I wish there were multiple kinds of downvotes. "This is actually bad" (spam, etc.) vs. merely useless, vs. factually incorrect but reasonably presented.
I mostly only downvote spam or abuse; I try to ignore "no-op" comments, and would rather reply to someone with information about why they might be wrong vs. downvote, but I'm not sure if this is universal.
I wish there were multiple kinds of downvotes. "This is actually bad" (spam, etc.) vs. merely useless, vs. factually incorrect but reasonably presented.
There's arguments for and against that.
On the one hand, we do want to minimize the mental effort put into making a valid vote by a good community member. Up/Down is the simplest, and it is mentally the easiest. When you ask someone to put that vote into a category, that person may or may not then choose to vote at all, and we've missed the opportunity to capture a bit of information.
On the other hand, requiring a little bit more thinking effort may yield more information on average, and help better quality comments rise.
We do kind of have a two-tier vote system now anyway. You can downvote a comment that is just crap. And you can flag a comment that is awful (spam, etc.).
Upvoting should be lightweight, but I'm ok with downvoting requiring slightly more effort (picking a reason).
I probably upvote 20x more than I downvote, if not more. (this would be an interesting statistic to show the user on his own profile page, or even to make globally visible).
>but I'm ok with downvoting requiring slightly more effort (picking a reason).
How about downvoting requiring a reply? I reply to everyone I downvote, the exception being copypasta, strictly-copypasta. A one-word variation on copypasta gets a reply.
Thanks for doing that. I really hate it when a comment that I put some thought into gets downvoted without a single reply. I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything obviously wrong, so if somebody still doesn't like my comment (e.g. they have a reasonable disagreement), I would like to know why.
Requiring downvotes to be accompanied by a reply would also make trolls hesitate before they downvote something just because. Otherwise they themselsves will be downvoted for their failure to provide adequate justification for their downvotes.
But it might also have unintended side effects. For example, all those replies will take up valuable screen space without actually adding anything useful to the discussion, especially if the downvoted comment is worthless to begin with, and especially in the downvote-the-downvote scenario that I just outlined above.
>I really hate it when a comment that I put some thought into gets downvoted without a single reply. I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything obviously wrong, so if somebody still doesn't like my comment (e.g. they have a reasonable disagreement), I would like to know why.
This is exactly why I have that personal policy. If you pass the CAPTCHA, the 'post-to-account-age' ratio, and whatever tests you took to post then you deserve a reason when someone clicks 'DOWNVOTE'. Let the software take care of the real shit-posts.
>Requiring downvotes to be accompanied by a reply would also make trolls hesitate before they downvote something just because.
If you think "trolls" are doing a statistically appreciable amount of downvoting, I would suggest they aren't. "Disagreeable" people are more interested in making their point than they are with suppressing the ability of others to make theirs.
>For example, all those replies will take up valuable screen space without actually adding anything useful to the discussion
'folding' comment branches would fix this. Not folding by default (unless nested deeply enough to justify it anyway); That's just another way to hide 'undesirable' content.
>especially if the downvoted comment is worthless to begin with, and especially in the downvote-the-downvote scenario that I just outlined above.
Put the power in the user's hands. Downvote-the-downvote comments create transparency.
I try to give constructive replies generally, but some people freak out over even positive advice so I just save the low-content back and forth "something is wrong on the internet I must comment on this!" that would make everyone else miserable and downvote them.
Not only does it require a bit more overhead on the downvoter's part, but the reasons can be used by the algorithm.
I also think that some sort of feedback for the comment's poster could really help comment quality.
edit to add: It also reduces the possibility for 'accidental' downvotes, which I see on a regular basis.
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On a related note, deleted comments should still count toward a user's Karma and avg.
The other day I saw a user making comments that struck me as factually questionable. I'm not an expert in that field, so I asked for an explanation. The user had an avg over 5, so there was reason to believe the user might have known something I didn't. All of a sudden, the user's comments on that topic started getting downvoted. Despite the initial downvotes one of the comments was still at the top of the thread (my understanding is that a user's avg impacts the comment ordering). The user never responded to requests for more information or reputable sources, and then all of a sudden, all of his/her comments on that thread were deleted.
