Round 2! I'm just going to continue here since there are so many comments and a lot of them are saying similar things.
So first of all, a lot of people are saying WE DON'T WANT A HIVE MIND! People seem to be of the opinion that hive mind = reddit = chaos. Actually a hive mind is just about utilizing many minds in order to achieve something e.g. sorting. The voting system on this website is a hive-mind voting system! That's how it operates whether you say so or not! When you have tens of thousands of users sorting content by voting, that is hive mind voting. Downvotes or not, that's what it is. To everyone saying they don't want this to turn into reddit... the main difference between reddit and snapzu is in the number of users. Askreddit has over 9,000,000 subscribers. I'm a member of many small subreddits and you know what? They're full of polite, intelligent discussion and quality content. But when you take a subreddit that has over 9,000,000 subscribers, chaos is pretty much inevitable. That's not le evil reddit, that's people, and snapzu wouldn't fare any better with that many users. Read reddit's etiquette guide, it seems to be more detailed and at least as noble as snapzu's. And, same as here, it asks users not to downvote based on disagreement or emotional reaction. It works when you have a few thousand users, but it will fall apart when you have hundreds of thousands or millions of users. So to the people saying that downvoting because of disagreement is against the rules, that's all good and well but how do you enforce that? And when snapzu grows and has tens/hundreds of thousands of users, how do you police people's downvoting?
And the person who cited the Boston bombing, the Sunil chaos was not caused by the voices of reason being downvoted. The problem lies more with the fact that people disagreed with the voices of reason, but they would have done so whether there was a downvote button or not. It's complex, and I'm not going to sit here and blame it on one thing or another, but that was people being people. Reddit was just the platform and it would have happened even if the downvote button didn't exist. And another thing that didn't help was the media picking it up and adding weight to it. Reddit is just a platform for a bunch of people to express themselves, it can't really be expected to provide truthful or accurate information, whereas the media should, because the purpose of the media, ideally, should be to disseminate truthful and accurate information.
To people saying that downvotes are bad because they push content down so its harder to see: downvotes just add a little more heft to your voting. But if there are, say, 1000 posts, they have to be sorted in some kind of order. Something has to be in the 1000th spot, and the 999th, and the 1st etc. Provided you don't hide posts with a certain number of downvotes, downvoting won't "hide" content from the users. Whoever thinks that the 1000th post won't be seen because it has been downvoted out of sight... there will still be a 1000th post with just the upvotes/neutral voting system. So you're still pushing some things to the top and in the process, albeit more passively, pushing other things down. I honestly do think that people here have a strange view of downvotes; people tie so much negativity to it, they're upset when they get downvoted. If people were complaining because they felt like their point was valid yet they'd received -50 points, I'd be sympathetic and...
Round 2! I'm just going to continue here since there are so many comments and a lot of them are saying similar things.
So first of all, a lot of people are saying WE DON'T WANT A HIVE MIND! People seem to be of the opinion that hive mind = reddit = chaos. Actually a hive mind is just about utilizing many minds in order to achieve something e.g. sorting. The voting system on this website is a hive-mind voting system! That's how it operates whether you say so or not! When you have tens of thousands of users sorting content by voting, that is hive mind voting. Downvotes or not, that's what it is. To everyone saying they don't want this to turn into reddit... the main difference between reddit and snapzu is in the number of users. Askreddit has over 9,000,000 subscribers. I'm a member of many small subreddits and you know what? They're full of polite, intelligent discussion and quality content. But when you take a subreddit that has over 9,000,000 subscribers, chaos is pretty much inevitable. That's not le evil reddit, that's people, and snapzu wouldn't fare any better with that many users. Read reddit's etiquette guide, it seems to be more detailed and at least as noble as snapzu's. And, same as here, it asks users not to downvote based on disagreement or emotional reaction. It works when you have a few thousand users, but it will fall apart when you have hundreds of thousands or millions of users. So to the people saying that downvoting because of disagreement is against the rules, that's all good and well but how do you enforce that? And when snapzu grows and has tens/hundreds of thousands of users, how do you police people's downvoting?
