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YouTube recently made headlines for removing the ability to downvote videos.

Here on Dakka, we can exalt a post, which I suppose is a sort of upvote.

But I wonder if Dakka would benefit from the inclusion of a downvote compliment to the exalt.

So, a simple poll - would Dakka benefit from a downvote feedback mechanism?

(Might save some people a bunch of time writing responses to many of my posts, for example!)

For now, I will keep my opinion to myself. I am most interested in hearing what others have to say.

YouTube removed the Dislike button due to craven corporate cowardice.

Dakka adding one would be like adding a 'social credit score' to every user.

Let's not do that.

Things that aren’t really engaged with/cared about already just kinda fade away. I think a dislike would just prematurely bury discussions that are controversial, and I for one like talkin about blast templates .

It wouldn't happen, for the same reason that Exalts aren't displayed publicly - it just turns things into a popularity contest.

Also, from what I've seen of this sort of 'feature' elsewhere (Reddit in particular) it's too easily misused for personal agendas, or just because someone thinks their own post should be getting more attention than this one.

So no, it's an awful idea.

We do. It's called the 'ignore' setting. Or perhaps one could consider the 'report this post' button to be a 'downvote' of sorts.

Having a formal 'downvote' button really adds nothing.

Even on YouTube it's rather pointless. If you don't like a video, don't watch it. If you really don't like it, don't watch that channel anymore. That hurts them way worse than downvotes ever did. Ask Disney/Star Wars about that.

We don't need any kind of "downvote" feature. If you really don't like someone's post, either ignore it or (in the case of something that breaks Dakka's rules or something) use the yellow triangle of friendship.

I know Reddit has a downvote button but it’s that atomised it’s hard to see the same user twice on different posts in the busier subreddits. On here you would be consistently bumping into the same users and people would be consistently downvoting people because of an argument they had 3 months ago. And it’s in danger of making users with “unpopular opinions” isolated and ignored rather than engaged with, I don’t see upvotes and downvotes benefitting discussion at all.

Also downvotes on YouTube used to be a good metric of how useful a video was before watching it, sadly no longer the case.

I just don’t see the benefit to be honest. Whilst yes it does have a certain appeal, what impact would it have apart from another e-peen measuring stick?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
another e-peen measuring stick?

Is that the latest tech Elon Musk is working on?

Maybe in the long ago days of yore when forums were in their heyday it might have had some use, but now? Nah.

Yeah, for clarity, the votes might not be publicly visible like on Youtube, they might be visible only to the poster on her or his profile page.

I try not to use the yellow triangle of danger unless someone is personally abusive, and then I feel badly about it because Mods should have better things to do than read posts that typically have a bad mood about them, and which might thereby help to ruin the poor Mod's day.

I do try to friend people who make posts that I like, because it can help me to find subjects that I might not look for on Dakka.

And, the ignore button is really useful, but then again there have been times where I have un-ignored people after seeing something quoted in a different 'naut's post and thinking, OK, maybe this person was having a bad day or something in the past, but actually has something interesting to say so ...

Personally, I like feedback mechanisms of most every sort barring violence. Good for both and all, even if it might not feel that way at a given moment.

The idea came to mind when I was reading someone's response to one of my own posts, and that person seemed really not like what I had written, so I thought 'maybe a down vote or dislike button might have been easier'.

Ironically, the majority of votes in this poll are down votes! Perhaps, rightly so.

I always thought that dakka dakka was about encouraging and engaging with the community, a downvote doesn't really do that.
Without the downvote, if you really don't like it, you have to say it with your "face", which means you have to back up why you don't like it and can thus become a form of constructive criticism...

No, because the reasons mentioned above.

I remember on the Infinity forums some years ago they had an up and down vote function. But it seemed to get quite nasty, with people holding grudges and following each other around the forum down voting each other posts and stuff like that, so they removed it. I had one fat guy with guns doing it to me (I know because of his profile photo!), I guess I was lucky it was only downvoting on the forum and he didn't know where I lived I guess!

The ETC forum that some guys from Dakka started has an 'upvote only' feature which seems to work pretty well. It means you can see which comments have struck a chord with other users, although perhaps it works a bit better in the context (discussing politics and society) rather than talking about toy soldiers where the discussion should just be of a different, calmer nature (he says!)

What we really should be adding is Dakka Gold, where you can pay to add awards to a post you like and nobody knows how it works and what it means.

