Why is there no downvoting on the forums?

[Jimmy537]

I believe downvoting is a healthy feature to have in any successful form. Downvoting allows people to quickly see if the community agrees with a certain statement as well as help discourage troll posts. I am not sure if the devs are worried about people with differing opinions getting downvoted. In my experience on forums people are more likely to comment on the thread disagreeing if they can’t downvote and then you end up with a thread with one idea and a hundred people commenting that they disagree rather than the one comment with negative votes. This can make some threads tedious to navigate through. This is just my thoughts on it, Let me know your thoughts in the poll.

Edit: Suggested by Wicca Instead of downvote we can have 'Agree' and 'Respectfully Disagree'. I am unable to change the poll to reflect this so just pretend it says 'respectfully disagree' rather than 'downvoting'.

 

[Mito]

We gotta be like youtube and spread positivity. No negative thoughts are allowed

 

[Wicca]

Downvoting is a good feature, although for Xenforo I haven't seen the downvote function work with hiding the post similar to Reddit.

If you check out the Paradox forums:

They have "Agree" "Helpful" "Respectfully disagree".

As this is a community, having very negative connotations with downvoting could turn ugly, so hopefully the developers or admin/webmaster can find a good solution to this that fits with the overall theme or enviroment they want.

 

[Jimmy537]

That is a fantastic idea. I'm going to try to edit it to agree and respectfully disagree.

 

[Wicca]

That is a fantastic idea. I'm going to try to edit it to agree and respectfully disagree.

Maybe you could google a xenforo addon for this, so it's easier for the admin/webmaster to implement it.

 

[Morrgard]

I see the point of having a downvote, but would it not be better to encourage the writing of replies that give a more detailed (hopefully) reason to why someone disagrees?
"Trolls" will be dealt with by the ruleset anyhow, and by liking another persons post you would only take it in a positive way. Although something like "helpful" would be good I think.

 

[Jimmy537]

Maybe you could google a xenforo addon for this, so it's easier for the admin/webmaster to implement it.

To clarify I was referring to your suggestion of modeling the voting system after paradox's forums. I am not familiar with xenforo and I am not going to pretend to have the technical knowledge to implement a downvoting system.

 

[Wicca]

I'll find it unless someone beats me to it then..

 

[Kimsemus]

Honestly the last thing I want is this site to emulate reddit, but if downvotes didn't hide "bad" posts once they reached a certain threshold it could be fine.

 

[Wicca]

Here is what I found, whomever manages this forum make a seperate database and add the addon there to see if it works to reduce the number of options.. Because holy... There is a lot of potential like/dislike options:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/post-ratings-taking-likes-to-the-next-level.410/

 

[EllaFB]

I'll keep an eye on this poll and thread to see more about what people want.

Not that big of a fan of down votes, but I can see that "agree" and "respectfully" disagree could be useful for example in game suggestion threads. Although it would be nice to hear the comments of why they disagree.

 

[Kimsemus]

I'll keep an eye on this poll and thread to see more about what people want.

Not that big of a fan of down votes, but I can see that "agree" and "respectfully" disagree could be useful for example in game suggestion threads. Although it would be nice to hear the comments of why they disagree.

Paradox has used this exact system for more than a decade on their forums -- and it works super well as a valve for people to "respectfully disagree" with a post or assertion without resorting to a flame or negative post. People tend to respect the system and take stock in it. Developers can use it to quickly gauge public opinion without sorting through potentially hundreds of posts, and when looking for ideas in the community they can easily tell what is popular and what isn't or controversial.

"Helpful" is a good bonus tag too, so players can look at a post when trying to find info about the game and can see that other players agree with or have vetted that information based on their own experience.

 

[Sweez]

I like the idea of being able to respectfully disagree, seems like a good middle ground to show that you dont agree with someone, while still having a somewhat positive tone

 

[Bloodydavyflint]

Happy space exploration game

 

[Biglet]

I'm up for either honestly. Respectfully disagree being an option sounds fine.

 

[Kane Hart]

Forums are not meant for Downvoting. It's not the correct or right social norm and brings in a very bad taste to it. Downvoting and Upvoting is more of a feature used for social media that is not moderated or well moderated. Allows the community to sort of self moderate.

Each Social Media platform has their own way and forum communities like this should not ever be downvoted options.

Don't get me wrong it does exist but I think it has no place and honestly some the communities that do use it are some the worst communities when comes to moderation, rules, offenders, and people trying to break the rules by the thin lines.

I rather like a basic clean rule system where mods do their job.

 

[DrunkRussianBear]

Disrespectfully disagreeing with a message is not a bad thing on a forum.