And the person who cited the Boston bombing, the Sunil chaos was not caused by the voices of reason being downvoted. The problem lies more with the fact that people disagreed with the voices of reason, but they would have done so whether there was a downvote button or not. It's complex, and I'm not going to sit here and blame it on one thing or another, but that was people being people. Reddit was just the platform and it would have happened even if the downvote button didn't exist. And another thing that didn't help was the media picking it up and adding weight to it. Reddit is just a platform for a bunch of people to express themselves, it can't really be expected to provide truthful or accurate information, whereas the media should, because the purpose of the media, ideally, should be to disseminate truthful and accurate information.
To people saying that downvotes are bad because they push content down so its harder to see: downvotes just add a little more heft to your voting. But if there are, say, 1000 posts, they have to be sorted in some kind of order. Something has to be in the 1000th spot, and the 999th, and the 1st etc. Provided you don't hide posts with a certain number of downvotes, downvoting won't "hide" content from the users. Whoever thinks that the 1000th post won't be seen because it has been downvoted out of sight... there will still be a 1000th post with just the upvotes/neutral voting system. So you're still pushing some things to the top and in the process, albeit more passively, pushing other things down. I honestly do think that people here have a strange view of downvotes; people tie so much negativity to it, they're upset when they get downvoted. If people were complaining because they felt like their point was valid yet they'd received -50 points, I'd be sympathetic and I think it would warrant investigation. If people were complaining because people were really abusing the downvotes (i.e. going through a users profile and downvoting all of their content out of spite, or multiple users banding together to gang up on a person and supress their opinion by downvoting, downvoting because of the user instead of the content etc.) it would warrant investigation. But so many people complain about one downvote! I think that reflects immaturity and I think that's different from what people in this thread are defending. I think that those people complaining about a single downvote aren't doing so out of fear of snapzu turning into reddit, it's something more akin to vanity, at least in some cases. And if there's a rule that says not to downvote just because you disagree, then why isn't there a rule that says not to upvote just because you agree? Why should people's reasons for downvoting be questioned any more than their reasons for upvoting? Nobody seems to be worried that they got upvoted solely because their opinion is a popular one, rather than because it was a quality contribution to the discussion.
1. UPVOTE : Express agreement and put relevant content up-front.
2. IGNORE (Do nothing): Disagreement. Let the content "sit" where it is.
3. DOWNVOTE : Bury unrelevant content.
That's it. Honestly, I feel like Snapzu's prior users simply are too polite to tell us to just freaking adapt to their local culture. That's how this website works, it's not really up to us to change it. Jesus Christ, what is so hard to understand? We, Reddit shipjumpers, have to get accustomed to the local rules, not bend them around our will...
To people saying that downvotes are bad because they push content down so its harder to see: downvotes just add a little more heft to your voting. But if there are, say, 1000 posts, they have to be sorted in some kind of order. Something has to be in the 1000th spot, and the 999th, and the 1st etc. Provided you don't hide posts with a certain number of downvotes, downvoting won't "hide" content from the users. Whoever thinks that the 1000th post won't be seen because it has been downvoted out of sight... there will still be a 1000th post with just the upvotes/neutral voting system. So you're still pushing some things to the top and in the process, albeit more passively, pushing other things down.
Not really. The idea is that content that we don't agree with shouldn't be pushed down, simple left where it is. It's not up to someone who doesn't agree with the idea we have to make it unseen. A comment with enough downvotes will be hidden from sight - completely. A comment nobody agrees with will be down there, but still accessible. It's a subtle difference, yes, but there is one.
I honestly do think that people here have a strange view of downvotes; people tie so much negativity to it, they're upset when they get downvoted. If people were complaining because they felt like their point was valid yet they'd received -50 points, I'd be sympathetic and I think it would warrant investigation. If people were complaining because people were really abusing the downvotes (i.e. going through a users profile and downvoting all of their content out of spite, or multiple users banding together to gang up on a person and supress their opinion by downvoting, downvoting because of the user instead of the content etc.) it would warrant investigation. But so many people complain about one downvote! I think that reflects immaturity and I think that's different from what people in this thread are defending. I think that those people complaining about a single downvote aren't doing so out of fear of snapzu turning into reddit, it's something more akin to vanity, at least in some cases.
