Remove downvoting?

Pukon

Well, I think downvotes and upvotes are a helpful tool, but at the same time they can also affect the overall bonding of a community. For example, I wanted to upvote a post and couldn't because some random person downvoted my post without reason. While I understand that the system is supposed to allow people to let others know if a post is good or not, it can be really demotivating for the person who received a downgrade, especially if you want to upvote a post that someone else wrote and can't because someone pretty much destroyed the ability to do so. I don't think the whole system needs to be scrapped, but it would be helpful to be able to give someone an upvote even if they have a negative reputation.

Flippy

I'm wondering if there is a way to keep the downvotes but not have it carried as a point off on the individual? Say the post itself gets downvoted so you know the community disagrees with said post but it won't reflect that on that person's profile?

TheReGodfather

I say keep it. But with the abilty to see who downvoted you so I can block the ungrateful slags from seeing my posts. If they don't like my posts and have to go through my profile to spam downvote me, I want the ability to remove them from seeing my posts since they seemed to be lacking the functionality to press a button except the downvote button.

I can understand not liking someones posts, but some are just downvoting for the hell of it and frankly I rather them not partake of my posts.

Finn

If I had to give my opinion, I'd say that downvotes are a real help, just as dislikes have been on youtube.

We need them to know whether a shared file is trusted or not.
I remember there was a debate about a shared file here flagged as a virus and a long and unnecessary debate was held about it.
Of course, these downvotes shouldn't be abused or just directed at people you don't like.

They should be a guarantee of the quality of the content shared.

Edit : i'll add that, you don't like someone here ? just block him and move on

AviCreat

I would say having a single downvote against you taking away your ability to upvote someone or something like that might be a bit of an issue if someone just downvoted you because they may not have liked an asset post or something like that so I can see where it may frustrate people. Maybe adding something of a system where that only happens if you have a set number of downvotes would be better rather then it being if you have 1 downvote we could set it to something a bit higher while making it so trusted individuals with a good rep are the ones with the ability to downvote as that encourages others to help the community and do good in order to get a good rep.

AviCreat

Personally I dont think keeping the upvotes is bad as it encourages people to do what they can to help people so that they get upvotes and can get a good rep, so long as it doesn't end up being misused by people. If your doing good in the community and helping people and active looking for assets to share and things that should be rewarded in some way so people upvoting to show their appreciation isn't a bad thing.

Miss Tera

I rather keep the ability to downvote. While, yes, seeing that one particular infamous topic thread of a user spamming the recent threads with their whining about being downvoted to hell and fighting everyone within said thread

We all at some point at least saw that “special thread” once or twice in the recent post tab. Correct me if I'm wrong… I think one of the problems was because the person kept insisting on pushing it and didn't want to acknowledge they were taking it a bit too far attempting to convince people to agree with them, it seemed.

When someone would say they felt neutral or disagreed with their idea rather than fully agreeing with them 100% without question or critical independent thought.

The person would just get more upset and imply that everyone here are horrible people just because the community didn't side with them throughout the thread.

It felt like to me, they lacked the experience & knowledge of witnessing/interacting what most communities on certain social platforms that have some sort of ability to create threads or comments tends to act on a cultural level. Say for instance YouTube, Tumblr, Reddit, or Twitter etc.

I won't point fingers or tag their name here. I rather it doesn't turn into a repeat of past events with them coming here to take over the entire thread, spamming another thread again

Not only that, but I don't really trust them and prefer not dealing with them at all due to how they behaved. I do not know if other users relate to that, but I could just be me being hyper vigilant

I did notice somewhat odd behaviour when I went to their profile out of curiosity and checked their post history. They went into other threads to execute a similar pattern as if they were attempting to find people to agree with them or would tag other people that may or may not of been targeted by the downvote spam. Especially without the person's consent, as if they were trying to validate their behaviour as a positive thing.

It's like overtime, their intentions changed into something less innocent and well intended positively into basically just being full on toxic to people without noticing it due to their microaggressions.

Keep in mind, some users genuinely went out of their way to help them and attempted to put it from a different perspective to encourage some sort of community discussion.

For instance, initially I upvoted the poster and some of their good points merely to give them upvotes to balance out the negatives. Not because I felt guilty or bad for them, but they did have some kind of some good points which had some valid standing to a degree. I was just completely out of the loop on the context of what was actually going on a bigger scale.

