The issue with downvotes as someone else mentioned is essentially that there are numerous meanings for why a post is downvoted.
I imagine a better solution would be to use something like emojis (e.g. poo vs spam emojis) but to also combine that with the user's emoji history on other posts to determine the meaning of the emoji they've left.
That way the system can differentiate someone that's let's say a radical or part of a group that wish to simply "bring something down" from those that are more legitimate.
Perhaps asking users why they are downvoting could help. Maybe not necessary to show their reason to others, but add friction and force someone to think twice.
In the end, downvotes indicate how many people had a strong negative reaction towards a post. It leaves out majority of the aspects worth considering. I found your post insightful so thank you. I wonder if the downvoters press dislike emoji more often during code review.
What we need is a way to downvote stuff that we don't want to see. That doesn't mean that the person who posted should be able to see the amount of downvotes. It means that the algorithm shouldn't show me similar stuff in the future.
The more direct response to the OP would be to limit downvoting based on whether a user has already downvoted another post of the same user already. But even that gets silly.
I hate it when I don't know why I'm being downvoted---did I make some kind of error? did I word things wrong? or do people just disagree with me?
What if there were a separate "flag" that people could click for trolls and spam, but when you downvoted someone, you were forced to post a reply explaining why?
I had an idea about this, you could require a reason when downvoting.
It might make people less likely to downvote stuff unless they have a good reason. It might also help explain to the original poster why they are being downvoted.
I'm not really sure what the implications of this would be though. Perhaps it might make it harder to get rid of obvious trolls and spam.
My understanding of downvoting is that it is meant to tag/reinforce negatively any behavior that is not in keeping with what is considered the ground rules or standards of the community. This definition should promote keeping signal/noise ratio high. The definition of downvoting that says downvote=disagree seems to be a problem. There is also some grey area, for example do you downvote claims that are known to be incorrect factually? This is different from disagreeing on matters of opinion. I would say lay off the downvote in that case and consider writing a reply to correct the error.
Maybe there should be a small color coded menu that opens for down votes, to specify the reason for downvoting. That would serve two purposes. 1: it would be slightly more difficult to downvote and 2: the color coded downvotes could be used to paint the text, indicating in which way the comment is considered off the mark. On second thought, painting the text would draw unwanted attention to it, but use the colors somewhere on the heading maybe?
My problem with downvotes isn't the downvotes themselves, it's that a downvote is devoid of context because it is a single button press. Even if a comment is toxic, abusive, or just off-topic, I think there is value in being able to attach a _reason_ to a downvote. Rather than downvotes, I would like to see 'vote-comments', where you can leave a +1 or -1 comment, so it acts like an upvote or downvote, but there has to be some text there as well, which would serve to contextualise the upvote/downvote.
Downvote-type systems aren't that effective since they usually end up becoming a "I disagree" button and multiply the effect of whatever mob is most active at the moment. It's one of the reasons HN locks them behind a karma wall.
One idea I had was to be able to see who downvoted a post and be able to list of the last 50 or so posts a particular user has downvoted. Thus would hopefully shame users who downvote for reasons other then to keep the conversation constructive.
You could even allow downvoting of the downvote, so users could lose karma for downloading an insightful post that they simply disagreed with.
Of course, if you allowed downvoting the downvote of a downvote, and so on recursively, you could have downvote wars between two users, where they both drain each other's karma down to zero. I don't see much problem with this, because anyone willing to participate in such a battle seems childish enough that they deserve what they get.
I feel like “other people should not see this” is already the function of a downvote. Problem is, it is used for two different kinds of content; spam/trolling and “things I have a negative ideological reaction to”. And no person wants to admit it’s the second one when they are downvoting.
Consider removing the downvotes? Keep only the upvotes?
Downvoting IMO feels bad for the poster. They stop feeling like participating. They might have very good and insightful posts which might not be popular. The downvotes end up driving them away and all you're left with is an echo chamber of groupthink
This should stop the knee jerk downvotes and otoh also tell the OP the reason why the post got downvotes.
If somebody makes a downvote with a comment like "sgsgsgsfwfwg" the OP can flag it and the downvoter gets his downvote privileges revoked on 10 flags or something.
One thing I tried (released yesterday) is more aggressive graying out of negative comments, in the hope that people wouldn't be so prone to downvote something they could no longer read. I also increased the threshold for downarrows to appear. Neither of those helped in this case, though.
So for now it's back to the drawing board-- or rather, vi. I'll write some code to analyze voting patterns and see if there is some way sw could distinguish mean downvoting from e.g. the downvoting of trolls and spammers.
I imagine a better solution would be to use something like emojis (e.g. poo vs spam emojis) but to also combine that with the user's emoji history on other posts to determine the meaning of the emoji they've left.
That way the system can differentiate someone that's let's say a radical or part of a group that wish to simply "bring something down" from those that are more legitimate.
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