I agree. As long as downvoting is "free" people will do it. There needs to be an incentive to not downvote. Maybe have downvoting cost some small amount of XP (similar to how StackOverflow does it)?
I disagree with the XP idea because of my brief experience with Voat. A system that only allows downvotes through the quantity of activity only strengthens powerusers and takes the voice of lurkers (who are the majority). The people who karmawhore end up with too much power over the system.
But I like its suggestion of when to downvote:
Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.
That downvoting guideline feels to me like one that will encourage reddit style downvotes. My theory (as someone who basically never downvoted on reddit) is that the downvote problem starts with people who think they are downvoting "egregiously sloppy" comments that actually weren't, and those downvotes create the impression in naive users that voting is to indicate whether you agree or disagree.
That's why I'm glad to see so much discussion of this subject during what seems to be a large influx of new users. It's hard for a site to propagate it's culture in that situation, but luckily most of my fellow migratees seem to be respecting the culture that attracted us here.
Yeah, I agree. Most of the time people probably go with their own interpretation of what the downvote should be to them. I really wonder if just changing the downvote to a report button would solve these issues. Something for the Snapzu team to test.
This sounds like the "job creators" arguments used by politicians. The lurkers are just as important as any one else.
That's why Snapzu is the way it is too. You can passively gain XP by voting, but you'll never gain rep or a lot of XP, so good luck getting to 50.
From what I´ve experienced until now, Snapzu is first and foremost a community where all members can participate equally. The way you word it makes it look like a mere game to gain fictional points.
The thing is that Snapzu will hopefully come to a point where Reddit had reached, where people won´t need to comment and post snaps to achieve a constant stream of content. It was unnecessary for me to post links at Reddit because almost everything I thought was interesting enough to be posted there had already been posted by someone else. Even in the comments it was quite common that another user had already expressed similar thoughts. I am only more active at Snapzu than at Reddit because it is still a small community and at this moment it is better for everyone to contribute.
I see where you're going with this, but I'm not sure an XP "fee" is the way (or the only way) that I would go about this.
Perhaps stigmatize down-voting by publishing the number of downvotes (or a percentage of down/up) made by a user in their profile (color coded green, yellow, red?). Conscientious people don't generally want to be seen as assholes.
Also, the idea of requiring a reason for a downvote may in itself be enough to curb old downvote habits. It will let users from elsewhere know that this place is not like their old place.
That system seems like something that would adapt well over here, actually. It might be worth for the devs to cherry pick some ideas from Stack Overflow and apply it here, in hopes of curbing some of the old Reddit habits that are going on.
Blacking out different opinions (outside of blatant racism/hate speech) is something that shouldn't be followed, just because it doesn't fit in the mold of things here.
This community is largely about discussion, not a house of perpetually repeated jokes and memes for the sake of quick upvotes. Maybe we could also add some popup dialogues with the upvote and downvote buttons that go something along the lines of "Insightful post!"/"Doesn't contribute to discussion.", to push things in the right way a bit more?
I don't really like StackOverflow's system for downvoting. Sometimes content needs to be downvoted, and there shouldn't be a barrier in those cases. Though I do quite like this solution to the problem.
I agree. As long as downvoting is "free" people will do it. There needs to be an incentive to not downvote. Maybe have downvoting cost some small amount of XP (similar to how StackOverflow does it)?
I disagree with the XP idea because of my brief experience with Voat. A system that only allows downvotes through the quantity of activity only strengthens powerusers and takes the voice of lurkers (who are the majority). The people who karmawhore end up with too much power over the system.
But I like its suggestion of when to downvote:
That downvoting guideline feels to me like one that will encourage reddit style downvotes. My theory (as someone who basically never downvoted on reddit) is that the downvote problem starts with people who think they are downvoting "egregiously sloppy" comments that actually weren't, and those downvotes create the impression in naive users that voting is to indicate whether you agree or disagree.
That's why I'm glad to see so much discussion of this subject during what seems to be a large influx of new users. It's hard for a site to propagate it's culture in that situation, but luckily most of my fellow migratees seem to be respecting the culture that attracted us here.
Yeah, I agree. Most of the time people probably go with their own interpretation of what the downvote should be to them. I really wonder if just changing the downvote to a report button would solve these issues. Something for the Snapzu team to test.
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I see where you're going with this, but I'm not sure an XP "fee" is the way (or the only way) that I would go about this.
Perhaps stigmatize down-voting by publishing the number of downvotes (or a percentage of down/up) made by a user in their profile (color coded green, yellow, red?). Conscientious people don't generally want to be seen as assholes.
Also, the idea of requiring a reason for a downvote may in itself be enough to curb old downvote habits. It will let users from elsewhere know that this place is not like their old place.
That system seems like something that would adapt well over here, actually. It might be worth for the devs to cherry pick some ideas from Stack Overflow and apply it here, in hopes of curbing some of the old Reddit habits that are going on.
Blacking out different opinions (outside of blatant racism/hate speech) is something that shouldn't be followed, just because it doesn't fit in the mold of things here.
This community is largely about discussion, not a house of perpetually repeated jokes and memes for the sake of quick upvotes. Maybe we could also add some popup dialogues with the upvote and downvote buttons that go something along the lines of "Insightful post!"/"Doesn't contribute to discussion.", to push things in the right way a bit more?
I don't really like StackOverflow's system for downvoting. Sometimes content needs to be downvoted, and there shouldn't be a barrier in those cases. Though I do quite like this solution to the problem.