Trouble is, I took the upvotes away as soon as they started getting very rude and aggressive towards other users. The fact, they lacked the maturity and respect to learn it's not a "me VS you" or "who wins or loses" thing and couldn't seem to let it go.

I believe any debate/argument looses any valid meaning when you start being toxic or passive-aggressive instead of being mature and flexible minded, allowing other people to participate in the discussion without any microaggression.

It is no longer a healthy and positive debate as soon as someone starts attempting to use insults on a personal level that is meant to degrade someone's self-esteem to make themselves feel superior or cause discord

When it comes to the internet, flame wars and trolling is hardly an uncommon thing to happen on the internet, since it kind of part of our culture in a backwards sense. However, that doesn't mean it is also valid to do so and a good thing.

We all know to a certain extent that the lack of IRL face to face interaction and anonymity to an extent makes us as humans do weird and dumb shit sometimes. Due to either us forgetting it could be a real living breathing human on the other end of the screen and/or perhaps not going outside enough to touch grass to refresh our brains. To come back to something later with a new approach.

Sometimes you just gotta go outside in the fresh air for once and go for a walk to factory reset your body. It's pretty normal if you have to do that often to help self regulate yourself.

Everyone is dumb sometimes, including me. Humans have always been very flawed and never been perfect. If we were really perfect, we realistically wouldn't need history as an educational subject as much from repeating the same mistakes someone in the past may have done

PrIsMaTiSm

@CoolSkeleton95 A lot of your points are irrelevant or incorrect. Not to mention you being eerily vocal about this entire situation with your account creation coinciding with my comments a little too closely.... Anyway.

Content quality is in the eye of the beholder. A downvote system could easily dissuade others from recognizing a comment that would otherwise be useful.
You are conflating downvoting with a reaction to a post. Downvoting is not feedback, it is a vote. I am all for reactions being available per post, but having rep and the negative repercussions from it is effectively handing over admin privileges to the community. The community as a whole can not be trusted with admin rights.
An upvote-only system would lead to a positive environment. Like many other platforms that allow users freedoms in thought and expression, a vote system is removed. In its place are reactions that allow users to gauge community feedback without any needless negative repercussions on the poster.
We have seen that this doesn't work at all. This point is incorrect. If a user is spamming or trolling, they can be reported to an admin, voting down effectively puts admin privileges in the hands of the community.
This has shown to not be the case, and wouldn't be the case anyway. Having a system where people are afraid of getting downvoted means they are encouraged not to to say what they think and will therefore hamper constructive conversation in the favor of not saying something people won't like.
This, as before described, is not a good thing. In fact, because of this issue, I'd argue more burden has been placed on admins as a result.
This I agree with, it does encourage user engagement, that also seems to be what people are complaining about, so I don't see this as a reason to include.
Again, voting a voice out of existence is not an accurate portrayal of a "democratic environment". That would instead include a system that does not punish users for speaking their opinion, but instead allows readers the option to express their feelings in the form of a reaction.
Context should be understood by the individual reader, if additional context is necessary, it should be provided by the author, not assigned by people that decide its meaning for all to see via a vote.

I have also referenced the votes on either side, I am disheartened to see some users created hours ago with no posts, comments, rep or even profile views voting on this topic.

@Finn In regards to your YouTube comparison, I agree with you, but YouTube does not penalize the poster for having negative reactions. If that same system was implemented here, it would not prevent mass downvoting, but it would remove the incentive in the sense that the community wouldn't be able to silence the individual because of it. I would support that.

@LizEllie Calling someone "whining" and hating on a post here for something you disagreed with isn't spurring friendly conversation, drop the hostility, then we can have a conversation. Making accusations about people and when and where they post is below adult conversation. Stop using this as your venting platform. Also, while I would appreciate the fact that you initially upvoted some of the posts to "balance out the negatives", It is yet another reason why the rep system is flawed and needs to be reworked. Also, you seem to only recognize one person in this description, even though it was most definitely many people being rude and lacking maturity, sending memes, calling names etc. Those people seem conveniently absent from your description.

