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.
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.