Modifying the Way Hats Work

An annoying thing in YKTT Ws is that anyone can remove all the hats in a proposed trope. They don't need to give any explanation and people who added those hats in the first place aren't able to put those hats back. It makes it hard to judge whether a trope is launch-able or not.

Each person may only add or remove one hat, not all of them.

I once unintentionally removed 3 hats from a trope because I thought only 1 hat would be removed.

EDIT: I just tested it again just to be sure (on a YKTTW that only had 2 hats to avoid causing too much damage). I removed both hats and had to add my own hat after to half make up for it.

edited 26th Jul '13 8:45:38 AM by ilniaj

Hats are supposed to be like crowner votes, with the difference that if you add a hat and remove it later, the second action makes only a 1 point difference instead of 2.

Crowner Votes?

Votes on "crowners" — a kind of poll, I guess — like this one, which are usually attached to forum threads. You can press up or down for each item, and if you vote one way and then change it then it makes two points of difference, by subtracting the upvote and adding a downvote. (Please note that you may see a couple buttons on that one outlined as if you have already voted. That's an error.)

But it doesn't work like that. Instead if I say try to remove a hat then it removes all the hats that the YKKTW has.

Then that would be a bug.

I agree that the hat system should be changed.

Currently, the only thing that determines whether a YKTTW is ready or not is five hats. This means a YKTTW could have five hats at one point, then it can suddenly get a downvote that puts is at four hats. There needs to be something more quantifiable than the current system.

I don't think hats should be able to be removed at all (except by the person who issues them, should they misclick or otherwise make an error). I think it's a vestige of the crowner system that doesn't actually serve a good purpose in YKTTW. The issue is that if the standard is "It's ready when five people agree that it is", it should be that, and shouldn't be "It's ready when 5+X people say it's ready, where X is however many people think it's not ready".

What good purpose is there to be able to remove a hat in the first place, except when people are just putting hats on various YKTTW's to be funny.

The whole point of using the hats was to gather a sense of whether a substantial number of people think the proposal as it stands right then is ready to launch. There is, however, a number of tropers who give a hat as an indication that they like the idea of the proposal, even when it's patently obvious that it's not ready to launch — it has a badly-written or unclear definition (or next to no definition; few or even no examples; and other such problems. Removing the ability to delete a hat if you think it's no ready to launch also removes all value in the hat system.

That may be the intended use for the hat system and what it's "supposed" to mean, but I've never seen it used for that. Generally, I've seen hats be a lot closer to "X hats = X/5 of the way there", and while the point you raise may be a problem in theory, I have found from my experiences launching tropes that the reverse is the real problem - tropes that are ready to be launched that fail to gather the requisite hats or which simply lose interest when there are three hats and a trope that is basically in launchable shape.

I've never seen someone unable to launch a trope because of a lack of hats. If enough people are saying "Launch it already" at 3, or if they post "Please add hats" at 1 when it's in a workable stage, it's usually fine. If a YKTTW is fluctuating wildly, then clearly it still needs discussion because multiple people have conflicting opinions.

The whole "You have one Hat. Do with it what you will" is pretty good system, in my opinion. My biggest issue is people being too generous with them. If you give a trope a hat, it means that it's ready to hit the launch button. Like an earlier poster said, many many people throw a hat at a YKTTW just to say "yep, that's a good idea" even if there aren't that many examples, or they aren't added yet, or if there is ongoing discussion.

It seems like OP's biggest issue with hats was a bug he had been dealing with. I don't know if that's resolved or not, but I think it's fairly non-indicative.

edited 29th Jul '13 10:27:29 AM by Larkmarn

Stale, I believe. So closing.