Hey, I saw your comment! I thought it genuinely added to discussion, so the only reasons I could imagine someone would downvote you is if they wanted their comment to go higher, or if they disagreed with you. Neither of those are legitimate reasons to downvote. That sort of thing makes me wonder if downvotes should be anonymous.
I think that would be great, but would also like to see a mandatory reason code like I saw mentioned elsewhere. I think the combo would help more than either individual piece.
Mandatory reason code is probably one of the better ideas. It'll be hard for trolls to bs a downvote reason on the spot, and even if they can it will probably look bs'd. It might not solve the problem, but at least we will know when we are being downvoted by someone for now reason.
I also like the idea of there being some sort of expandable downvote history or something. That would be pretty good as well.
Actually, the more I think about this, the more I like it. At times, I can see something like this be a bit more "punishing" to those who downvote. However, on the flip side, showing people who downvoted, is a good way to deter spamming as well.
It almost reminds me of what stackexchange sites do when users mark a question as duplicate. You know who marked it and for what reason. I like that.
I think that showing who down voted what could also have the potential to start bullying and flame wars. I like that it's kept anonymous, but I think providing a reason on comments as well as snaps could help deter spamming at least. There will always be jerks on the internet, there really isn't a way to stop them every where or every single time.
Downvotes aren't meant to be a "disagree" button, so I can't imagine flame wars would erupt unless they're misused.
And "stopping jerks" is not necessarily about managing mean behavior. When you have a vote-based content system reddit, snapzu, or voat, downvoting means that dissent often gets sidelined, even if it is honest and well-reasoned dissent. Back-and-forth often gets misinterpreted as argument, too, and suffers that same treatment. You can't have a conversation in that environment. It leads to the phenomenon of threads dominated by meta-discussions about how the hivemind or circlejerk is ruining the website -- often instead of discussing the topic at hand.
On the plus side if someone does go into a flame war of downvotes it will be completely clear who is doing it and the appropriate action can be taken such as banning the user or disabling the ability to downvote.
I would worry about personal vendettas flaming up. Beyond knowing that someone downvoted you, I'm not sure what the additional information of who downvoted you does for you? Do you message them and ask why if they forgot to leave a reason? Beyond that, I can't think of any other things anyone would actually do with that. Well....any good things that people would do with that! :P
Yeah, it is a difficult system to control well. I think you're probably right, I hadn't really thought about that. There's trade offs to either one. I guess we should just stick with the spirit of what we have, and follow guidelines on it.
Unless they have a valid reason to downvote, in which they will receive a nasty message for downvoting comments that genuinely deserved it. capping daily downvotes depending on site tenure and internal auditing of downvote totals by user would curb the behaviour incredibly quickly.
At which point they would be in violation of the site's policy against harassment or abusive language and would get banned. I would have no issue with the account publicly tied to the down vote and the reason for the down vote.
That's cool, but it means an unpaid admin team devoting and additional 188 hours (slightly exaggerated) per person per day to follow up on new requests of mean private messages being sent. Then you also get people signing up fake accounts sending harassment messages from those, then you ban that account and the account that invited them but then it turns out that a stranger gave them the account, and now a stranger is penalised for good will. You want to put in the most effective policies that require the least work to implement and police.
Okay fair enough. I realized I was kind of oversimplifying it as I was posting it. Do you feel that a mandatory reason of the down vote, with the reason remaining anonymous would fit the criteria of effective and least work to implement that satisfied the base concern?
I don't, only because mandatory submissions tend to result in junk data being received that could otherwise be useful.
The only other suggestion based around tenure I could give would be to give people unlimited downvotes, but scale their downvote percentage. e.g. you are allowed 2 downvotes a day because you have been here 5 minutes, but you have downvoted 100 posts, so each post is downvoted .02. This might/would require a significant change in the backend, as well as changing data types to data types that retain more data. It wouldn't change the behaviour of people downvoting but it would change the outcome. I don't know if you can change the mentality of peoples perception on what a downvote should be used for. Considering the imminent mass migration that is coming/taking place (myself included), trying to change the behaviour might be like trying to stop a ship sinking by removing water with a single bucket.
Edit: Reddit still has the same rules, downvote based on whether or not something adds to the discussion... Most people completely ignore it there, I can't see why they would respect the rule here.
