Negative 'Downvoting' Removed

Kiamodo

raisinbman wrote:

Finally, the scattered darkness won't hide the trolls and haters. No longer can they disparage me with voting.

Those who seek to challenge me must do so in posts. Thusly, making ignoring easier and painless.

I stand as an equal to everyone else.


But I will miss downvoting things that are absolute tinykitty so that naive forumgoers would be wary of them.

Buret0 wrote:

community bullying

I'm not gonna comment any further cuz I'll get in trouble, but at least someone brought it up

And here is your symbolic downvote

Unknown

JVReal wrote:

If that were the case, label them agree and disagree, and don't translate them into positive and negative reputation because tying the two together convolutes the definition of what they are... are they agree/disagree or are they positive/negative? The two sets are completely different.

A post you don't agree with shouldn't be hidden by negative feedback if it simply a post people disagree with. The fact that it hides the post after receiving a net of 5 negative feedback is indicative of the rating system being intended to hide and remove downvoted posts because of the negativity and inappropriateness of them, not worthy of being considered. It is not indicative of a system that simply says this is not a popular opinion.

While I somewhat agree, the number of posts that were reasonable, but downvoted enough to be hidden were next to none, mostly limited to nerf announcements. While many counter posts may receive 1-3 downvotes, it's rare that it hits that -5 threshold unless the post is particularly nasty, in which case it made sense to hide them. Further, those posts are only semi-hidden; you could always see the offending post with an extra click. It was an odd situation where the aggregate of people's actions generally did the right thing, despite people using upvoting/downvoting for different meanings.

However, I do feel thankful that I won't be doing any balance upvoting for awhile.

Unknown

So everyone who disagrees with an opinion now has to post about it?

Isn't it pretty obvious that this will lead to flame wars?

Raffoon

Before I could simply press a button when I disliked or disagreed with a post. This saved time and was quite convenient. It also eliminated the need for many duplicate posts that simply said in essence "I disagree".Now I must actually take the time to make a post in order to express my disagreement. Why is the same burden not also expected when liking/agreeing with a post?

This seems like a pointless change that removes a useful function. I suppose I will need to just make posts that consist of this image, now. Please consider it as applying to this change as well:




Editing because I have thought of an additional point: in order to disagree with a post, you must now bump that post by posting? That seems counter-intuitive.

JVReal

ArkPrime wrote:

So everyone who disagrees with an opinion now has to post about it?

Isn't it pretty obvious that this will lead to flame wars?

Or you simply don't agree. Not agreeing reflects either disagreement or indifference. That's how I see it.

ZeiramMR

A reminder for everyone: your Control Panel does have a Friends and Foes section. It is not as surgical (strike) as downvoting specific posts, but if there is someone that you want to completely ignore in threads you can add them in Foes.

Raffoon

JVReal wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

So everyone who disagrees with an opinion now has to post about it?

Isn't it pretty obvious that this will lead to flame wars?

Or you simply don't agree. Not agreeing reflects either disagreement or indifference. That's how I see it.

Why should agreement be singled out? Not disagreeing reflects either agreement or indifference.

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]Friendly forum users!

As of today, we're disabling Negative Reputation in the forums. Positive Reputation, or "Upvoting" will remain in place. Reputation history and current standings should be unaffected by the change.

Ice IX, the forum moderators and myself have considered and discussed the Reputation System at length and have decided that removing Negative voting was an idea worthy of experimenting with. If it doesn't work out, downvoting can certainly return.

Our hope is that by eliminating Negative voting, many forum users will feel less intimidated to post and quick and easy negativity will be somewhat lessened. Abuse of the system, including "revenge downvoting" of multiple, unrelated posts goes away.

All other functionality will remain in place, so the community will still be able to report any abusive or rule-breaking posts, and of course, comment constructively on topics they might disagree with.

Thanks for working with us to help foster a welcoming, inclusive and friendly forum for all users.

I would downvote this if I could

Malcrof

Raffoon wrote:

JVReal wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

So everyone who disagrees with an opinion now has to post about it?

Isn't it pretty obvious that this will lead to flame wars?

Or you simply don't agree. Not agreeing reflects either disagreement or indifference. That's how I see it.

Why should agreement be singled out? Not disagreeing reflects either agreement or indifference.

Express disagreement in a constructive manner.

JVReal

Raffoon wrote:

JVReal wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

So everyone who disagrees with an opinion now has to post about it?

Isn't it pretty obvious that this will lead to flame wars?

Or you simply don't agree. Not agreeing reflects either disagreement or indifference. That's how I see it.

Why should agreement be singled out? Not disagreeing reflects either agreement or indifference.

Then have 4 buttons along the bottom: Agree, Disagree, Indifferent, Inappropriate... well might as well throw in all the other options as well, Maybe, I See Your Point Even Though I Don't Agree With It, You Are A Troll, and LOL.