People aren't complaining particularly about those single downvotes. They don't fear for their own reputation, neither do they show "vanity" because of it... People are complaining because of the slow culture shift that could happen if this goes unnoticed and unaddressed for too long. Snapzu is older than our arrival - circa 2012, I believe? It has its own identity and way of working. I definitely aren't here to change that, as this way of working was what brought me here in the first place.
And if there's a rule that says not to downvote just because you disagree, then why isn't there a rule that says not to upvote just because you agree? Why should people's reasons for downvoting be questioned any more than their reasons for upvoting? Nobody seems to be worried that they got upvoted solely because their opinion is a popular one, rather than...
1. UPVOTE : Express agreement and put relevant content up-front.
2. IGNORE (Do nothing): Disagreement. Let the content "sit" where it is.
3. DOWNVOTE : Bury unrelevant content.
That's it. Honestly, I feel like Snapzu's prior users simply are too polite to tell us to just freaking adapt to their local culture. That's how this website works, it's not really up to us to change it. Jesus Christ, what is so hard to understand? We, Reddit shipjumpers, have to get accustomed to the local rules, not bend them around our will...
To people saying that downvotes are bad because they push content down so its harder to see: downvotes just add a little more heft to your voting. But if there are, say, 1000 posts, they have to be sorted in some kind of order. Something has to be in the 1000th spot, and the 999th, and the 1st etc. Provided you don't hide posts with a certain number of downvotes, downvoting won't "hide" content from the users. Whoever thinks that the 1000th post won't be seen because it has been downvoted out of sight... there will still be a 1000th post with just the upvotes/neutral voting system. So you're still pushing some things to the top and in the process, albeit more passively, pushing other things down.
Not really. The idea is that content that we don't agree with shouldn't be pushed down, simple left where it is. It's not up to someone who doesn't agree with the idea we have to make it unseen. A comment with enough downvotes will be hidden from sight - completely. A comment nobody agrees with will be down there, but still accessible. It's a subtle difference, yes, but there is one.
I honestly do think that people here have a strange view of downvotes; people tie so much negativity to it, they're upset when they get downvoted. If people were complaining because they felt like their point was valid yet they'd received -50 points, I'd be sympathetic and I think it would warrant investigation. If people were complaining because people were really abusing the downvotes (i.e. going through a users profile and downvoting all of their content out of spite, or multiple users banding together to gang up on a person and supress their opinion by downvoting, downvoting because of the user instead of the content etc.) it would warrant investigation. But so many people complain about one downvote! I think that reflects immaturity and I think that's different from what people in this thread are defending. I think that those people complaining about a single downvote aren't doing so out of fear of snapzu turning into reddit, it's something more akin to vanity, at least in some cases.
People aren't complaining particularly about those single downvotes. They don't fear for their own reputation, neither do they show "vanity" because of it... People are complaining because of the slow culture shift that could happen if this goes unnoticed and unaddressed for too long. Snapzu is older than our arrival - circa 2012, I believe? It has its own identity and way of working. I definitely aren't here to change that, as this way of working was what brought me here in the first place.
And if there's a rule that says not to downvote just because you disagree, then why isn't there a rule that says not to upvote just because you agree? Why should people's reasons for downvoting be questioned any more than their reasons for upvoting? Nobody seems to be worried that they got upvoted solely because their opinion is a popular one, rather than because it was a quality contribution to the discussion.
Because that's what an upvote is. Saying "you've got some quality content there, plus, I agree with you". Read that etiquette again, and all those comments in this thread. It's been explained more times than it should have been.
I feel like Snapzu's prior users simply are too polite to tell us to just freaking adapt to their local culture. That's how this website works, it's not really up to us to change it. Jesus Christ, what is so hard to understand?
I came here from Reddit because of this culture. I don't want to see that change. OP, you have a choice:
1. Adapt to Snapzu culture
2. Use Voat
3. Stick with Reddit
It's okay that you asked the original question, but after your edit/round 2, even I downvoted your post (congratulations...you received my first downvote). Why? You weren't really asking a question and taking in the answers. You were beating people over the head with how it should be. Borderline trolling.
lustig: if there's a rule that says not to downvote just because you disagree, then why isn't there a rule that says not to upvote just because you agree?
folkrav: It's been explained more times than it should have been.