Hey, I saw your comment! I thought it genuinely added to discussion, so the only reasons I could imagine someone would downvote you is if they wanted their comment to go higher, or if they disagreed with you. Neither of those are legitimate reasons to downvote. That sort of thing makes me wonder if downvotes should be anonymous.
I think that would be great, but would also like to see a mandatory reason code like I saw mentioned elsewhere. I think the combo would help more than either individual piece.
Mandatory reason code is probably one of the better ideas. It'll be hard for trolls to bs a downvote reason on the spot, and even if they can it will probably look bs'd. It might not solve the problem, but at least we will know when we are being downvoted by someone for now reason.
I also like the idea of there being some sort of expandable downvote history or something. That would be pretty good as well.
Actually, the more I think about this, the more I like it. At times, I can see something like this be a bit more "punishing" to those who downvote. However, on the flip side, showing people who downvoted, is a good way to deter spamming as well.
It almost reminds me of what stackexchange sites do when users mark a question as duplicate. You know who marked it and for what reason. I like that.
I think that showing who down voted what could also have the potential to start bullying and flame wars. I like that it's kept anonymous, but I think providing a reason on comments as well as snaps could help deter spamming at least. There will always be jerks on the internet, there really isn't a way to stop them every where or every single time.
Downvotes aren't meant to be a "disagree" button, so I can't imagine flame wars would erupt unless they're misused.
And "stopping jerks" is not necessarily about managing mean behavior. When you have a vote-based content system reddit, snapzu, or voat, downvoting means that dissent often gets sidelined, even if it is honest and well-reasoned dissent. Back-and-forth often gets misinterpreted as argument, too, and suffers that same treatment. You can't have a conversation in that environment. It leads to the phenomenon of threads dominated by meta-discussions about how the hivemind or circlejerk is ruining the website -- often instead of discussing the topic at hand.
On the plus side if someone does go into a flame war of downvotes it will be completely clear who is doing it and the appropriate action can be taken such as banning the user or disabling the ability to downvote.
I would worry about personal vendettas flaming up. Beyond knowing that someone downvoted you, I'm not sure what the additional information of who downvoted you does for you? Do you message them and ask why if they forgot to leave a reason? Beyond that, I can't think of any other things anyone would actually do with that. Well....any good things that people would do with that! :P
Yeah, it is a difficult system to control well. I think you're probably right, I hadn't really thought about that. There's trade offs to either one. I guess we should just stick with the spirit of what we have, and follow guidelines on it.
That's actually a pretty wonderful idea. Attach a name to a downvote. People tend to think more when they can't hide behind anonymity.
Unless they have a valid reason to downvote, in which they will receive a nasty message for downvoting comments that genuinely deserved it. capping daily downvotes depending on site tenure and internal auditing of downvote totals by user would curb the behaviour incredibly quickly.
At which point they would be in violation of the site's policy against harassment or abusive language and would get banned. I would have no issue with the account publicly tied to the down vote and the reason for the down vote.
That's cool, but it means an unpaid admin team devoting and additional 188 hours (slightly exaggerated) per person per day to follow up on new requests of mean private messages being sent. Then you also get people signing up fake accounts sending harassment messages from those, then you ban that account and the account that invited them but then it turns out that a stranger gave them the account, and now a stranger is penalised for good will. You want to put in the most effective policies that require the least work to implement and police.
Okay fair enough. I realized I was kind of oversimplifying it as I was posting it. Do you feel that a mandatory reason of the down vote, with the reason remaining anonymous would fit the criteria of effective and least work to implement that satisfied the base concern?
I don't, only because mandatory submissions tend to result in junk data being received that could otherwise be useful.
The only other suggestion based around tenure I could give would be to give people unlimited downvotes, but scale their downvote percentage. e.g. you are allowed 2 downvotes a day because you have been here 5 minutes, but you have downvoted 100 posts, so each post is downvoted .02. This might/would require a significant change in the backend, as well as changing data types to data types that retain more data. It wouldn't change the behaviour of people downvoting but it would change the outcome. I don't know if you can change the mentality of peoples perception on what a downvote should be used for. Considering the imminent mass migration that is coming/taking place (myself included), trying to change the behaviour might be like trying to stop a ship sinking by removing water with a single bucket.
Edit: Reddit still has the same rules, downvote based on whether or not something adds to the discussion... Most people completely ignore it there, I can't see why they would respect the rule here.
What about when you go to down vote you have to click a box of like 6 choices like, dangerous information, or spam or something like that.