I don't want to drop qualifications (specially since they are not that impressive and unique), but I think this is a bit important for the context,
I'm an UI&UX planning professional, so my opinions are a mixture of personal opinion, with informed experience and analysis. And since this field of work is ever evolving with global culture, everything I'm about to say is at the same time my professional opinion and an educated guess. That said:
From everything I saw to this day, on the up-and-down voting system there seems to be some sort of bakunian anarchist behavior as a event horizon regarding downvotes. It only works in small circles.
The paradigm of the system is that upvotes are for stuff that contribute with content and downvotes are things that do not contribute with content.
This seems to work on smaller communities; early reddit, niche reddit clones, and to some extent current slashdot;
The problem is that if the system has a premisse that defines itself and it is only upheld as long the users obey it, when the community sphere reaches non-personalization, (that is, when we consider ourselves just a speck of dust in the higher machine), the actions of users seem a bit more inconsequential and the system laws are often disregarded.
What that means is that people start downvoting with things they disagree with, because that's what people do when they are not serious about a system, they revert to individual relevance over infrastructure maintenance. Specially when the downvote button is ridiculously easy to use, and on a semiotics context the go-to button to systematically punish confronting ideas, by morally scoring negatively an idea and systematically pushing that idea out of evidence.
This makes nearly impossible to upheld the downvoting button as a "not-disagree" button.
There you have two options,
Accept that it IS going to be used for disagreement or change the system.
The first case is easy and it is what the majority does, which is mindnumbing, because as stated, it is basically the foundation of the system. So there's a perpetual dissonance in what the system should be doing from what it does.
The second option scares the hell out of people, because people hate to change the foundation of systems,
So in this case, the best option would be to tweak it. See what is wrong with the system and take the edges off to balance the user experience to the intended behavior.
As I said in another post, the Snapzu platform is better than some alternatives because it takes a bit of anonymity of the user. Not that it requires REAL WORLD Id. It's not a binary system.
Snapzu gives people avatars, XP levels, it is invite only (for now), etc...
Those are characteristics that make the user feel a bit more responsible for what ideas his image is professing into the world.
But that is not enough, the downvote button is still shielded by anonymity. (And that's a good thing BTW).
Then we would have to make simple changes on how the downvote button is associated with its proposed function, and the responsibilities that come with the usage.
Then we can have a plethora of suggestion on how to change it, let me give you a few (most have already been echoed in several threads on several platforms for years by many users):
- Make the downvote button NOT the imagetic opposite to upvote, instead of a downarrow and the name "Downvote" something more akin to "Report" "Not Contributing", and changing the forma...
I don't want to drop qualifications (specially since they are not that impressive and unique), but I think this is a bit important for the context,
I'm an UI&UX planning professional, so my opinions are a mixture of personal opinion, with informed experience and analysis. And since this field of work is ever evolving with global culture, everything I'm about to say is at the same time my professional opinion and an educated guess. That said:
From everything I saw to this day, on the up-and-down voting system there seems to be some sort of bakunian anarchist behavior as a event horizon regarding downvotes. It only works in small circles.
The paradigm of the system is that upvotes are for stuff that contribute with content and downvotes are things that do not contribute with content.
This seems to work on smaller communities; early reddit, niche reddit clones, and to some extent current slashdot;
The problem is that if the system has a premisse that defines itself and it is only upheld as long the users obey it, when the community sphere reaches non-personalization, (that is, when we consider ourselves just a speck of dust in the higher machine), the actions of users seem a bit more inconsequential and the system laws are often disregarded.
What that means is that people start downvoting with things they disagree with, because that's what people do when they are not serious about a system, they revert to individual relevance over infrastructure maintenance. Specially when the downvote button is ridiculously easy to use, and on a semiotics context the go-to button to systematically punish confronting ideas, by morally scoring negatively an idea and systematically pushing that idea out of evidence.
This makes nearly impossible to upheld the downvoting button as a "not-disagree" button.
There you have two options,
Accept that it IS going to be used for disagreement or change the system.
The first case is easy and it is what the majority does, which is mindnumbing, because as stated, it is basically the foundation of the system. So there's a perpetual dissonance in what the system should be doing from what it does.
The second option scares the hell out of people, because people hate to change the foundation of systems,
So in this case, the best option would be to tweak it. See what is wrong with the system and take the edges off to balance the user experience to the intended behavior.
As I said in another post, the Snapzu platform is better than some alternatives because it takes a bit of anonymity of the user. Not that it requires REAL WORLD Id. It's not a binary system.
Snapzu gives people avatars, XP levels, it is invite only (for now), etc...
Those are characteristics that make the user feel a bit more responsible for what ideas his image is professing into the world.
But that is not enough, the downvote button is still shielded by anonymity. (And that's a good thing BTW).