TL;DR: The rep system would function better as a system of reactions on a per-comment basis. (Like Facebook) or a simpler up and down reaction (Like YouTube).

CoolSkeleton95

@PrIsMaTiSm
*I'm just a vocal person in general, so I usually give my two cents in when a situation arises. I'm really just here for assets but I like the community so far.
*You do realize that all of this is one of the first things new people see when they sign on to this forum right? It gets bumped constantly. Most people just read/react to what's going on, and new people join every day. Lurkers are the majority, we are the vocal minority.

*Also for the original comment, while I'm still personally for most of my original points, the ones you brought up are also valid

cloakanddagger

@PrIsMaTiSm I read your points on CoolSkeleton95 comment and felt he made some points. The thing I don't like, was the comment on CoolSkeleton95. You made a comment about "A lot of your points are irrelevant or incorrect".

So point 1,2,3 and 4 I feel can be fixed by and system it's like Youtube where you can downvote but it only shows the positives while keep the peoples freedom to vote anonymously.

So point 5 should not be a problem if you are not causing conflict or antagonizing people much like the time you accused me of alt accounts.

point 6. Any big conflict or fighting in general is a burden to admins. Mad props to them BTW

Point 7,nothing to argue about

point 8 and the notes after the ninth point: does not mater if they are new or a year old, so long as they follow the rules and conduct, an accounts age shouldn't really be problem.

point 9 anyone should be voice them selves about what they see.

Final notes: You have fought and made the rep problem worse the fact on your "everyone is guilty" mentality has pissed off allot of people and i feel keeping the vote should show just how much a real asshole you really are.

PrIsMaTiSm

@shadowangelking I have not assumed everyone is guilty, but it is a possibility that accounts are being made to take advantage of a vote to guide the future direction of this system. I would much prefer a method that allows only people familiar with the forum and the system (accounts created several months ago) to vote, in order to remove all new users that most likely do not fully understand the system on which they are voting on.

It is also interesting to note that although the comments I have received in reply to mine have been mostly positive and agreeing with many of my points, I still get downvoted -8 for it. Does this make sense to anyone? I am just making sure people understand what I am currently dealing with is the very reason this system needs reworked.

Miss Tera

@PrIsMaTiSm

Unfortunately, I just witnessed you running head first into the concept of "biting the hand that feeds you" which is great. You failed to register i was one of your supporters with the problem you had like I clearly stated you were having until you messed up badly

So thank you graciously for biting my head off and treating me like your chew toy. You're not supposed to attack the people who either supported you or remotely tried to help. Otherwise no one will want to help you with anything at all. I'm actually not part of the problem that got you here and to verify I am remotely not associated with the bad apples you're talking about

So you can't really frame me as a bad person when i've been kind to the community and haven't done anything wrong as far as I can tell. Mind you, if i knew if i did something wrong then the admins and moderators would of already contacted me privately to inform me of said action and to discuss it in a civil manner. Therefore, I would be able to learn how to do better.

As a matter of fact, I welcome everyone to check my profile's post history to audit me very thoroughly to your hearts content, so please do. There is already evidence on my end I've always done my best to be a decent person, at the bare minimum. I say please and thank you, even going as far as admitting when I make a mistake. I do not intentionally cause conflict or drama, as I definitely know that's one way for basically everyone to despise you. Plus, I say it's no problem if no one can't help me with something or apologise for inconveniencing anyone.

So I don't know where you're getting all these claims from. It seems like you're accidentally projecting your faults onto other people. You do not want to accept the ramifications of your actions. You stir the pot by responding to anyone you think is an easy target you assume you can take on or carelessly feeding the trolls.

I will only clarify myself about my past input here once, and that's it. I'm happy to discuss things with other people and be open, obviously. I will no longer bother giving you any oppotunities to access any communication to me in any capacity, specifically you @PrIsMaTiSm , regardless of whether you understand or not. You are not treating me with any respect despite doing nothing wrong to you at any point of being a member of this site. I do not understand what i have ever done to you. So please respect my boundaries or I will do more than just block you. I will flag your account. I do not deserve to be treated like this at all and I won't stand here to take it like i'm your personal punching bag just because you're having a bad hair day to make yourself feel good

You genuinely need to step back from everything. It's very concerning that you're still persisting in trying to convince people that we should blindly believe you despite your microaggressions and the fact that you committed a few bad actions in public.

