New Feature Teaser: Sink and Retract

Tomorrow, we're adding a few new, albeit long-requested, features to the site. You can see them both in action in Figure 1 below:


Figure 1: Notice all stories now have a Sink button under the Vote button and a Retract button appears if you have already voted on or sunk a story. Sunken stories (like the two bottom ones in this screenshot) appear grayed out.

You now have the option to not only Vote for stories you like, but add a Sink vote to stories you don't like. This sink vote doesn't affect the actual ranking of the story, but each story will note whether it has mostly positive or mostly negative ratings above the story title, and it will list the number of votes to the number of sinks. If you choose to sink a story, that story will appear grayed out for you (but not for everyone else). However, if a story receives a negative rating over 60%, then the story will appear grayed out for everyone (see Figure 2 below). Also, if you accidently click on Vote when you meant to click on Sink, or vice versa, we now have the long-requested Retract button, which will allow you to retract votes or sinks that were unintentional or if you happen to change your mind about a certain story.


Figure 2: Since over 60% of the votes for this story have been sinks, it shows up grayed out in the On Deck page, even though I have yet to either vote for or sink the story.

For those of you who are worried that your enemies will Sink every story you submit, rest assured that they will at the very least be held accountable for their actions. Just as Netscape keeps track of who voted for every story in the system, we will be keeping track of who sunk a particular story (see Figure 3).


Figure 3: Who sunk this story? These guys did. Quick add them to your Enemies list! (Note to developers: We need an Enemies feature on the site.)

It also bears mention that Sinks will now be tracked as part of your overall activity on the site on your member page. With tomorrow's push, we will have also fixed the Activity page display so stories do not appear multiple times in the list, but rather each time you interact with a story, that story will pop to the top of the list with all the interaction you've had with the story. We hope you all enjoy these new features, as we think they will make the site more dynamic. If you have any ideas for future improvements, keep them coming our way. We're all ears.