A few words about users reputation
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As I've said before, I see an issue with people downvoting because of language, rudeness or attitude. That's something the moderators should handle when the need arises, therefore you can just flag a post when you feel it is inappropriate instead of downvoting. Users also get downvoted for their ideas or opinions regularly – not in the feature request subforum, but everywhere else. Truly, I see it the other way around: If anything, we should be allowed to downvote feature requests in case we really don't want to see something implemented, but should allow people their own opinion without downvoting them on the rest of the forum.
So currently I feel downvoting triggers all the wrong things in this community. I wholeheartedly agree with OP that it should just be removed. Wether or not upvoting should be removed too is another discussion, but I wouldn't really miss it. The
Thank you
system we had before was more meaningful in my opinion, but of course this wasn't a conscious decision but just a side effect of switching to nodeBB.edit: As a sidenote: The only posts I currently downvote (since I can't downvote feature requests ^^) are those featuring spam or advertisement – these are posts really deserving the downvote, as negative reputation (anything under 3 upvotes) imposes restrictions on the user.
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@luetage said in A few words about users reputation:
That's something the moderators should handle when the need arises, therefore you can just flag a post when you feel it is inappropriate instead of downvoting.
If the moderators were to intervene in each case like that, it would not only drain more time of their life to carefully read, interpret, decide whether to take any action, what kind of action, the possible outcome of that action, but it would also increase the irritation of the users being constantly rebuked and censured. We already receive complaints about imposing too much "censorship", while all we try to do is to keep the forums civil. Sometimes we decide not to take any action because even though someone doesn't quite obey the rules, the violation is minor and we could let them get away with that.
Generally, the more we intervene, the more people get irritated, therefore we often restrain to removing/editing the content only if it is clearly in violation of the Code of Conduct. "Downvotes" is a form of punishment for those naughty users who are in that "grey" area of not breaking the rules (yet) but being not too kind. After all, we cannot impose politeness on people - the best we can do is to give them a good example.
Whether we need that voting system is up for debate (except for feature requests).
BTW. One of the moderators proposed (privately) a voting system similar to the one observed on StackExchange, where you'd have to give away one of your own reputation points to downvote somebody else. That's also an interesting idea. I know that the StackExchange community is a little bit different, but it's the kind where the downvotes are pretty much essential and it doesn't become any more toxic because of that...
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@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
If the moderators were to intervene in each case like that
If something is clearly against forum rules, you have to intervene anyway. The only thing I'm saying is that the downvoting doesn't do us any favours. I mean what does a user take away from a situation taking half a dozen downvotes, because they critizised Vivaldi? Critique should be nurtured, cultivated and tolerated instead of discouraged – and that's exactly what the voting (and especially downvoting) does – be it here or on reddit/twitter/whatever.
And yeah, the Stackexchange way of handling it would probably solve this somewhat, a solution we could all live with I think.
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Personally I ignore the up/down vote unless it serves a genuine purpose.
Unless it changes the order in which you view comments, or actually affects reputation as far as the forum software is concerned it serves no genuine purpose.I feel that voting on comments is a pointless gamification which just encourages competitive behaviour.
Voting belongs to polls, not general conversation.Imagine having a conversation for real while the people you are talking to are up and down voting you. In real life you would feel offended by this rude behaviour of people judging you constantly.
In the aging gamer forums where I moderate we bestow reputation ranks on the users.
At UT99.org honoured members get added to a sticky post with a description of why the community values this individual (the admin do not pick the honoured members. the community put their name forward and we have a period of input from the community where they voice their opinions).Users gain reputation by their deeds for the community, not the posts they write.
I have previously suggested we ditch the voting and have it for topics where voting is required.
I reiterate this request for sanity. Please dispense with the gamification of conversation.
If users feel compelled to agree or disagree with a post, they already have the tools at hand to join the conversation and say what they think. Voting gives nothing you don't already have. -
@Dr-Flay said in A few words about users reputation:
Voting gives nothing you don't already have.
It allows users to acknowledge help by upvoting without posting a reply, which adds to the poster's notifications, and bloats the thread.
Downvotes allow users to show their disapproval of the tone of a post without starting a flame-war.
In real conversations people show their approval or disapproval by their body language. Online conversations need different tools.
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@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
One of the moderators proposed (privately) a voting system similar to the one observed on StackExchange, where you'd have to give away one of your own reputation points to downvote somebody else.
This is a good solution. Really.
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
One of the moderators proposed (privately) a voting system similar to the one observed on StackExchange, where you'd have to give away one of your own reputation points to downvote somebody else.