NO
A thousand times NO


Every forum I've been on that features a down-vote system ends up in tears and fights. People use them as a form of being casually hostile and people get REALLY attached to them. You see stupid childish stuff where two people have a disagreement so someone "downvotes/disagrees/dislikes" a post and suddenly BOOM the other person takes offence and it kicks off.


I've never seen any positive result from it at all anywhere ever. All it does is generate a LOT of additional drama and general trouble.



I have seen down-vote systems work in controlled environments, for example The Grand Alliance forums has an up and down vote system on rules questions where, most of the time, correct answers get up voted and incorrect ones downvoted. It mostly works; though can make the threads messy as they also default moves the posts around (higher votes higher up lower votes it gets pushed down).

But that only works because its restricted and moderators can at least have a chance to be impartial and objective - if a wrong answer is getting upvoted they can easily step in and its more clear cut than drama in the open forum.









Again downvotes/negatives however you want to call them in the open forum are akin to "He called me a bad name" arguments that just spiral.

This is a discussion forum, not a popularity contest. If you see a post you disagree with I'd much prefer people either report it, if appropriate, or discuss the points in the post they disagree with to further the discussion.

I'll also vote no.

I think that with a video service downvoting is useful. It takes time to see a video, you can't easily skim it. So downvoting a video as a waste of time is a useful metric.

With a text forum you can skim, it takes seconds to get the gist of a post and decide if you'll keep going.

Silence is fine as a downvote.

I'm not a fan of downvoting... pretty much anywhere. It's too easy to get used for dogpiling and other unpleasantness.

So I would say no.

Reddit is a festering can of social appeasment. Lets not turn Dakka into that.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Reddit is a festering can of social appeasment. .

Fun observation - as a mod on another site a rep system was introduced. It only has positive scores, no negative. However it started out being called "helpful" and generally people responded to that by up-voting the helpful comments. It actually had a positive impact.

Then the system changed through a software update and "helpful" became" likes" and suddenly the whole attitude of a portion of the site changed. They shifted from helpful comment marking to "funny/I liked it" which sparked a whole increased wave of people being silly/snide/childish/jovial and getting upvoted for that.


NOTHING in the system changed besides the name of the icon. All it did was add 1 to a counter shown on the users profile. But that associated name shift means something and it dictates how users see the function; how they interpret it and how they eventually use it; with the resulting impact on the social group being driven by the most active.



It's the same reason Negative/downvote/dislikes/wrong votes fail in social groups - or if not fail they at least increase social unrest and arguments over petty things.
Exalts are a bit different because users don't get "marked" on their profile for them and they are sort of a tab-away from the site. Also cause you can't take them away I know I've wound up clicking the button by accident more than a few times but in the end its not really noticed the same way.

Not at all - rep systems ruin forums in the long term

Keep Dakka Dakka, as Dakka Dakka.

No

The mind races at the abuses that can be had in this. WFB grognard still bitter about AOS? Downvote all AOS content. Or reverse that scenario. As a retrogamer myself, I wonder how many players who are barely able to legally vote if even THAT old would spam the downvote simply because I wasn't fellating the new hotness.

I think downvotes are a terrible idea.

 Just Tony wrote:
The mind races at the abuses that can be had in this. WFB grognard still bitter about AOS? Downvote all AOS content. Or reverse that scenario. As a retrogamer myself, I wonder how many players who are barely able to legally vote if even THAT old would spam the downvote simply because I wasn't fellating the new hotness.

I think downvotes are a terrible idea.

Yup that is true, I would be downvoting all of that AOS content like a MF

I'd be downvoting T9A content like a boss.

Conversely, knowing people on this site who criticize me for playing WFB 6th instead of 6 dicing Purple Su... er, I mean, playing 8th Ed, I'd get downvoted into obvlivion.


See? It'd be too easy to become a richard over this sort of hobby with tools like that. Nothing good could come of it.

Interesting that more than one fifth of respondents say yes… sizable minority.

No, 40+ percent is a sizeable minority. This is a fething landslide.

I dunno, 20% is a lot of people. I mean, it is not a competition. There is no "winning" side... the idea is simply to have a discussion. If 1 in 5 people around me had an opinion, heck, if 1 in 1000 had an opinion, that was different from mine, I would hope to have the warmth of heart to respect that. But, different strokes, I guess... which is the point of the poll, after all.

Now seeing your signature text, ...

Maybe some of them could post why they support it.

I mean unless they're afraid of being downvoted.