May you please kindly stop this behaviour towards everyone you respond to, as it is starting to turn into harassment. You are basically scaring new people away and preventing people from remotely having a say in regards to this topic. No one likes to be stalked and spammed by someone who lacks actual genuine maturity and respect like you do.

The fact is, you're claiming to me and talking to me like you're the bigger person and the adult here. That I'm just the little girl who doesn't understand anything and the adults are talking here so I should shut up. Is genuinely cringy and disgusting... you're doing a similar malicous tactic the trolls were doing to you (directly to me in public as well) so you're being a massive hypocrit. I am merely answering to your response because you're accusing me of being the culprit to your problems and I am using this oppotunity to review my past input to clear up a misunderstanding you're haivng about my post. That is all, didn't know when clarifying or helping someone understand my comments was prohibited. Yikes...

I and many other people will not tolerate being treated with disrespect. Some individuals have already made that quite clear to you. However, you seem to enjoy violating people's boundaries by pushing them, which is not a good look for your track record on the internet. What happens on the internet stays on the internet, creating a new account will no longer benefit you anyway if you keep doing the same negligent behaviour. Sooner or later, your only options will to be to get IP banned or delete your account if you keep going.

I think you're forgetting the fact that I was one of the few who initially supported you, so you cannot claim I'm being biased and supposedly hating you. I am not your blindly ignorant white knight here to protect you either, and neither is anyone else here. You lost my support for you for a very valid and appropriate reason. I do not owe you an apology for the mere concept of changing my mind due to your toxicitity. Humans are not like robots and don't always stick with one thing.

Mind you, I did point out in my post that flame wars and trolls do exist on social platforms. Just because I didn't say the ripper forums doesn't mean I said this site is exempt. However, the reason there were trolls and "cyberbullies" on your posts is because you kept responding to them. You kept feeding the trolls. That is one of the most common pieces of advice on the internet given to anyone. Do not feed the trolls no matter what. Most people are aware of that advice when it comes to interacting with people on the internet

You also failed the vibe check just then by spreading yourself into here too. Responding to me in a passive agressive manner right out the gate. I did not summon you here, nor did I explicitly request that you come here to challenge everyone like a gladiator. I did not add your name anywhere and kept the information pretty loose. So it was more flexible and broad. You basically just proved you go after anyone that mentions you even vaguely and anything to do with downvotes. So you're intentionally getting yourself involved in more mess; you're making your situation worse, and it's just depressing at this point.

The only reason this thread exists is partially due to your behaviour and other events not even remotely related to you. There isn't any point asking you to politely stop becuase other people have said a similar thing and you clearly ignored them. This is only causing more work for the admins and moderators than needed by trying to supervise more than 100+ users at a time on this forum. They can only do their best, but they always can't bend over backwards for one single user's demands. They might have better things to do than trying to manage every little thing that may not matter as much. They have to triage stuff to priortize whatever is more useful or important for the future of this site

I do not think you remotely have the skillset and mindset to handle either being a moderator or admin for any forum but thats okay. I don't have the privilege of time to spend more than a few hours keeping this site running smoothly

I already pointed out that humans are flawed. I stated this at the very end of my comment.

"Everyone is dumb sometimes, including me. Humans have always been very flawed and have never been perfect. If we were really perfect, we realistically wouldn't need history as an educational subject as much to avoid repeating the same mistakes someone in the past may have made."

I think you're misunderstanding what I was writing about, which doesn't surprise me at all, so I'm not disappointed. I can tell you didn't bother reading and analysing the text deeply enough, since you're supposedly claiming I'm being hostile. I have not written anything explicitly graphic or violent. For example, I haven't said anything along the lines of "OMG I HATE THIS PERSON, GO DIE" anywhere. I'm not spamming memes, calling users bad names, or being rude to anyone on this thread nor anywhere else on this platform.

