this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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It's a good point, but very difficult (maybe even impossible) to achieve. Downvoting to disagree is a kneejerk reaction that is very easy to do, so it's going to require a lot of self discipline to avoid - and I don't think you can expect that from most people.
I don't even really think that there should be downvotes. Just different categories of votes, kinda like how Fark does comments with 'Smart' and 'Funny' votes.
Generally, shifting away from a binary system could be beneficial. What would be the options? What's enough but not too many options to cover the gamut? Maybe two types of positive ("I agree" and "This is quality") and two types of critical options ("I don't agree" and "This is poor quality") ?
I’m not sure I want to feel like I’m doing a psychological evaluation or political survey when I’m liking a post. Up and down is fine.
That's part of the reason why platforms like Reddit took off: they're simple and easy to approach and people don't get overwhelmed at first sight
Nothing sounds more fun than a paroxysm of analysis with every 'doot
Granted, you could easily replace the two arrows with a four-part diamond (❖) with those two axes .... but I have a strong suspicion that nearly everyone who's going to vote "I don't agree" will also vote "This is poor quality" except in extraordinary cases. It's just human nature: one would be disinclined to explicitly acknowledge the quality of one's antagonist.
While a better system might be one where you can apply a range of reactions to a post, that would probably make things look cluttered and spammy (if a post has a dozen different reactions on it)
The upvote/downvote system seems like the most useful one, at least right now while people are migrating over and these sites are in the expansion phase
@AnonymousLlama I like forum software that offers a range of reactions (ala vBulletin / XenForo). The default reaction could be a simple "Like" with an additional click or two required to change the reaction to Informative, Agree, Funny, Sad etc. Two of these reactions (probably positioned last to add that extra little bit of friction) might be Disagree and Off-Topic.
But if this is too convoluted, maybe just cap the number of downvotes a post/thread can get. So if a post gets 5 (or whatever the cap number is) downvotes, additional downvotes do not change the downvote counter. This would discourage "piling on" but there'd still be an indicator that a post might be poor quality or contentious. On the other hand, upvotes should probably be unlimited (or have a higher cap number) to encourage positive feedback.
I like how wiki tribune is doing it where you can set trust levels for users. Hey this person comments are always intelligent and useful. I set the trust value to 100. This other guy is always trying to promote some wierd conspiracy. Set trust level to 0. Now I see way more posts and comment from user 1 and way less from user 2.
unfortunately true. it would be nice to avoid though
I avoid it on my instance by disabling downvotes
Of course downvotes can be ironic such as the one I've just added....
My instance just drops external downvotes, so it's all the same thing to me :)
okay, but in a social environment like the fediverse it kinda doesn’t matter what your instance does: up and down votes are entirely to do with other people, and their instances still show all your down votes
disabling downvotes on your instance just means your local communities don’t have down votes: your posts on other instances still do!
Not quite. What it means is that people on my instance don't have the same view as people on other instances. When we visit a community or look at a post, we see it as if downvotes don't exist, wherever those downvotes come from. You seem them with downvotes included.
How you see my post doesn't bother me. How I see other posts is what I'm interested in, and for me, downvotes don't influence ranking
If 3 users from 3 different instances see a post. One sees 10 up votes, one sees 10 up 2 down, and one sees 10 up 10 down. Each of their home instances will rank and sort the post based on what they see.
The objective reality might be 10 downvotes but for each user the lived experience is based on the value of downvotes in the instance.
I wonder about repurposing a shitty thing from reddit into a good thing: the classic but annoying 'this' reply. Suppose someone posts something you disagree with rather than just hitting the downvote type a 'disagree' as a reply. Then like minded people can upvote or downvote the 'disagree' as its own thing leaving the original post to be judged or interacted with on its merits.