I think here's the core issue with the current voting mechanism: it conflates subjective and objective votes, and incorrectly presents up and down voting as equal but opposite actions. It has to be continually explained to newcomers because the UI isn't aligned with the etiquette, and thus newcomers don't intuitively know how to use it.
There are actually 4 kinds of voting reactions one might have:
1. Subjective positive: I agree with this, yay interesting.
2. Subjective negative: I disagree, what a load of crap.
3. Objective positive: This content is of high quality: well-written, many source links, covers the topic in all relevant areas, etc.
4. Objective negative: Spam, harassment, other TOS violation.
However, since we aren't robots, it's usually difficult to separate the subjective and objective reactions, so an up vote actually means 1+3, and a Snapzu down vote is intended only for 4. Currently there is no way to express 2 except by commenting.
If you ask me, it would be sufficient to address the issue simply by changing the UI. The voting & reputation system itself seems fine. I wonder, though, if it would make sense to have an additional, separate button for the "disagree" vote that wouldn't actually affect the sorting of the snap or the submitter's reputation, just to give people a way to easily express their opinion?
A bit of a preamble, you should know that next to none of us think that the upvote-downvote system here is perfect. Head over to /t/ideasforsnapzu where everybody is suggesting things and giving opinions like these on how to improve the site. There have been countless suggestions on the voting system and there are a lot of functions currently being worked on. This isn't the final version of the voting system. Snapzu is a young and evolving site. Some of the features that exist on reddit are there after years and years of the site being alive. Snapzu is only a couple years old.
These things take time. However, the solution is definitely not to just give up and let it happen. You keep referencing some inevitable future point of the site that is impossible to fight as if that's a fact. Truth is, no site is the same and just because it happened on reddit doesn't mean it will happen on every other content aggregator. Snapzu isn't reddit. Reddit isn't snapzu. Snapzu isn't voat or hubski or meneame or panjurry or whatever content aggregator has been advertised around reddit the past month. Snapzu is just snapzu. It has it's own destiny. While some things are truly inevitable, we don't know what. Websites aren't a science. Just accepting the toxic aspects of a different website and just saying "let it happen" is akin to just asking for the site to become toxic itself.
Now, I'll tackle your post concept to concept
Hive mind
Here is the thing, yes you are giving an accurate description of a hive mind, but you aren't giving the whole picture. Yes, a site-wide hive mind is an extremely effective method of content aggregation. You can have certain opinions up and down at a powerful level with mass agreement. However, what this picture doesn't paint is the quality of these submissions. The reason why large subreddits are such terrible places for quality content is because of the hive mind. Nobody cares about quality on these subs so nobody upvotes based on quality. They upvote based on "I agree vs I disagree". This is why on top threads on /r/askreddit, when the post isn't tagged as serious, it is always some pun or joke, or super-agreeable comment. They were just the first person there and their content rose to the top, even though later users have higher quality posts, they are buried under the hive mind.
Taking the higher quality subreddits into mind, like /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians, these subs are only their level of quality because of two things:
1)A community with quality over agreeability in mind
2)Extremely active moderation team.
If the community didn't agree with the moderator's principles, then the moderator's jobs would be absolutely impossible. While the moderation team at those subs are spectacular, the community and their principles are also a driving force.
Taking the smaller subs into account, you are right in that these tend to be higher quality subreddits, but they tend to be so for different reasons than just the hivemind. Hiveminds aren't things that start to happen at extremely large sizes. Subreddits/tribes can have hiveminds at extremely small sizes. The reason why quality tends to be higher in these subs is usually just because of reddit's karma system. It's extremely hard to game smaller subs for karma. For one, you are never going to gain a massive amount of karma from a small sub, so legitimate gamers only stay in the large subs where they can take advantage of the system there. Also, when you ...
