improvements for everyone's inbox so that your pages will load faster and you can communicate with your Askville friends even easier!

We've actually made several performance improvements which hopefully has made Askville faster to download.  Our traffic and user base is growing faster than ever and we want to make sure Askville provides a good user experience as it relates to performance of the website.

Thanks and we hope everyone enjoys the new features and as always - please send us feedback on bugs or improvements!
-The Askville Team

Find questions to answer on Askville

What would you do at an Askville Dinner Party & Tshirt/Mug Update

Hi Askville,

We realize that many of you have developed strong friendships here on Askville.  We are excited that Askville is a place where people can come together and share a bit of knowledge while developing new friendships online.  This is possible because of the community members that care about the community, the type of content that gets generated every day, and the respect that you give to both newbies and veterans of Askville, regardless of whether you disagree with their opinions or views.

That said, not everyone in this growing 'ville, are going to get along.  As with any social ecosystem, as a group gets to know each other, the quirks, mannerisms, different sense of humor, views, etc... eventually can bother anyone if they aren't similar to their own. 

So what should you do if you realize that there are some people in your 'ville that you don't get along with?  Before we give our recommendation, we ask you to ask yourself what would you do if you had a neighbor that you didn't get along with?  It would be great if you could force that neighbor to sell their house and leave the neighborhood, but unfortunately, that probably isn't an option for you.  What do you do when you meet that person at your local community event (e.g. parent/teacher association meetings, church, while picking up the kids from school, at the supermarket, at a mutual friend's dinner party)?

Let us take the mutual friend's dinner party as an example.  If you saw someone you did not like at a dinner party and they were engaged in a conversation with someone, would you go out of your way to get into the conversation?  Would you demand the host of the dinner party that they should ask that person to leave the dinner party because you can't stand seeing that person?   

I think one of the wonderful things about Askville is that this community is comprised of well educated adults who are good natured people with good hearts.  Don't get me wrong, good natured people can dislike each other, as mentioned above.  However, I do believe that people who have come here to "wreck the neighborhood" or have perverse, ulterior motives, (e.g. spammers or trolls), are quickly identified by our "neighborhood watch" and are eventually escorted out of our community. 

So when two neighbors or two groups of neighbors dislike each other, it is difficult for us to "take sides".  Unfortunately, when scuffles occur and neighbors clash, words are exchanged in the "heat of the moment" that causes both people/groups to spiral down a ugly, slippery slope.  Our philosophy is that everyone has a good heart and will give them the benefit of doubt, unless their actions/behavior continually go against our community guidelines, *independent* of being coerced or provoked by another neighbor.  Put differently, if two neighbors exchange heated words with each other that are inappropriate, we typically discount that conversation with the hope that the two neighbors will try to settle their differences respectfully, or realize that the neighborhood is big enough that they can interact with people they like versus "looking for a fight".  However, if a neighbor independently vandalizes our neighborhood (e.g. spam or invoke "hate speech"), or goes against community guidelines without being provoked, then we will question whether this neighbor has a good heart or is truly a good natured human being and we will investigate and take appropriate action, i.e. ban the user.  We have banned many "bad neighbors", and even some who have developed friendships within Askville, based on this philosophy. 

Some have asked me if there is a "double-standard" in Askville, where some Askvillers get preferential treatment over others.  Our perspective to this is that people who have been an active member of our community for a long period of time and have demonstrated that they are good natured neighbors with good hearts, will be given more leeway than a new neighbor who just "moved in".  The reason why, is because even good natured people can have "bad days" or will have scuffles and arguments with other good natured people.  However, if that neighbor has a "track record" of good actions/behavior in the past, we tend to weigh their good track record more heavily in our decision on what actions to take.  Moreover, as mentioned previously, we discount the content/conversations that occur during a scuffle between two neighbors.  To be clear, a scuffle requires "two to tango" - i.e. if a community member starts publicly attacking another neighbor in a discussion board, and that person or people do not take the "high road", but rather attack right back at the user, it is difficult for us to lay blame without full history and context of the relationship between the two members (e.g. was there another question that was asked that attacked the first user, which caused them to post the initial comment in a different discussion board?).  Does this mean that if you've been a "good citizen" of Askville, you will never get banned, regardless of your behavior?  Absolutely not.  Analogous to a credit report, you may have built a good credit history, but if you continue to "default on payments" or go against community guidelines, especially if it is not provoked by others, then your "credit score" will drop quickly and you will be banned. 

We realize this doesn't "solve" the problem for some of our neighbors who are currently not so friendly with each other.  Our suggestion is to try and avoid entering into a conversation with someone you dislike.  Walk away from that conversation and join in on another more pleasant conversation with your friends.  Think of Askville as a huge dinner party and I'm sure you'll find a group of neighbors that are far more interesting and friendly to be around.

Update on Tshirts and Mugs
We *finally* got the Askville Tshirts and mugs from our distributor this past week!  Hooray!!  We sincerely apologize for this delay.  It has been quite upsetting to us as we have been as eager as you to show off our Askville Tshirts and drink from our beautiful mugs!  We will be shipping all Tshirts and mugs to everyone that placed their order this coming Tuesday.  So hopefully, you'll be getting your tshirts and mugs by the end of next week (international Askvillers will need to wait a bit longer for shipping).

Thanks for your patience in this matter.

Sincerely,
AskvilleMayor

Send me back to Askville!