May I point out that you have been doing this song and dance for a while now? The reason I said you were whining for a valid reason is that I also witnessed you went way past your boundaries and kept pushing it, making everyone very uncomfortable. You keep going in circles, and everyone is tired of seeing you pop up doing the same behaviour on repeat. If you genuinely didn't add more fuel to the fire by being rude to people attempting to support you and provoke the trolls then maybe people would've still supported you. Including myself

I did not specifically mean you were whining from the very start of your post, silly rabbit. I meant it as when you showed, via your actions, you refused to actually stop when people asked you to. It's about respecting someone's consent when they either tell you no or stop. Just because they explicitly did not say "please stop, you're making me uncomfortable" means they're giving you consent to keep going. This has nothing to do with the people giving you a hard time when you obliviously made this mess worse with your own hands

You haven't hardly earned my kindness or given me much reason to be polite to you either. Why? You already lost my respect for you even berfore you decided to respond to my input, and I do not want to help someone who's rude to everyone. People will treat you as you treat others. Especially if they witness you committing the wrong thing. I regret even supporting you so thanks for making me feel like shit

You don't want to improve or change. You have metaphorical horse blinders on, and the only solution to keeping them off is working on yourself. We can't take the horse blinders off your face for you. It's up to you to find a way to make a change for the better.

Please read my input from earlier, as I clearly stated.

"It is no longer a healthy and positive debate as soon as someone starts attempting to use insults on a personal level that are meant to degrade someone's self-esteem to make themselves feel superior or cause discord"

Despite this, I worded my past input very appropriately as best as I could without tagging or dragging people into something like you do. I took those upvotes away from your posts in those thread because you behaved inappropriately towards people, and I was completely out of the loop about your behaviour towards other people. Which i partly blame myself for not investigating earlier to verify the bigger picture. Which made me feel bad for even supporting you in the first place.

For you to respond to me like this only gives me a more valid reason to no longer support you; it verifies what some people have pointed out: you're acting badly to put it respectfully, and I'm not changing my mind because you made the mistake of making assumptions or being inappropriate towards me as well. That is hardly my problem or my responsibility. It is yours and no one else's.

I prefer we do not remove downvotes because I feel like that's just taking away everyone's ability to say what they see from their perspective, regardless of whether it's positive or negative. A forum is a place for people to chat with each other and share stuff with everyone in a nuetral environment bare minimum. Having downvotes may also partly help with security of the site if someone decided to post malicious files to the site to deliberately sabotage users who open it or have bad intentions to cause harm to the community for instance

The internet isn't meant to be a place that's strictly filled with toxic positivity, like a fantasy land. Criticism exists for a reason: so we, as humans, can learn from our mistakes and improve by learning how to do something differently to achieve a better result. We all receive criticism throughout our lives, IRL or online. So don't you dare think it's just you and play the victim card here.

It is not my concern or anyone else's if you choose to ignore the people who genuinely went out of their way to give you support and guidance. You don't want to accept a solution that isn't exactly what you want, word for word.

You may have the option to respond to people, but that doesn't mean you fully deserve the privilege of other people's time and energy to sit here for you as you please. Not only that, but you're forgetting the fact that you went as far as leaking information of a conversation with someone. That's not a very nice thing to do to anyone.

You violated someone's privacy and their trust in you by leaking information. It's pretty obvious based on the exchange that when that person found out what you did. The outcome you received from your actions is that its safe to say you're less likely to be considered to ever help improve the community in the future. So hats off to you by setting an example for everyone here on what NOT to do if you want to directly help staff and everyone else in future

There is a big difference between having something valid to say and being inappropriate in your behaviour. Just because someone says they're a good person does not always mean they're telling the truth. Actions speak louder than words. You clearly demonstrated that to a T.

Please go outside, go for a walk, and touch some grass. I do it all the time, and it helps me stay grounded in reality. Take a deep breath and relax. Please have a lovely week and take positive actions to help improve yourself. I will not be responding to you at all in the future, so don't bother attempting to leech more attention out of me and take me for granted. Thank you very much

PrIsMaTiSm

@LizEllie what the heck is this? Sorry, I don't want to read all that. This is getting absolutely ridiculous. If you want to rage, ~~feel free to DM me~~ (Nevermind, I cannot DM with negative rep).

cloakanddagger

@PrIsMaTiSm You have a point. There can be people out there trying to get you out of spite. I still believe of the freedom to vote but if the staff can find a safe way to keep the freedom with the hell storm, I would jump on the band wagon. The downvoting problem. sadly I cannot point out.