A bit of a preamble, you should know that next to none of us think that the upvote-downvote system here is perfect. Head over to /t/ideasforsnapzu where everybody is suggesting things and giving opinions like these on how to improve the site. There have been countless suggestions on the voting system and there are a lot of functions currently being worked on. This isn't the final version of the voting system. Snapzu is a young and evolving site. Some of the features that exist on reddit are there after years and years of the site being alive. Snapzu is only a couple years old.
These things take time. However, the solution is definitely not to just give up and let it happen. You keep referencing some inevitable future point of the site that is impossible to fight as if that's a fact. Truth is, no site is the same and just because it happened on reddit doesn't mean it will happen on every other content aggregator. Snapzu isn't reddit. Reddit isn't snapzu. Snapzu isn't voat or hubski or meneame or panjurry or whatever content aggregator has been advertised around reddit the past month. Snapzu is just snapzu. It has it's own destiny. While some things are truly inevitable, we don't know what. Websites aren't a science. Just accepting the toxic aspects of a different website and just saying "let it happen" is akin to just asking for the site to become toxic itself.
Now, I'll tackle your post concept to concept
Hive mind
Here is the thing, yes you are giving an accurate description of a hive mind, but you aren't giving the whole picture. Yes, a site-wide hive mind is an extremely effective method of content aggregation. You can have certain opinions up and down at a powerful level with mass agreement. However, what this picture doesn't paint is the quality of these submissions. The reason why large subreddits are such terrible places for quality content is because of the hive mind. Nobody cares about quality on these subs so nobody upvotes based on quality. They upvote based on "I agree vs I disagree". This is why on top threads on /r/askreddit, when the post isn't tagged as serious, it is always some pun or joke, or super-agreeable comment. They were just the first person there and their content rose to the top, even though later users have higher quality posts, they are buried under the hive mind.
Taking the higher quality subreddits into mind, like /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians, these subs are only their level of quality because of two things:
1)A community with quality over agreeability in mind
2)Extremely active moderation team.
If the community didn't agree with the moderator's principles, then the moderator's jobs would be absolutely impossible. While the moderation team at those subs are spectacular, the community and their principles are also a driving force.
Taking the smaller subs into account, you are right in that these tend to be higher quality subreddits, but they tend to be so for different reasons than just the hivemind. Hiveminds aren't things that start to happen at extremely large sizes. Subreddits/tribes can have hiveminds at extremely small sizes. The reason why quality tends to be higher in these subs is usually just because of reddit's karma system. It's extremely hard to game smaller subs for karma. For one, you are never going to gain a massive amount of karma from a small sub, so legitimate gamers only stay in the large subs where they can take advantage of the system there. Also, when you make a lower quality post, it harder for it to get hidden on a smaller sub. Less people to downvote you combined with the fact that people can probably see the higher quality post below yours.
how do you enforce that? how do you police people's downvoting?
First, I talk about this a lot in the preamble. Also, for policing, reference the part about /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians above. There are already some systems in place, such as new members being restricted on their downvotes (1-10 are 5 snap downvotes a day). Another part is how the site is set up. It is less partitioned like reddit. People follow each other and the tribes are more of a web then separate tribes. This alone helps with policing and maintaining a site culture because the culture of a single tribe is spread through the rest of the site and vice versa. There are also a lot more suggestions. If you have any, give them at /t/ideasforsnapzu. The thing is, what your current suggestion is, is to give up and let it happen. Just let quality degrade. Of course, quality degrading is practically inevitable, but the question is how much. Just giving up leaves that up to complete chance. Fighting that degradation gives us a better chance up being a large site with quality content.
Boston Bombing
Frankly, I agree with this part. It's a bit much to suggest that the famous reddit witch-hunts were because of the voting system.
Hefty vote section
Except it isn't about what the 1000th post is. It is about Everything in between. Here is a simple example.
Let's split the posts into three sections. A is high quality. B is low quality posts. C is spam.
In the suggested system, the content is order as so: A B C.
In the agree/disagree system the content is ordered like this: A (BC)
Instead of having B separate from C, B is now mixed with C. To find high quality alternative opinions, you don't need to wade through A and B, you have to wade through B and C. Instead of having to subject yourself to content that you enjoy, half of the content you have to read is spam or harassing content. That is overall just a worse experience.
