Topic: Downvote / Dislike button (Read 1997 times)

I like this idea. We were just looking at slashdot and their implementation of this. Again the metrics that we'll be using may change soon since we want to give maximum flexibility.

Assuming the above is sarcasm, It CANNOT be abused. You misunderstood.

The topic was about a Downvote/Dislike button. What I was suggesting was the following.

A personal option on each members dashboard where they can set a discretionary option for which member group dislikes come into action.
This is not for the thread owner to decide, and it will not affect any other users.

For example.
Only ignore threads/posts if 10 Full members rate the thread/post negative. (underline being changeable)
They can choose any member group or turn the feature off as this is a local feature.
High ranking members tend to be more trustworthy due to risk of losing their profile. However, if corruption entails, It would be an optional feature set off by default.

Why would this be useful? Really? Unless someone is so arrogant that they need to make sure people dislike a post that they don't like.


What a smart fucking idea. That definitely would NEVER be abused. Silly ol' me.

It would be such an redicilous increased load on the mods it would be un-doable, think of it, every dumb-ass can dislike a tread > gets smaller text > automatic report > more work than normal...

Why not have it where the user can decide what rank threads should be ignored by.

For example:

Ignore threads/posts if 10 Full Members, Members, Hero Members, etc rate the thread/post negative.

This might be a decent idea if a way is implemented to curb malicious entities from abusing it. For example, if this feature is activated for Full Members and higher only, then griefers would either need to spend time or money to farm accounts gifted with this privilege. If that is not enough, then increase the requirement to having received no negative feedback from anyone on the default trust hierarchy.

It's really tough to do right, it seems. I've never seen a forum implement likes, dislikes, or a reputation system without it turning into a circle-jerk mixed with unnecessary drama. I can't even really think of any way to improve it, though. Tying money in doesn't seem to help... I found a druggo forum where the users were all able to kind of "sub-reply" with comments and a rating of the post, which seemed like a really great idea, but their posts were all unreadable quasi-academic papers and still unproductive given sourcing every argument you make doesn't change reality (it was still a lot of speculation and disagreeing studies), just takes up a damn lot of time and looks like an exclusionary human centipede of ball-sucking.

I'd be worried, especially with hero+ members, that the ball-sucking human centipede would come in the form of all non-optimistic bitcoin news or speculation being hidden. I took a different position before, but now I don't really buy that forum members should have any kind of regulatory power over others. The trust system was a really cool experiment and seems completely reasonable, but I haven't found it beneficial in practice (maybe a poll would help determine whether or not users find it useful?). Spam and the like's dealt with fairly quickly on the forum already using only the pretty basic reporting mechanism. It doesn't fix scamming, but as long as it's clear it doesn't (rather, that it can't), I guess that's acceptable.

A slightly better option would be this:

After x amount of downvotes by hero members, decrease the size of the post in the menu (see the image), and report it to moderators.


If the image doesnt load, click here.

I truly believe that this would be the best way. If there is abuse, the mods can increase the value of x

It would be great to get a mods opinion on this.

I like this idea. I would think that hero members would be far less likely to abuse the system. As you mention, a trial run of it couldn't hurt.  Not sure if I would like to see it totally hidden though, it's always nice sometimes to take a look at it to see why it was down voted so much.

Well, it would be a trial basis. If it gets abused, increase the number of required hero members, or just remove the feature all together.

I'd only hope that Hero members would not abuse the capability. Corruption by hero members may occur and this may be hard to moderate.

It would be cool if something like 10 hero members downvote it, then it gets hidden, or the size of the title decreases.

That way the community can work with the moderators.

I think it could be a feature that would implemented, but turned off by default.

Although, I don't necessarily see an issue with negative posts. They stir conversation and set a framework for what NOT to do.

i like the idea, but like everyone else said i think it could easily be abused by a scammer with a few alts

I like the idea of an upvote, but a dislike button would just get abused.  I'm on a hockey forum and they added a + and - system.  It was abused really really bad.  People would just - people for no reason and then their buddies would come in and do the same. 

They took away the - option and just left it as a + system.  It works rather well.  We only get 4 or 5 a day, so it makes it a lot harder to abuse.  We then get a rating under our account that adds them up. 

For the forum, yes.
For hackernews, that's how having only likes changed content. I was just trying to illustrate the point that having just likes also has it's own drawbacks.

A concrete but fictional example would be if post likes were tied to user rating. Many users with malicious intent could be pushed into higher and higher user rating tiers (if such a thing existed.) Basically any system that only has a up button could easily have everything pushed "up." ("up" could be anything too.)

Also please consider the psychological aspect of a like and dislike system. Reddit has become famous for karma whoring. Some people go to extreme lengths for a virtual number that means absolutely nothing.


I would like to try and figure out a way to tie likes into a meaningful metric to try and fight spam posts and malicious users but I haven't figured out a viable route yet. I may switch to something entirely different metric at any point in the future too. As of right now, nothing is set in stone on that subject.

Don't we already have a way to push content up or down? By the time of the most recent post.

If you go on hackernews, there's only a like button but even that has shown that it was lead to unwanted side effects. In their case, many of the same articles get pushed to the top because there's nothing to say that the same content has already been posted. Think of the like and unlike as way to move content up or down. All three scenarios (likes, dislikes, likes and dislikes) come with their down sides.

Disqus include downvotes, but as far as I understand, the total sum of downvotes is not shown to users. It's just used for sorting comments by relevance and such (which I don't think would be a great idea in a forum).

A like button isn't so bad, but a dislike button could be, especially if it's tied into possibly negatively affecting peoples' posts. All you need is a few alts to downvote the comments or someone you just don't like and it can become quite a nuisance and another way to troll.