We've Changed our Welcome Mat!

Hey Askville,

We've made a few changes to our "welcome mat" in front of our community, which we hope will make it easier for new users to feel more welcomed to Askville.  Next time you try to Sign In you'll notice a few things have changed with the Sign In process.

Some of you may have "lost" the password that your computer had saved and used when you logged into Askville.  Don't worry, just click on the "Forgot password?" link shown above and it will send you to another page where you can type in the email address that you used to access your Askville account.  We will then send you an Askville email to that email address that will allow you to reset your password to your account.  If you have any problems, don't hesitate to send us feedback, and we'll be happy to help you out.

We've also added a new "tab" called "Account" on your My Settings, where you can now easily change your password from within Askville (previously you had to go to Amazon.com to change your password).  Please be aware that when you change your password on Askville, you are changing your Amazon.com password as well!  In the very near future we will add a few new features under the "Account" tab, which will help you manage your Askville account more easily.

Hopefully you'll like the new "welcome mat"!  We made this change because we've received a lot of feedback from users who were having trouble joining Askville and/or creating a new account.  So we hope this will make the process of being a part of the Askville community a lot easier!

Thanks,
The Askville Team

Send me back to Askville!

What to do if you see Voting Abuse?

Hi Askville community,

We wanted to address a discussion board comment we made today on voting abuse.  Voting abuse is a serious offense on Askville.  Many of our users spends significant amount of time researching and providing very thoughtful answers.  And voting is a core part of how we recognize and reward those Askville users for the great answers they submit. 

That said, we want to explain what constitutes voting abuse so that it is clear for everyone, new and old:

A - When an answerer is voting on other people's answers with the sole intention of lowering other people's final ratings (e.g. give every answerer a 1-star/bad rating) so that their answer has a higher chance of getting the best answer ribbon.

B - when someone is playing "favorites" or "negatives" (i.e. negatively vote on someone they don't like) and/or colluding with others by regularly voting favorably toward specific users, regardless of whether those answers were of high quality.

C - For both A & B, especially B, we want to see a trend occur versus an isolated incident. Reason being, is that it is difficult to prove that you are colluding or playing favorites when you've only voted on 1 question.

So what should you do if you think there was voting abuse on a specific question?  Submit a voting abuse report!   We read every report abuse form submitted and will investigate each one (albeit, we may not be able to get to it in a timely manner due to the size of our team and volume of report abuse forms we receive each day). 

What you should *not* do, is to make public accusations directly at other members of the community (even if you're right) on the discussion board.  Our philosophy, rightly or wrongly, is to give people the benefit of doubt and let the evidence/investigation determine if there were any violations. By publicly jumping to conclusions and making accusations first, before the evidence and investigation is completed, is analogous to "shoot first, and then ask questions later", which we feel is not fair.

Now there are several comments we'd like to raise and some caveats to the above violations:

1 - if you receive a negative vote (less than 3 stars), you should not always assume it is the fault of the asker, especially when you have multiple answers to a question. Every answerer has the option to vote too.

2 - Just because you received a 3 star rating (Average) does not always mean that no one voted. In most cases, users have voted and your rating has averaged out to 3 stars.

3 - Opinion based questions are very subjective by definition. When you answer an opinion based question, you need to realize that your opinion may not be popular, which could result in a negative vote. That said, please use the discussion board to *respectfully* discuss/voice your opinion and hopefully you can sway other voters to your side! Moreover, you can always appeal any rating, if you feel that your opinion/answer didn't get fair representation from the group of initial voters. To be clear, if this has happened to you, this is *not* voting abuse. If someone answered the question, "What is a funny joke?" and received a 1-star rating, is it voting abuse? Opinions, by definition, are subjective. What you may consider a 5-star (Great) answer, others may consider that answer just 3-star (Average) or 1-star (Bad). As a result, we have always taken the stance that it is very difficult to prove that voting abuse occured on any opinion based question.

4 - Not everyone you meet within Askville will share the same beliefs as you, which we believe is a good thing. When you interact with other Askvillers who have different views than you, it's very important that you respect their views and philosophies. It's perfectly okay to disagree so long as you do it in a respectful manner, as the old saying goes, "intelligent people can agree to disagree". However, if you publicly chastise, harass, or disrespect other users who have a different viewpoint, that is not tolerated and is a clear violation of our community guidelines. So please be nice to your neighbors and treat others as you would want them to treat you. As mentioned previously, publicly accusing others of voting abuse is against community guidelines since it is a form of public harrassment. Before you think about publicly accusing someone of voting abuse, please ask yourself the question, "how would you feel if someone publicly accused you of voting abuse?". Instead of publicly making an accusation against a specific Askville user, just use the report abuse form and we will investigate.

5 - Favoritism or other forms of voting manipulation to game the voting process is a direct violation of our community guidelines. That said, not everyone is fully aware of how one should behave and/or vote in Askville, especially newbies. Everyone makes honest mistakes and what you may think is malicious intent may be just an honest error of judgment, or someone who does not understand the rules. We strongly encourage our veteran Askvillers to lead by example and warmly welcome newbie users and respectfully advise others about how to use the site via private messaging.

We know this system isn't perfect (is any voting system perfect?). However, we hope you respect these rules/guidelines as you participate in this community. As always, we are open to suggestions (and we've seen several that recently were posted that we like!), and will think about how we can make improvements to this system in the future.

Sincerely,
-The Askville Team

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