Awesome! - but I think we need a downvote, and here's why

submitted by codywohlers from self.SaidIt

One of the purposes of voting/liking is to provide a quick way to engage a post without the full steps of writing a comment.

Having a like/up-vote button reduces the amount of "nice!" comments and such, and lets the comments be focused on making a point.

But if you don't have a dislike/down-vote button, then people who disagree/dislike and are feeling the need to engage have no other recourse except to leave a comment, (or ignore it). And if you have options for a quick positive response but no options for a quick negative response, then the comments can become majority negative because there's no other outlet for a negative response.

I absolutely don't think down-voted comments/posts should be hidden or anything. It's just nice to know as a reader how others feel about it, and it gives the reader additional sorting/filtering options.

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[–]i_cansmellthat 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I don't know....being ignored sends a very strong message. While an insightful post may get buried and therefore ignored from time to time, hate filled rancid posts that are ignored will go away and not be plastered on the front page.

Not downvoting forces you to engage in meaningful debate or it shows ambivalence. Maybe that can help divide and conquer techniques falter a bit. If you don't feed the stray cats in your neighborhood, they will look elsewhere for food.

Not saying you are wrong, just some thoughts.

[–]codywohlers[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good points. I replied elsewhere in this thread that people are going to people so there should be an outlet for them. But I'll give this site a try and see how it goes. (So far it's been great, this is the most productive discussion I've had on this topic in a while.)

[–]wizzwizz4 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This comment is self-evidencing.

[–]magnora7 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

You can also report the comment, that's another option. Underneath every comment is a 'report' button that flags the comment or post for that's sub's moderator to take a look at.

We got rid of the downvote because it leads to a situation where 100 upvotes are cancelled out by a group of 100 downvotes, so one sub might wage war on another, and information gets lost in the process. Encouraging people to ignore content rather than judge it as negative leads to a nicer community that is less centered around judgement and censoring, so vote brigades are less likely.

That's the reasoning behind it. Plus having two types of upvotes allows for people to filter out the serious content from the fun content, which is something reddit could desperately use

[–]SundogsPlace 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It's interesting how a simple button can end up weaponized, LOL!

[–]magnora7 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

It really is amazing how the use of the buttons evolved over the last 12 years reddit has been around. I remember back in the day they used to show the upvote count and downvote count individually, like how saidit shows the interesting and funny votes separately.

But then about 3 years ago the reddit admins went out of their way to remove this functionality. Meaning now the users only see the net total. So if something has zero votes, you don't know if it got 100 upvotes and 100 downvotes, or just was ignored. So that's an information loss. Which as far as I can figure was done intentionally to hide vote brigading. Which implies that the reddit admins want to cover up the (sometimes bot-run) vote brigades that are running rampant on the site, rather than act to prevent them... because it drives "engagement numbers" which looks good to advertisers, which means reddit gets more money. So they're literally endorsing the hoards of bots and shills by turning a blind eye, for profit. I think this is the main reason reddit is so messed up these days.

There's so many layers to this upvote/downvote stuff, despite how straightforward and simple it seems. The more I learn about how it works the more happy I am with the voting system we built for saidit.

[–]codywohlers[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yeah and if you're reddit upvotes - downvotes != score cause that would be too easy :) (plus the complications you mentioned)

They do have that dagger option that will show you comments with large upvotes and downvotes and a low score, but it's off by default.

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They do have that dagger option that will show you comments with large upvotes and downvotes and a low score, but it's off by default.

Haha I never realized that was an option until right now. I thought they were going to enable it by default, but then I never heard anything. They didn't do a good job telling people it was in their preferences, if my case is any indication...

[–]Tom_Bombadil 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Shills gonna hate.

[–]codywohlers[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Good points. Thanks for the explanation.

Encouraging people to ignore instead of downvote is an interesting philosophy that I'm going to ponder more. My initial thoughts when you say "Encouraging people to..." is that people are going to people and if the tools don't support the intentions, people will fight the tools instead of changing intentions. And the long term outcome is a daycare website where admins remove features and mods add rules in a continued attempt to "encourage people" (see reddit) :)

I agree with what you said, but just to continue the discussion: People are compelled to engage with things they disagree with (even more than things they agree with). I think its just a math problem: if there's 3 ways to respond positively (insightful / funny / comment) and only 1 way to respond negatively (comment) then on average there will be 3x more negative comments than positive ones. And people are lazy too so 2/3 of the negative comments will be quick responses (as there's no other quick negative response).

I know I'm new here and am discussing/criticising things at the core of the site but if you kept the "upvotes" and "downvotes" as separate stats (and not subtracted them to get a single "score" or anything) then you can still sort how you currently sort (by "upvotes" or whatever), and also have the quick negative outlet. As for brigade wars, they can still happen in the comment section if there's no downvote button.

I do absolutely love that you broke out upvotes into insightful and funny (as inspired by slashdot) and I think the perfect discussion site would have this as well as for the downvotes (like off-topic, troll, spam). Then you don't even need moderators as the readers can vote and sort/filter themselves (theoretically). But like I said I'm new here, I'll try your system in my search for a new goto discussion site and see how it goes.

Thanks for the clarifications!

[–]i_cansmellthat 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And the long term outcome is a daycare website where admins remove features and mods add rules in a continued attempt to "encourage people" (see reddit) :)

Reddit summed up in two words: "daycare website" Nice.

[–]raven9 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

"One of the purposes of voting/liking is to provide a *quick way** to engage a post without the full steps of writing a comment."*

People who can't be bothered, or are not capable of writing a proper response should be discouraged from interacting with a discussion topic, not encouraged. The upvote/downvote system is probably the biggest insult to intelligent debate that has ever existed and is not only perfect for shills, brigaders and forum sliders, it also gives the redneck with an IQ of 75 the same level of influence over the readability of a post as the intellectual who actually reads the post and the linked material and writes a thoughtful response and this surely is the reason so many reddit subs are little more than meme fests for the sheeple. Discussion topics for the intellectally challenged. Just look at the image, if it makes you go "hur...hur...hur...hur I agree with that", click upvote, else, click downvote. Well done, you just took part in a discussion, now scroll down to the next meme and repeat.