hi ambrosia and bubby- i just have to comment on the exchange that occured in this thread between you two.

i am very impressed with the way each of you expressed yourselves without getting nasty. so many people would jump to conclusions or read someone's post wrong(which is very easy to do).

i cannot express the respect i have for the two of you.
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ok- i'm done with my little outburst.

carry on.

:D

Thanks, Bubby...

Yesterday was the 4th day in a row of very high temps. We lost 22 rabbits to the heat on Friday and I had been fighting as hard as I could to save them. We have other animals as well and yesterday I was out hosing them down with cold water while I ran back and forth to the rabbit barn with ice bottles, cold water spritzes for their ears, and iced marble tiles. We are in an area of the Northeast US that is not supposed to have these kinds of temps and if we do have a hot day, it is never this early in the year. Multiply that by a number of days and it is beyond belief. It was only a couple weeks ago we had our last killing frost. Very difficult. Luckily we haven't lost any more animals, so my efforts for the other days haven't been in vain like they were Friday. I am just beyond exhaustion though.

Having been admin on a couple other sites I do understand your thinking on giving the simplest answer to reach the largest number of people. I apologize for overreacting and taking it personally. Like I said, stress does a number on me.

I appreciate the work you do here. Thanks.

Ambrosia, sorry if you felt my explanation was a little simplistic or even condescending. The fact is, I don't actually know the age or how much computer experience each user on this site actually has. Even if you wrote the original version of "Rocket Science Software 1.0" back in 1960 on the back of a paper napkin - there will be numerous other users who purchased their first computer at a department store last tuesday who are wondering the same thing you were (and probably a lot more) when you wrote the question. ;)

I would rather go overboard and answer a question once - in a manner that all the users can understand - than leave people wondering. By answering a question like this, I am not implying you are silly but trying to kill many birds with one stone.

Good luck with your animal saving from the heatwave.

That makes sense, Paali. Thanks.

When you rate a comment, only the rating for that comment will be refreshed, not the whole page. So if you read through all the comments, then rated them, you would refresh them one by one. In the time it took you to read through all of the comments, and then go back to rate them, it's very likely that seven people rated that same comment in the meantime.

Bubby,

I have the utmost respect for you. We are dealing with a heat wave here and I am trying to save animals. Thus I am a little stressed so forgive me if I say anything in such a way that is the least offensive. I certainly don't mean to be rude or anything. I just have a low capacity at the moment due to the heat and the stress.

I felt your reply was a bit like an adult explaining to a small child how something works. I have been dealing with computers since the 80's and on the Internet while most people didn't know it existed. I do understand about other people reading and rating the comments while I am rating them. I understand about page refreshes and how the current 'score' would not show until the page is refreshed, either by manually refreshing it or by voting and having the page update. It isn't rocket science. I understand that it may have been a very busy time during the time I was doing the comment rating. I have, however, never seen it happen like that before, since first joining this site back around Feb or March of last year. You would think I would have experienced the wackiness at least once in all that time. Also, you assume I read each post and then rate each post. Which would indeed give time between rating each post for multiple people to change the numbers by 8. However, I don't. I read through all the posts and then go back and rate them. The rating goes very quickly because I have already read the posts and am just clicking off the 'yes' or 'no' on each of them. Given that my method doesn't take more than a few seconds between rating each post, you would think there would not be 7 other people who hit the button at the same time as I did.

It is not impossible, it just seems highly unlikely, especially given my previous experience here. Was the counting software actually checked to make sure it isn't throwing errors? Or was it just assumed I had not taken into account 'the world moving on' while I read and rated the comments?

It is not a problem with the site. You need to remember that while you are reading the comments - other people are reading and rating those comments also. The updated figure is not redisplayed until after you vote.

If for example a comment is rated +2 when you load the page. It might be 4 minutes until you get to rate that comment. In that 4 minutes another 6 people also rate that comment as yes (so the total is really +8)

When you come to the comment it is displayed as +2 (but the website knows the correct total is +8). If you refresh the webpage - it will display the correct total, but instead you vote "No" which appears to you that +2 -1 = +1 should be the result. However +7 is displayed.

Remember, the world, and the ratings for the comments - do not stand still while you read and rate the comments.

I personally don't put a lot of stock in the rating systems of either the thumbs up/down or the comments. However, on occasion I will look over the ratings of the comments and when the whim hits me I will go through and rate the comments.

Today when the whim hit me I found that the rating system was not putting down an accurate count for my vote. Instead of changing the rating by 1 it would change it anywhere from 0 to 8 points. And it did not matter if it was a yes or no, except there were more 0's on the no side. Now if the multiple numbers had happened once, I would have chalked that up to someone rating at the same time as I did. But it happened almost every time. And then those times when it didn't change at all proved to me that the system is broken. I really doubt anyone was hitting the counter simultaneous with me to zero out my vote.

It really is a non-issue for me, like I said. But I wanted to let you guys know there is a problem with the site, albeit imho a tiny, inconsequential one.

Thanks!