Downvotes = “I disagree” or “this is bad and you should feel bad”?
I think I’ve settled on the latter. Disagreement is maybe best communicated by the absence of an upvote? And downvotes work best when they signal something that is just off base, and while not reportable, is not appreciated at a broad cultural level.
General discussion threads, sure - ‘up’ = ‘good content’, ‘down’ = ‘irrelevant’. Irrelevant could be because it’s not to do with the matter at hand, it could be hateful, trollish, whatever.
Post asking for a specific fact, like in ye olde askahistorian? Up = correct, down = incorrect. Doesn’t matter how well written or how good the intent is, downvoting for disinformation.
One of the things that Slashdot got right was being able to upvote / downvote with a reason. (Perhaps only being able to upvote / downvote occasionally too, which stops brigading.) Made it possible to filter on why things were good, save ruining your fake internet points when you were mistaken about something as opposed to being an arsehole.
Interesting! I’ve kinda thought this myself, that having a sort of sentiment meta data attached to online actions would be an interesting way to go, kind of as a substitute for the body language and gestures we use and pick up on in real life.
Enter: the wheel of upvote options and the multidimensional spectrum of downvote options. Don’t worry, I’ll ask Google to analyse my life history and feed it into the emote-i-vote.
Come to think of it, I like the attach emoticon thing in GitHub (and lots of other social media? But I’ve liked it in GitHub) to get a relatively convenient and concise expression of “I like your message in this particular(ish) way”
Depends on what kind of “I don’t agree”. If somebody asks for people’s favorite food, I’m not going to dislike all other answers… But if it’s a more serious question, and an answer just has a really bad take that I don’t agree with, that’s getting a dislike.
I enjoy reading thoughtful content that I disagree with. I downvote based on perceived intent of the comment or post. If it’s just mean, hateful, trolling, wildly off-topic, or anything like that it will get a downvote.
The only times I’ve really been downvoting is if someone is giving out completely incorrect information, like in a support thread or something, and confusing matters. It’s not a personal judgement or anything, just trying to keep things clear for the person asking the question.
If I disagree with a comment, well no biggie. Sometimes it’s worth discussing like adults and sometimes it’s just a subjective opinion. If it’s offensive, I’ll report it and block the user.
If I want an article to be read by others, I give an upvote. I’ll downvote if I don’t want it. It has nothing to do with my side of the idea or the event. For example, a rape news was shared. My upvoting does not mean that I support the incident, it just means that it will come to the fore so others can see it.
Yep. I’ll up vote news of a hate crime or something, but downvote things that are directly hateful.
Context always matters and a lot of the big sites fail to understand the difference between talking about things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia and somone being those things.
Taste my righteous wrath and because I can do it with one click without explaining why means I don’t need to and the internet is on my side. Feels like the implicit meaning when I’m downvoted.
Its both. It will never, not be both. This idea that there should be some rule that we have to up vote things that we disagree with because it’s well written is cope from people that needs to go outside.
Comments get downvoted because it failed to convince people to agree with the comment and that makes it a bad comment.
But as an intelligent person, you can also discriminate between something that doesn’t convince you personally, and something that is completely without value or irrelevant.
When you refrain from downvoting in the former instance, you contribute to a more healthy discussion. Not every person that I disagree with is a bad person; similarly, not every comment that I disagree with is a bad comment.
Would you like to make an example of a good comment that you disagree with? Because in my world comments that I disagree with are bad comments. If they were good comments I would agree with them. I am not some teacher grading essays and giving points for good structure.
I am not some teacher grading essays and giving points for good structure.
That’s exactly my point. You are not the ultimate judge of what is good and what is bad. I’m not telling you to upvote things you disagree with, I’m simply telling you to not downvote unless it’s clearly not relevant.
All of your comments on this thread are good comments that I disagree with. Sometimes, disagreement leads to growth.
Yes, it really bugs me when I get downvotes but not one single comment articulating what they are not liking or what they disagree with. I could not care less about the score, I’m here for discussion and also debate. I often find when I ask “why the downvotes” it’s because people misinterpreted what I wrote (my fault, I need to be clear) or I used info they didn’t have (something I know because of an area of interest that I think it’s common knowledge in that group). Both can “fixed” by discussion.
Same man. But you hit the nail on the head, regardless of how you upvote or downvote, its usually even better to just make a comment and explain your thoughts, respectfully of course.
I agree with the above convo you've been having, but your comment made me think, so I'll play a little devils advocate here: do we want 1000 "I agree." comments following each other comment? Not really. There needs to be a simple way to say "I like this but don't have anything to add". An upvote accomplishes this.
As for downvotes, yes they need to be more than "I disagree". Something akin to "I don't think this contributes". I liked someone's suggestion that we need more than the binary up and down. Maybe a "troll" vote too.
I caught the joke :) I mentioned playing devils advocate cus I don't want to actually attack you or anything, I just saw an interesting opposing viewpoint that I hadn't heard expressed yet. I think your closer to the best solution in general tho
You’re taking things way to personally on the internet if you worry about down votes. It’s not people’s job to explain everything to you. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t, learn to move on from downvotes.
Goes too far. That a social media comment is the limit of what is possible as far as persuasion and learning goes, especially on difficult or controversial topics, is plainly wrong. Mind shifts can be hard work. And so there’s plenty of space in which a comment can be making a worthwhile point, politely and clearly, without it ever being able to be persuasive, just by the nature of the audience and topic.
There’s also low-effort/value comments that agree with your worldview but are bad contribution to the debate. Especially on controversial topics.
I’m sure there will always be lots of updates for things that shit on the opposition, especially when the majority thinks the opposition is morally and intellectually corrupt, but I’d rather those posts/comments be demoted (or e.g. relegated to a shitposting community) so healthy discussion can happen. And the truth can be seen more fairly.
As a side note: some of Reddit’s majority opinions which I broadly agree with, I found myself shifting away from, because most of its supporting posts are stupid arguments. And some of the opponents I’ve gained sympathy for, because whenever I check the source for hate against them, it’s ill-founded. I tried not to take much opinion from Reddit anyway, but I love it when good debate frames the truth more clearly.
The nice thing about the fediverse is all my votes are displayed. I generally only down vote a post if it’s way off topic or it’s rife with hate. This also applies to comments.
I generally upvote most things as long as it fits the topic, even if I generally disagree with it.
There’s some part of my brain that applies display:none to the upvote/downvote function on every platform.
So if I don’t vote on your content it’s not because I hate it. My brain is just wired to automatically edit out anything that’s not content. Mostly this means ads, but voting features seem to have been caught in the net too.
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