This is a good solution. Really.
Yes it seems to me a good solution, who knows if it's supported by NodeBB.
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
@Vort said in A few words about users reputation:
If user posts stupid thing, community have right to see "-123" and do not read that idea.
This week a user wrote that he had lost his data. Probably it was because of a rare bug. The community should works together to find the causes of this bug. But now this post has about "-10" rating. And you're right: nobody read this now.
Were is this post?
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
@Vort said in A few words about users reputation:
So the problem is that people can't believe that their thoughts can be wrong?
Why it should be fixed by technical means?OK, another reason to hide a negative reputation: what if I just don't like you? I could vote against every your publication. You write a lot of comments and I can put a lot of "-1". Today I can destroy your reputation just because I want. Are you sure this is OK?
On the forum not just you and your opponent. A lot of users have read and vote. One person can't crash your personal reputation if other users not agree with him.
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@Gwen-Dragon said in A few words about users reputation:
@Vort The problem on reputation related to downvote is users acting like trolls can and had alreay etremenly downvoted others.
One troll can't crash your reputation - many other users will upvote and reputation will growth. And, even you got a lot of minuses, you can write a good post or comment and people will upvote it.
Actually, all users that currently have less than -10, got this downvotes rightly.
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@Semenov-Sherin said in A few words about users reputation:
@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
One of the moderators proposed (privately) a voting system similar to the one observed on StackExchange, where you'd have to give away one of your own reputation points to downvote somebody else.
This is a good solution. Really.
It's not a good idea. If somebody make wrong things - why I should get a part of his guilt?
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@Shpankov On StackExchange it works both ways. You give away your own points by simply voting (whether "up" or "down"), but you can earn points also in other ways. I think it's too complicated anyway. IMO the way it works here is good enough.
I also wanted to add a few other thoughts regarding the downvotes. First of all, the votes are not anonymous. That's very important. We can see who downvoted a certain post. If there's any abuse, we have the right tools to take action. Moreover, I think that the downvotes can serve as a sort of a warning for users who misbehave. The threat of being downvoted might make them restrain from writing something rude (for example). But I'm aware that it can work both ways and it can scare off users who didn't intend to say anything wrong.
Well, I'm not trying to be an advocate for downvotes here. I'm seeing both the pros and cons of having them. Whether they stay or not, I'll be fine with either option.
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@Pesala
Yeah I understand the principal, however in a real conversation with body language if someone is obviously showing disagreement while you talk, you will pick up on this at that moment and either ask what the problem is, or explain yourself differently.
When they nod and make agreement noises, this is to show that they understand and you can continue.
Votes after the conversation are too late to be of use.
Flame wars generally happen with people that are not used to discussing different opinions, and these days we seem to go out of our way more and more to avoid discussing different opinions.Anonymous voting with regard to reputation allows for politicised voting, and is what makes sites like Web of Trust truly broken.
Example of voting with no comments on why
Yahoo answers site is extremely useless due to voting on the answers, so often the correct answers are not shown as relevant.
If someone agrees and has nothing to add, they could just be happy they agree, rather than needing to be seen to agree.
If someone disagrees and has nothing to add, then why bother disagreeing ?
If the need to be seen to disagree is more important than explaining why you disagree, maybe you don't have a solid base for disagreeing and would rather stay silent lest you were proven wrong.Our countries are run by people that like to be seen to agree or disagree on things they know nothing about. Facebook and twitter are rife with people agreeing/disagreeing on things they only read the headlines of.
This gets us where ?
Personally this desire for external validation is abhorrent and I see it as part of the modern rot of the iWorld.Dialogue and discussion were once valued tools, but now we show our pleasure/displeasure with all the eloquence of emoji.
Obviously this is all a matter of opinion, but in my eyes it just feeds the lazy competitive and selfish direction our cultures are headed.
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@Shpankov said in A few words about users reputation:
It's not a good idea. If somebody make wrong things - why I should get a part of his guilt?
It's not part of the guilt. There is no "guilt" to begin with. Downvoting could be seen as an unwelcoming act, therefore it makes sense you have to invest something. If you have many upvotes, it won't hurt you a bit, but it also means users with less than one reputation can't downvote. I think that makes a lot of sense.
@pafflick said in A few words about users reputation:
First of all, the votes are not anonymous.
But they pretty much are anonymous. Vivaldi has removed the pointer over the voting count to hide the fact it can be clicked to access a list of Upvoters/Downvoters. Only users accustomed to the forum software are aware of this. We also shouldn't forget most know up and downvoting from reddit, where it is anonymous indeed – it isn't a big stretch to assume the same for Vivaldi too initially.