Curious, I went and looked up the user's previous comments. In multiple fields this person put on an air of expertise. Maybe he/she is and then again, maybe not. But the comments were almost all disparaging, with this air of expertise. So, the user makes definitive claims that come across like an expert, if their comments start getting downvoted, they delete the comment and don't get penalized. Otherwise, they reap in the upvotes and have an avg that appears to the world to justify their expertise.
I would love an option somewhere between a downvote and a flag. I like to be able to use downvotes almost casually, to signal that someone is wrong or even that they presented their idea poorly and should be knocked down the page. I reserve flags for serious offenses that should result in moderator action. I don't currently have a way to mark a comment as "terrible comment but is not a ban-worthy offense".
I agree. But it is possible that a 3 choice downvote would increase the number of downvotes. Many people do not downvote at the moment, but they might if they had the option to say "abusive/insulting" or "incorrect".
It would be interesting to come up with a way to vote on specific portions of a cmoment. Often when I comment, i'm putting forth many different ideas in one comment box. I don't make 5 comments to put forth 5 different ideas. But because someone disagrees with one of the parts of my comment, the whole thing is downvoted. (And I sometimes have extreme, negative and unpopular opinions, so my average is pretty crummy ;) I would like to see a way for people to show what specifically caused them to downvote; maybe that's categories, maybe voting per-line or per-paragraph, or highlighting and then downvoting?
Just for the sake of putting it under consideration:
Make this a user option. If you want fine-grained downvoting (or at least downvote confirmation), enable it in your user profile. If you don't care that much, don't.
Slashdot tried this, without much success. All the -1 mods were treated pretty interchangeably (can you distinguish between "-1, Flamebait" and "-1, Troll"? Is your distinction going to be the same as the next modder? And much of the time they were really being used as "-1, I Disagree" anyway).
As were the +1 mods, for that matter, save "+1, Funny".
I think slashdot intentionally(?) picked silly voting reasons.
Spam, Mean/Abusive/Rude, Incorrect would cover the vast majority of reasonable downvotes, I think, and are fairly distinct and intuitive. There are some gray areas about downvoting (something which is interesting but offtopic: is that spam?), but I don't think those gray areas usually are between two of these categories.
I loved when /. introduced the vote-categories, if for no other reason than it finally solved the internet humor problem for me. Some people like the joke/comedy comments that occur in discussion threads. Nine out of ten times I find them uninspired and formulaic. /.'s voting system meant that I did not have to see the "funny" comments and all of the "comedy fans" were able to get their laughs in without my downvotes.
The only thing that matters is separating agree/disagree from constructive/unconstructive. (The latter is used for raising comments to the top of the thread. The former is mostly to force people to make the distinction, and maybe for getting a sense of the crowd's opinion.) None of the other distinctions are really useful for action.
There actually is a second type of downvote: if you click on the direct comment (e.g. on the 'link'), you can flag that particular comment. You should use that for the "This is actually bad" type of comments (spam, etc.)
I like that idea, and I don't think a multiple downvote system would have to be hard to implement. It would take very little change to the site, for example, to promote a system in which we flag for spam, downvote for irrelevance, and reply to posts we perceive as factually incorrect.
Maybe classification like this would be helpful: "up" (=well written/insightful/continues the discussion) xor "down" (=spam/rude/trolling/prevents discussion), "agree" xor "disagree", or "problematic" (=bad grammar/bad-language usage/logical flaws/prospect of improvement). Comments would still be mainly sorted by up/down counts, partly by the count of reported problems. The agreement-percentage will be displayed for everyone and the problems will be displayed only to the commenter so that the comment can be improved accordingly.
I mostly only downvote spam or abuse; I try to ignore "no-op" comments, and would rather reply to someone with information about why they might be wrong vs. downvote, but I'm not sure if this is universal.