Immaturity
Sorry, but I don't see why you think that is so immature. Sure, if somebody complained about every single downvote that they got, that would be annoying. And I've seen people get annoyed at people who complain about a very small amount of downvotes. It goes both ways. However, in no way is it immature for people to wonder why they are getting downvotes on high quality content that follows every rule. Especially considering the site culture and the admin's intentions in the FAQ and the fact that downvotes affect your reputation which affects your own voting weight, having a number of downvotes on the post suggests that you did something wrong or your post wasn't a quality post. If you believe that your post followed all rules and was a quality post, you deserve to know why people think that isn't true.
Upvote Contradiction
While not perfect, that largely isn't true. Low quality but agreeable posts AREN'T wanted at the top, and that is reflected by the community. Even on reddit, that is reflected by the community. It's the reason why everybody hates all of the pun threads at the top of askreddit posts. They are low quality, but since people laughed and upvoted, they are what is top, and people complain about it. The reason why you don't see this as much on snapzu is because it really doesn't happen yet on snapzu, to a large extent. If you go down to the bottom of threads, you will see a lot of agreeable posts that don't incite conversation with maybe an upvote or two (with probably a couple downvotes for being irrelevant, or in essence, spam). Of course, the system isn't perfect, and I think it could be improved upon with changes to the UI, but largely, what you said really isn't true.
(Just found out Snapzu's character limit. 7500. I guess I've gotten my message out haha.)
"So to the people saying that downvoting because of disagreement is against the rules, that's all good and well but how do you enforce that? And when snapzu grows and has tens/hundreds of thousands of users, how do you police people's downvoting?"
You enforce it by assimilating newcomers into your community. At the beginning it is very important to establish culture, and as it grows you have to exponentially increase that effort. When a community grows rapidly, the newcomers outnumber the established folks and sometimes will even out-participate them. As a single newcomer on a forum like this one, you see the actions of everyone around you in the form of those little numbers next to their names, so if you see 50 downvotes on a comment that doesn't break the rules, but seems like what you'd consider an unpopular but at least potentially a reasoned argument, you assume that downvotes are for things that you disagree with. Most people aren't going to read the rules, so if the established community believes strongly that downvotes should be used as intended, they need to push hard to make sure the downvote's purpose is known to the new users.
So can it be legitimately enforced? Not easily unless you want to assume you know what the person who downvoted was thinking when they clicked the button. But can it be socially enforced, to an extent? Yes. By leading by example when growth is not rapid, and by calling special attention to it when growth is rapid. There will come a point when that is not enough either, and that will require UI changes that have been suggested in this thread: moving the downvote button, changing the graphic, and including a dropdown box for you to give a reason for every downvote (which will make very clear that if you don't have one of those reasons, then there shouldn't be a downvote given).
Round 2! I'm just going to continue here since there are so many comments and a lot of them are saying similar things.
So first of all, a lot of people are saying WE DON'T WANT A HIVE MIND! People seem to be of the opinion that hive mind = reddit = chaos. Actually a hive mind is just about utilizing many minds in order to achieve something e.g. sorting. The voting system on this website is a hive-mind voting system! That's how it operates whether you say so or not! When you have tens of thousands of users sorting content by voting, that is hive mind voting. Downvotes or not, that's what it is. To everyone saying they don't want this to turn into reddit... the main difference between reddit and snapzu is in the number of users. Askreddit has over 9,000,000 subscribers. I'm a member of many small subreddits and you know what? They're full of polite, intelligent discussion and quality content. But when you take a subreddit that has over 9,000,000 subscribers, chaos is pretty much inevitable. That's not le evil reddit, that's people, and snapzu wouldn't fare any better with that many users. Read reddit's etiquette guide, it seems to be more detailed and at least as noble as snapzu's. And, same as here, it asks users not to downvote based on disagreement or emotional reaction. It works when you have a few thousand users, but it will fall apart when you have hundreds of thousands or millions of users. So to the people saying that downvoting because of disagreement is against the rules, that's all good and well but how do you enforce that? And when snapzu grows and has tens/hundreds of thousands of users, how do you police people's downvoting?