Anyway, I don't think we have a real problem here, but change wouldn't hurt either. Let's just try something different and see how it works out.
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@luetage said in A few words about users reputation:
Vivaldi has removed the pointer over the voting count to hide the fact it can be clicked to access a list of Upvoters/Downvoters.
That's interesting because as far as I remember, the pointer was never there in the first place. I know this, because early on after we switched to nodeBB I made a custom CSS for the forums and adding a pointer for the votes counter (or more like
cursor: help
in my case, for some reason) was one of my very first modifications.My point was that since the votes are not anonymous, we can spot the abuse and take appropriate action, whenever necessary. Whether the average user is aware of that is a different story.
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@pafflick Wether the average user is aware of it is all that matters. And I would assume the majority of users aren't aware. And yeah, the pointer was never implemented on Vivaldi Forum. Either it's a nodeBB standard setting, or Vivaldi removed it specifically when switching – it makes no difference either way, because it's our current situation.
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I have only quickly skimmed this, because there are a lot of issues being discussed here, but the big problem I see with the ability to "downvote" is that it can be misunderstood, used inconsistently and/or abused.
For instance:
-person A and person B both upvote posts they like and agree with.
-person A downvotes posts they don't agree with as they don't like the idea, although there's nothing wrong with the post itself. They don't find it offensive, they just prefer another point of view.
-Person B downvotes posts they believe are offensive.Whilst upvotes are usually interpreted as "I like this idea", person A (quite understandably and logically) interprets a downvote as just the polar-opposite of an upvote, whereas person B interprets a downvote as a kind of "report" tool. This is a very common inconsistency/mistake I see in other forums.
Even worse than this issue, is the issue of person C, who maliciously downvotes posts they disagree with, in order to destroy another user's reputation or silence them in a debate (again, very common in other forums).
Finally, there's the issue of what constitutes obscene/offensive in the first place. It's relative. What you downvote for being "offensive" might just seem like "simple common sense and speaking honestly" to me (or vice versa). Sometimes we can be having a debate with someone and we misinterpret what they say, and think that they have started to be offensive to us, when that was not their intention (I see this in almost every argument that ever happens in a discussion forum). Or we just happen to find another person's viewpoint offensive, even if they don't mean to offend us. As an example, I tolerate Christians, Muslims and Jews because I know they mean well - despite some sometimes expressing viewpoints about Paganism that I find... irritating, to say the least... at times! Some of them, in turn, probably find Paganism in and of itself offensive.
IMHO there is absolutely no need for a downvote option. If one truly believes that a post is offensive, it should be reported to the moderators for them to deal with it. I think only having an "upvote" option also fosters positivity. Otherwise we just get mob rule and some sort of chaotic free-for-all with everybody interpreting the purpose of a "downvote" differently.
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@jamesbeardmore To address your main points
- No one can down-vote a feature request, however stupid it may seem to them.
- Down-votes are not anonymous. Malicious down-voting can be reported.
- Mature users won't down-vote without a good reason. Reporting every post that violates the Code of Conduct would make too much work for the moderators.
- Whenever there is repeated and obvious bad behaviour by a user the moderators will take action. If they think that the reported post is not a violation of the Code of Conduct, they will do nothing, or they might take action against the reporter. Mob rule will be avoided if the moderators do their job well.
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@Pesala thank you for pointing this out, it's somewhat reassuring and addresses most of my particular concerns.
I still have some reservations due to people not necessarily knowing what "downvote" is actually for. Whilst one can't downvote a feature-request, it's still possible to downvote comments elsewhere - so unless users actually know what the purpose of downvoting is, they may mistakenly and unintentionally misuse the feature. Yes, this could happen with any feature, not just downvoting, but I think the problem is that the "downvote" feature is a bit less intuitive than other features, including the "upvote" feature. Not everybody is computer literate, and even those who are computer literate may not understand current netiquette (or the netiquette of each individual forum), just like when we visit other countries and don't know the customs. I still think there needs to be at least a reminder on the page (or a sticky post) that states the most basic, over-arching rules/guidelines - including when to (and not to) downvote.
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- As said, that's the only thing we should be able to downvote…
- Downvotes are practically anonymous. As long as we don't get notified of downvotes, just like it's handled with upvotes, it's clear that it is meant being kept hidden. The fact that the vote count has no pointer for the cursor to access the overview just supports this.
- Voting is not meant to be a moderation tool and I firmly stand against using a downvote as a way to punish a user, wether it's for language, behaviour, or simply critizising Vivaldi. I cannot emphasize this enough.