Or a person can comment and express their opinion instead of relying on a button or series of buttons to express it for them.

simonsez

"David wrote:

Moore"]Our hope is that by eliminating Negative voting, many forum users will feel less intimidated to post

I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time caring about this change, but for crissakes, anyone who is too intimidated to post because someone might click on an icon next to their post, really needs to figure out pronto how they're going to get through life, if this is the sort of thing that is inhibiting them.

Unknown

To piggyback on JVReal's post, 5 negative votes meant censorship of a post. That was not intended to be for voicing a thought out opinion. It was intended to be a method for us forumites to police and hide the trolls, spam, hatred, and bigotry that occasionally existed here and save our volunteer moderators some time and effort.

Too often over the past few months, the downvote was used as a substitute for intelligent discussion and a method of attempting to silence dissenting opinions. For example, in a thread I was reading last night, there was a back and forth between two members. One was eviscerating the arguments of the other and after a couple of rounds, this was the response.

They took away downvoting at just the wrong time, because if I've ever seen someone deserving of red thumbs it's you, mate.

Again, this has unfortunately been the use of the downvote in recent memory. One person, out of supporting arguments, starts downvoting because that is the only way to win the argument. I guess this was inevitable with the competitive nature of the game and its players, that eventually the forums would devolve into a win at all costs attitude, but for a while these forums were unique in my experience for being a place of open opinions with a desire to help all players get better.

Personally, I disagree with removing the downvote, but with the way it was being used, this may be a good change.

TLCstormz

"American Idol ruined EVERYTHING!" lol

But seriously, it made "the people" believe that they had the right to judge everything, everyone, and every opinion ever uttered / typed. And that is simply NOT how society works.

If you wanna disagree with something, put the effort into a rebuttal. Don't just take the lazy or cowardly way out and click a simple button, because honestly.......no one cares if you simply didn't like what they had to say. That's just an immature power trip that MANY people on the internet feel validation from. You didn't like that was said? Such is life. Ignore it. Keep on scrolling. Get over it. You do not have the right to judge it (unless it was blatantly disrespectful).

Down votes shouldn't be instituted, in the first place. Imagine if EVERY SINGLE TIME your parent or teacher or classmate or co-worker said something you didn't like.....and EVERY SINGLE TIME you spoke up and said "I disagree" or "I don't like that"? Not only would that result in numerous slaps to your faces, but also a lot of disciplinary actions and getting beat up being the merry go round.

Malcrof

TLCstormz wrote:

I find it hilarious that we are not allowed to flame or insult each other in posts and in PMs.....yet.....we are allowed to do so in down votes? A mess.

Time to change your signature!

TLCstormz

OMG......I'm reading through pages 2 and 3 and people are so upset that the down vote is gone because "now if I disagree with something, what am I supposed to do?"

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO MOVE ON! lol. What on Earth? Is this a forum SPECIFICALLY for people judging others? Or thereby having to justify their own opinions, when it gets called out? A political message board? A Great Debaters website?

Why in the world are people so preoccupied with what OTHERS have to say, in the first place????? Life is way too short for that, ya'll. Find something else to occupy your time. Wow.

Unknown

TLCstormz wrote:

OMG......I'm reading through pages 2 and 3 and people are so upset that the down vote is gone because "now if I disagree with something, what am I supposed to do?"

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO MOVE ON! lol. What on Earth? Is this a forum SPECIFICALLY for people judging others? Or thereby having to justify their own opinions, when it gets called out? A political message board? A Great Debaters website?

Why in the world are people so preoccupied with what OTHERS have to say, in the first place????? Life is way too short for that, ya'll. Find something else to occupy your time. Wow.

See, now I have to point out this post is idiotic in writing. Look at the 13 year old grammar. Look at the **** punctuation. Look at how it's about not posting vapid stupidities while doing that exact same thing.

Unknown

Finally I can troll DMZ with no downvotes. My favorite Trolling of DMZ.

DMZ do you guys still do pvp? DMZ player hit me recently was suprised a seed team could fight back but of course he lost. Dev's got rid of all the seed teams because they figured 30 alliances of dmz was enough seed teams. DMZ are like minnows in an ocean. The Best Troll of DMZ comes from themselves when they say they have 30 alliances

Wonko33

papa07 wrote:

To piggyback on JVReal's post, 5 negative votes meant censorship of a post. That was not intended to be for voicing a thought out opinion. It was intended to be a method for us forumites to police and hide the trolls, spam, hatred, and bigotry that occasionally existed here and save our volunteer moderators some time and effort.

you are wrong, your point was brought up in a past post

http://d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27475

and Moderators explained that downvoting was just for disagreeing, why would we have the report button for spam and trolls if not? There is nothing about the downvoting in forum rules page that supports your opinion either.

Wish I could have just downvoted you instead of replying, now we might have a great debate about it, I'm sure it will be very constructive and the whomever was wrong will end changing his opinion in the end.

Unknown

This is why Facebook didn't add a "dislike button"...it would start wars

orionpeace

JVReal wrote:

Or a person can comment and express their opinion instead of relying on a button or series of buttons to express it for them.

So you support the notion that you either have both agree and disagree buttons or neither.