And the person who cited the Boston bombing, the Sunil chaos was not caused by the voices of reason being downvoted. The problem lies more with the fact that people disagreed with the voices of reason, but they would have done so whether there was a downvote button or not. It's complex, and I'm not going to sit here and blame it on one thing or another, but that was people being people. Reddit was just the platform and it would have happened even if the downvote button didn't exist. And another thing that didn't help was the media picking it up and adding weight to it. Reddit is just a platform for a bunch of people to express themselves, it can't really be expected to provide truthful or accurate information, whereas the media should, because the purpose of the media, ideally, should be to disseminate truthful and accurate information.
To people saying that downvotes are bad because they push content down so its harder to see: downvotes just add a little more heft to your voting. But if there are, say, 1000 posts, they have to be sorted in some kind of order. Something has to be in the 1000th spot, and the 999th, and the 1st etc. Provided you don't hide posts with a certain number of downvotes, downvoting won't "hide" content from the users. Whoever thinks that the 1000th post won't be seen because it has been downvoted out of sight... there will still be a 1000th post with just the upvotes/neutral voting system. So you're still pushing some things to the top and in the process, albeit more passively, pushing other things down. I honestly do think that people here have a strange view of downvotes; people tie so much negativity to it, they're upset when they get downvoted. If people were complaining because they felt like their point was valid yet they'd received -50 points, I'd be sympathetic and...
... Read Full1. UPVOTE : Express agreement and put relevant content up-front.
2. IGNORE (Do nothing): Disagreement. Let the content "sit" where it is.
3. DOWNVOTE : Bury unrelevant content.
That's it. Honestly, I feel like Snapzu's prior users simply are too polite to tell us to just freaking adapt to their local culture. That's how this website works, it's not really up to us to change it. Jesus Christ, what is so hard to understand? We, Reddit shipjumpers, have to get accustomed to the local rules, not bend them around our will...
Not really. The idea is that content that we don't agree with shouldn't be pushed down, simple left where it is. It's not up to someone who doesn't agree with the idea we have to make it unseen. A comment with enough downvotes will be hidden from sight - completely. A comment nobody agrees with will be down there, but still accessible. It's a subtle difference, yes, but there is one.
People aren't complaining particularly about those single downvotes. They don't fear for their own reputation, neither do they show "vanity" because of it... People are complaining because of the slow culture shift that could happen if this goes unnoticed and unaddressed for too long. Snapzu is older than our arrival - circa 2012, I believe? It has its own identity and way of working. I definitely aren't here to change that, as this way of working was what brought me here in the first place.
... Read FullI came here from Reddit because of this culture. I don't want to see that change. OP, you have a choice:
1. Adapt to Snapzu culture
2. Use Voat
3. Stick with Reddit
It's okay that you asked the original question, but after your edit/round 2, even I downvoted your post (congratulations...you received my first downvote). Why? You weren't really asking a question and taking in the answers. You were beating people over the head with how it should be. Borderline trolling.
I think here's the core issue with the current voting mechanism: it conflates subjective and objective votes, and incorrectly presents up and down voting as equal but opposite actions. It has to be continually explained to newcomers because the UI isn't aligned with the etiquette, and thus newcomers don't intuitively know how to use it.
There are actually 4 kinds of voting reactions one might have:
1. Subjective positive: I agree with this, yay interesting.
2. Subjective negative: I disagree, what a load of crap.
3. Objective positive: This content is of high quality: well-written, many source links, covers the topic in all relevant areas, etc.
4. Objective negative: Spam, harassment, other TOS violation.
However, since we aren't robots, it's usually difficult to separate the subjective and objective reactions, so an up vote actually means 1+3, and a Snapzu down vote is intended only for 4. Currently there is no way to express 2 except by commenting.
If you ask me, it would be sufficient to address the issue simply by changing the UI. The voting & reputation system itself seems fine. I wonder, though, if it would make sense to have an additional, separate button for the "disagree" vote that wouldn't actually affect the sorting of the snap or the submitter's reputation, just to give people a way to easily express their opinion?
