Topic: I think the thumbs down button was a mistake

The results of the dislike button will forever be etched on your permanent record.

Ooo, spooky. It’s our new Social Score!

I dislike disliking

and I hate disliking disliking because that is conflicting >.>

Seriously, I'd say don't even try to implement any negative feedback system and get rid of it right away. Feedback should be put in words. I do like the hearts, showing appreciation through a heart is fine in my opinion, saves me the trouble from having to type ''nice'' or ''I like you comment''. Which can also be seen as spam.

If you're gonna have a thumbs-down button, at least change the 'like' into a thumbs up.
Trigger my OCD with this asymmetric madness.

Responding to an unconstructive comment with an unconstructive thumbs down. We already have the report button for when a user takes it too far. If you don't approve of a comment but they're not breaking the rules you're better of moving on instead of thumbing it down. If you think something is crossing the borders of distasteful just hit that report button.

The ''poor'' commenter won't suddenly adjust their ways after a thumbs down, especially if that user isn't sure why they get the negativity. For example not knowing their avatar was taken into consideration. Thumbs down essentially comes down to this:

and it just isn't helpful if you already have a working report system. Leave the judging to the moderators and don't let this system bring additional negativity to the comment sections. That's how I feel about it, maybe I'm overreacting, I just don't see any added value.

Yes I really dislike that meme.

But a thumbs down button that doesn't hide the comment or shows the actual number to the poster is a bit of a level 1, compared to the level 50 that is that meme.

My 2 cents -

People who care even one tiny iota about "likes" and "dislikes" have some serious personal issues that they should deal with.

Now get off mah lawn.

Curious as to how people feel about this now that it has been around for almost a year. Personally I think it isn't that big of a deal but it does bring in a lot of cliquishness.

I think it's introduced a lot of unneeded hostility to the website and should perhaps be done away with, and I imagine that there would be some people insecure enough to create a dummy profile to see which of their comments have been disliked, which I imagine can be quite demoralising for some who may then feel despondent and alienated from the community. Now, I am hardly Mr. Popular Opinion around here, but I feel that what disliking tends to do in the long term is encourage people to conform to a particular sentiment or norm, as opposed to posing valid arguments against the majority (whereby they may be targeted by several users, and then feel compelled to address them), and I am not one to subscribe to the notion that "X people can't be wrong!" because they most certainly can be!

And in some cases, "disliking" seems an easy way out of having a careful and considered conversation as to why somebody disagrees with a person's point of view, and some people can be quite platitudinous in their articulation of why they may disagree due to the susceptibility of some to parrot the common sentiment, but not everybody considers their opinions carefully, and therefore not all opinions are equal. I value an educated opinion, even those I do not agree with, so I strongly believe that one should consider their words carefully if they are expressing what they call an opinion, when it could be mere sentiment, or what one has been lead to believe through subconscious conditioning as opposed to something that they have consciously reflected upon, and likewise, sentiment is often misconstrued as being an opinion when the two are certainly not equal.

But disliking also gives us, I suppose, a means of catharsis in expressing our annoyance or disapproval at some of the more inane comments made on the site.

Kindness is certainly preferable to the alternative though, and when people disagree with an opinion, we ought to address the opinion itself as opposed to making things personal. But in short, we could certainly do without the dislike button, even though I'll admit to using it at times, but I would prefer to give people likes instead, particularly if it may, in some small way, bring them a little happiness, because "real life" can be cruel enough as it is, and we ought not to be so aggressive and hostile over our shared hobby, which, of all things, should not be a cause for misery.

What does it even do? As far as I can tell, it's a counter that stops updating at 5, doesn't seem to actually have any effect on anything. That and as far as I can tell, people can't see the dislikes on their own comments so they don't even know people are downvoting them, so it seems pretty pointless?

The quote below was the last thing I saw about it.

I wish mods could see the true number. It would be so fun- I mean... Useful.

My interest is entirely professional of course, of course. 🧐

Edit: oh hey I made this joke before, cool

I do think it is strange how you cannot see the dislikes on your own comments. I have to assume @antdickens added it to the site for a reason but to date it doesn't seem to have much point.

If you have so much anxiety that you need to make a dummy account to see your own dislikes, then I kinda pity you. Life must be hard with that much stress.

Well, people would probably obsess over it even more.

I know that it's different for other people but I like the thumbs down and I wish I could see how many people thumbs down my own posts. It's just interesting to see how many people agree and disagree. I do understand that it means more than and different things to that for other people however.

@Silly_G Thanks for that well thought out post and I think you really touched on some of the more philosophical points about the like and dislike system in general. I would have to agree with you because I have sort of been using it to study the behavior patterns in the community and I have drawn similar conclusions as you. It seems like the dislike feature is primarily utilized as a "I don't like this guy" button, but it can often develop into clique like behavior, but to be honest the like button is the biggest culprit of that. It is why I have come to like forums that don't feature it, when you have like and dislike counters it seems to turn the comments sections into a popularity contest and most people are just falling into cliques or trying to say the most popular thing first. Sure you can just ignore this but it's become a notable feature that a lot of people use for helping them navigate a comments section. With that in mind I could see an argument for it's use but at the same time it seems like a lot of the toxic behavior can be traced to it's existence.

@RedderRugfish Well with that kind of use in mind I don't see why they even need to display a counter for anyone. They could just do what Youtube does and provide a dislike button but don't display anything for it, it's simply used for helping the moderators review comments.

It's interesting to see people still speculating about it basically I'm not going to reveal exactly how it works because then it'll be open for people to abuse it. Currently, the system is working really nicely (and as expected) for us and is doing it's job. The reason we don't show the dislike figure is simple, if it did, trolls would get satisfaction out of how many dislikes they could get. Currently it only ever shows up to 5+ to other users.

Thumbs down to your post for not telling people how it works.

@jump haha, very good

@antdickens Telling me that it's "working very nicely and doing it's job" tells me that you aren't really listening to any of the complaints.

@JayJ or, we’re listening to the feedback on both sides, including all the positive feedback we’ve had in private and the data/results. Just because it’s had a handful of complaints doesn’t mean we’re going to change things.