One thing I haven't seen mentioned here (or even on Reddit) that I think is the most sinister effect of a downvote button is that (at least on Reddit, I'm very new to Snapzu) it meant that all content had a 50%-70% chance of being buried forever, regardless of quality. How so?
Well, first of all you have filters. In general when content drops below a certain threshhold it stops being visible to users. Either through a hard filter that hides the content, or it simply falls beneath users' mental radar. Which meant that when you submitted content to reddit it had a few LIVE OR DIE minutes to garner a few upvotes or it would simply be buried by other content. If at any time during those crucial few minutes it received a downvote, it was essentially gone forever. It would drop below 1 karma and never be seen by another user. For all the talk of democratizing content, reality was that all it took was ONE downvote to bury a submission forever. Pretty brutal if you ask me.
Add to that the culture of "knights of new." (A culture that makes my stomach churn.) People being praised and heralded for ruthlessly burying content. An entire culture that lionizes the burying of content. Couple that with the fact that a single downvote is all that's required to bury something forever, and you get a site where it's almost impossible for good content to flow to the top unless it's a repost or submitted by a "Power" user. Which, as we all recall, is what brought the Digg empire crashing down.
A downvote button is, in theory, a great idea. It means "this is irrelevant or offensive, nobody should ever see it." Unfortunately large groups of people can't be trusted to use it responsibly and it invariably turns into an "I disagree" button. Which then creates an environment where good content cannot float up. I'm vehemently in favour of anything that banishes the "I disagree" button.
A downvote button is, in theory, a great idea. It means "this is irrelevant or offensive, nobody should ever see it." Unfortunately large groups of people can't be trusted to use it responsibly and it invariably turns into an "I disagree" button.
I think that if the downvote button is clearly labeled as "poor content" or something like this, and is not put near the upvote button, people would be less prone to using it as a "disagree" button. This is a simple UI solution that can lead to behaviour change.
New here: Has this been suggested anywhere official, or to admins? I can't think of any reason why this would be a bad idea, and similar ideas have been mentioned a few times on this thread. I imagine it wouldn't be a hard change.
It has in many forms. One idea was to change the arrows to flags or +/- signs to break the association with up/down voting. To date the admins have not indicated that they've taken a position that I'm aware of, but I haven't been following it that closely. They've expressed confidence that the way they've designed the reputation system will offset abuse of the downvote button, so I will remain patient and see whether or not their confidence is justified.
For the reason's you've given, the downvote button can be considered a "STFU button" when used improperly, instead of being used as a moderation button.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here (or even on Reddit) that I think is the most sinister effect of a downvote button is that (at least on Reddit, I'm very new to Snapzu) it meant that all content had a 50%-70% chance of being buried forever, regardless of quality. How so?
Well, first of all you have filters. In general when content drops below a certain threshhold it stops being visible to users. Either through a hard filter that hides the content, or it simply falls beneath users' mental radar. Which meant that when you submitted content to reddit it had a few LIVE OR DIE minutes to garner a few upvotes or it would simply be buried by other content. If at any time during those crucial few minutes it received a downvote, it was essentially gone forever. It would drop below 1 karma and never be seen by another user. For all the talk of democratizing content, reality was that all it took was ONE downvote to bury a submission forever. Pretty brutal if you ask me.
Add to that the culture of "knights of new." (A culture that makes my stomach churn.) People being praised and heralded for ruthlessly burying content. An entire culture that lionizes the burying of content. Couple that with the fact that a single downvote is all that's required to bury something forever, and you get a site where it's almost impossible for good content to flow to the top unless it's a repost or submitted by a "Power" user. Which, as we all recall, is what brought the Digg empire crashing down.
A downvote button is, in theory, a great idea. It means "this is irrelevant or offensive, nobody should ever see it." Unfortunately large groups of people can't be trusted to use it responsibly and it invariably turns into an "I disagree" button. Which then creates an environment where good content cannot float up. I'm vehemently in favour of anything that banishes the "I disagree" button.
I think that if the downvote button is clearly labeled as "poor content" or something like this, and is not put near the upvote button, people would be less prone to using it as a "disagree" button. This is a simple UI solution that can lead to behaviour change.
New here: Has this been suggested anywhere official, or to admins? I can't think of any reason why this would be a bad idea, and similar ideas have been mentioned a few times on this thread. I imagine it wouldn't be a hard change.
It has in many forms. One idea was to change the arrows to flags or +/- signs to break the association with up/down voting. To date the admins have not indicated that they've taken a position that I'm aware of, but I haven't been following it that closely. They've expressed confidence that the way they've designed the reputation system will offset abuse of the downvote button, so I will remain patient and see whether or not their confidence is justified.
For the reason's you've given, the downvote button can be considered a "STFU button" when used improperly, instead of being used as a moderation button.