A bit of a preamble, you should know that next to none of us think that the upvote-downvote system here is perfect. Head over to /t/ideasforsnapzu where everybody is suggesting things and giving opinions like these on how to improve the site. There have been countless suggestions on the voting system and there are a lot of functions currently being worked on. This isn't the final version of the voting system. Snapzu is a young and evolving site. Some of the features that exist on reddit are there after years and years of the site being alive. Snapzu is only a couple years old.
These things take time. However, the solution is definitely not to just give up and let it happen. You keep referencing some inevitable future point of the site that is impossible to fight as if that's a fact. Truth is, no site is the same and just because it happened on reddit doesn't mean it will happen on every other content aggregator. Snapzu isn't reddit. Reddit isn't snapzu. Snapzu isn't voat or hubski or meneame or panjurry or whatever content aggregator has been advertised around reddit the past month. Snapzu is just snapzu. It has it's own destiny. While some things are truly inevitable, we don't know what. Websites aren't a science. Just accepting the toxic aspects of a different website and just saying "let it happen" is akin to just asking for the site to become toxic itself.
Now, I'll tackle your post concept to concept
Here is the thing, yes you are giving an accurate description of a hive mind, but you aren't giving the whole picture. Yes, a site-wide hive mind is an extremely effective method of content aggregation. You can have certain opinions up and down at a powerful level with mass agreement. However, what this picture doesn't paint is the quality of these submissions. The reason why large subreddits are such terrible places for quality content is because of the hive mind. Nobody cares about quality on these subs so nobody upvotes based on quality. They upvote based on "I agree vs I disagree". This is why on top threads on /r/askreddit, when the post isn't tagged as serious, it is always some pun or joke, or super-agreeable comment. They were just the first person there and their content rose to the top, even though later users have higher quality posts, they are buried under the hive mind.
Taking the higher quality subreddits into mind, like /r/askscience and /r/askhistorians, these subs are only their level of quality because of two things:
1)A community with quality over agreeability in mind
2)Extremely active moderation team.
If the community didn't agree with the moderator's principles, then the moderator's jobs would be absolutely impossible. While the moderation team at those subs are spectacular, the community and their principles are also a driving force.
Taking the smaller subs into account, you are right in that these tend to be higher quality subreddits, but they tend to be so for different reasons than just the hivemind. Hiveminds aren't things that start to happen at extremely large sizes. Subreddits/tribes can have hiveminds at extremely small sizes. The reason why quality tends to be higher in these subs is usually just because of reddit's karma system. It's extremely hard to game smaller subs for karma. For one, you are never going to gain a massive amount of karma from a small sub, so legitimate gamers only stay in the large subs where they can take advantage of the system there. Also, when you ...
... Read Full"So to the people saying that downvoting because of disagreement is against the rules, that's all good and well but how do you enforce that? And when snapzu grows and has tens/hundreds of thousands of users, how do you police people's downvoting?"
You enforce it by assimilating newcomers into your community. At the beginning it is very important to establish culture, and as it grows you have to exponentially increase that effort. When a community grows rapidly, the newcomers outnumber the established folks and sometimes will even out-participate them. As a single newcomer on a forum like this one, you see the actions of everyone around you in the form of those little numbers next to their names, so if you see 50 downvotes on a comment that doesn't break the rules, but seems like what you'd consider an unpopular but at least potentially a reasoned argument, you assume that downvotes are for things that you disagree with. Most people aren't going to read the rules, so if the established community believes strongly that downvotes should be used as intended, they need to push hard to make sure the downvote's purpose is known to the new users.
So can it be legitimately enforced? Not easily unless you want to assume you know what the person who downvoted was thinking when they clicked the button. But can it be socially enforced, to an extent? Yes. By leading by example when growth is not rapid, and by calling special attention to it when growth is rapid. There will come a point when that is not enough either, and that will require UI changes that have been suggested in this thread: moving the downvote button, changing the graphic, and including a dropdown box for you to give a reason for every downvote (which will make very clear that if you don't have one of those reasons, then there shouldn't be a downvote given).
I think others have addressed part 2 well, but just some feedback for you:
I appreciate your change of tone, the original post was more rant-like and I found the latter portion to be more productive.