I read that last post where you are talking to the three, you need to be more considerate of others opinion despite you not liking the opinion. You have very vicious way of approaching an as you can see, many people see many faults to your demeanor. Take a small break and lurk in the shadows for a bit cause the worst thing you can is to keep fighting. some fights you cannot win.

PrIsMaTiSm

@shadowangelking That I cannot do. I fully respect your opinion, but if people here are going to continue to burn a witch at the stake, not for being wrong, but being 'inconsiderate' than I feel obligated to continue so others can see. Call it martyrdom if you wish, but what is happening to me, should not happen to others.

For the record, I would upvote your comment if I could.

cloakanddagger

@PrIsMaTiSm If you must, then do so. Make your stance and fight till the end! I must warn you though, I will gladly forgive you but will the others?

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PrIsMaTiSm

@shadowangelking No idea, I would hope. The issue shouldn't really be about forgiveness, but tolerance.

I also know what you meant with your image, I just want to be doubly clear to others that I won't be worse, I just refuse to be bullied off a platform from people who don't think I should say what I do.

Miss Tera

Anyway, back to the matter at hand as we were discussing to stay on topic. Regardless if there were a few infamous events of people spamming in threads trying to take over the discussion like @PrIsMaTiSm for instance since they decided to join another topic thread again. In my perspective, they clearly demonstrated, they do not care about the health of the community and only themselves. This is just my theory, so unlike them. It's fine if not everyone agrees with me, and i've made that pretty obvious. We are all different people chatting together on this site, and so far i've actually enjoyed my experience here in the community.

Put it this way, if that specific individual cared about the community, they wouldn't be consistently causing grief to other users and putting people down that doesn't blindly side with them

They dismiss feedback from many people including me as well. They have not improved nor changed, so we're not getting anywhere, giving them any attention. So unfortunately, their point is void if they're still going out of their way to put down others with regard to this topic, which isn't really beneficial to the community at all

I'm not going to give them attention or DM them like they asked since they openly disrespected me a few minutes ago. So them apologising to me won't fix anything if they've made other people feel uncomfortable due to not respecting boundaries. ~~I won't be surprised if they try to hide it too to cover their tracks anytime soon~~

Okay, so i tried to look at the history of announcements for the site since i joined after reputation system was put in place alongside the voting feature which influences it. So I do apologise if i may not have the long term experience of being a user here.

The upvote and downvote system i've noticed was only implemented recently this year, so of course there might be some growing pains to get used to. This isn't the admins or the moderators fault as I guess its just a tool to help the community evaluate posts and I theorised maybe this wasn't one of the expected outcomes which is okay. I do wonder if other sites though went through a similar phase when they put a voting system in place

The staff is only doing their best as i said earlier. Perhaps the system just needs more time to get used to rather than ripping it out shortly after its been implemented. Reddit has a similar system, and they haven't removed it yet. So i would like to know how this forum would be different that it would suddenly need downvotes to be removed that isn't related to the obvious users causing grief. Like, are there people joining just to spread misinformation and spread files that have malicious codes within them?

If someone said a really terrible pun, thats so painful it hurts. Some people would naturally want to downvote for the bad joke, which makes sense?

I know not every new feature might work for a community. Maybe its best we keep trying to work together, learning how we can utilise it better rather than letting a very small minority just ask admin to take it away.

PrIsMaTiSm

@LizEllie This has obviously become personal for you. I am truly sorry you can't get over this.

AviCreat

@PrIsMaTiSm Honestly not to sound like I am trying to attack you as I'm not but that comment sounds a bit off given your insistence to continue your arguments with people on multiple threads. You made your own thread to argue your case and the admin actually went out their way to help with your issue despite the disrespect you did in showing your dms and continuing to fight against their community.
They are doing everything they can to be accommodating to you so please do the same back and respect them by not arguing with people in these threads as it doesn't seem to get anywhere.
I understand your argument against downvotes as I do agree people misuse them to go after people they may not like or that they may just disagree with for no reason and it isn't fair but at the end of the day you had the right reasons at first but then it just seemed to be an argument that your making only to benefit yourself.
This is a thread to talk about our opinions on the downvote situation not a place to defend yourself. I just ask that you please respect spooky, again I am not trying to attack you or sound rude.