Then we would have to make simple changes on how the downvote button is associated with its proposed function, and the responsibilities that come with the usage.
Then we can have a plethora of suggestion on how to change it, let me give you a few (most have already been echoed in several threads on several platforms for years by many users):
- Make the downvote button NOT the imagetic opposite to upvote, instead of a downarrow and the name "Downvote" something more akin to "Report" "Not Contributing", and changing the format and the placing.
- Have X types of downvote, one that DOES mean that the user disagrees and the other(s) to non-cotributing report. That way you won't have to curb the impulse of the user to downvote-in-disagreement but you can control what this action does in the system
- Make it more difficult to access. A 2-step action to downvote, hide it in the interface more than upvote button, etc.
Just let make clear that those suggestions are actually the part that the managers and people in charge of this change have to think trough very carefully and run some tests, that is the trully hard part, and must be made with discretion and care.
The bottom line is that the downvoting system WILL BE USED FOR DISAGREEMENT. More and more as the userbase grows,
We can chose to do something about it, accept it and mold the community around it or live the system denying the factual truth.
This is a problem with the UI/UX of the website, which makes expertise on the matter ever more important. Thank you for your suggestions above and I agree with you.
As I've said many times before, no amount of reminders or convincing will ever change the general user's interaction with the down vote button. Up vote is agreement or positive content; down vote arrow is opposite to up vote, which in turn means disagreement or negative content. That's how it is on every web platform in existence and that will never change, no matter how many times we link to the voting FAQ. You cannot change a user's natural impulse. If they dislike an article, and they find an icon that reminds them of disagreement or negativity, they will click it. That will never change.
Let me pitch in,
I don't want to drop qualifications (specially since they are not that impressive and unique), but I think this is a bit important for the context,
I'm an UI&UX planning professional, so my opinions are a mixture of personal opinion, with informed experience and analysis. And since this field of work is ever evolving with global culture, everything I'm about to say is at the same time my professional opinion and an educated guess. That said:
From everything I saw to this day, on the up-and-down voting system there seems to be some sort of bakunian anarchist behavior as a event horizon regarding downvotes. It only works in small circles.
The paradigm of the system is that upvotes are for stuff that contribute with content and downvotes are things that do not contribute with content.
This seems to work on smaller communities; early reddit, niche reddit clones, and to some extent current slashdot;
The problem is that if the system has a premisse that defines itself and it is only upheld as long the users obey it, when the community sphere reaches non-personalization, (that is, when we consider ourselves just a speck of dust in the higher machine), the actions of users seem a bit more inconsequential and the system laws are often disregarded.
What that means is that people start downvoting with things they disagree with, because that's what people do when they are not serious about a system, they revert to individual relevance over infrastructure maintenance. Specially when the downvote button is ridiculously easy to use, and on a semiotics context the go-to button to systematically punish confronting ideas, by morally scoring negatively an idea and systematically pushing that idea out of evidence.
This makes nearly impossible to upheld the downvoting button as a "not-disagree" button.
There you have two options,
Accept that it IS going to be used for disagreement or change the system.
The first case is easy and it is what the majority does, which is mindnumbing, because as stated, it is basically the foundation of the system. So there's a perpetual dissonance in what the system should be doing from what it does.
The second option scares the hell out of people, because people hate to change the foundation of systems,
So in this case, the best option would be to tweak it. See what is wrong with the system and take the edges off to balance the user experience to the intended behavior.
As I said in another post, the Snapzu platform is better than some alternatives because it takes a bit of anonymity of the user. Not that it requires REAL WORLD Id. It's not a binary system.
Snapzu gives people avatars, XP levels, it is invite only (for now), etc...
Those are characteristics that make the user feel a bit more responsible for what ideas his image is professing into the world.
But that is not enough, the downvote button is still shielded by anonymity. (And that's a good thing BTW).
Then we would have to make simple changes on how the downvote button is associated with its proposed function, and the responsibilities that come with the usage.
Then we can have a plethora of suggestion on how to change it, let me give you a few (most have already been echoed in several threads on several platforms for years by many users):
- Make the downvote button NOT the imagetic opposite to upvote, instead of a downarrow and the name "Downvote" something more akin to "Report" "Not Contributing", and changing the forma...
... Read FullThis is a problem with the UI/UX of the website, which makes expertise on the matter ever more important. Thank you for your suggestions above and I agree with you.
As I've said many times before, no amount of reminders or convincing will ever change the general user's interaction with the down vote button. Up vote is agreement or positive content; down vote arrow is opposite to up vote, which in turn means disagreement or negative content. That's how it is on every web platform in existence and that will never change, no matter how many times we link to the voting FAQ. You cannot change a user's natural impulse. If they dislike an article, and they find an icon that reminds them of disagreement or negativity, they will click it. That will never change.