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My opinion on the state of the voting system on the League boards

Teriyaki Bukkake·11/8/2017, 12:22:22 PM·5 votes·677 views
Can people explain downvotes?

My post, a neutral one mind you, after stating that I think that downvotes do more harm than good, asks if people could explain what they think the downvotes are used for. In my opinion, downvotes harm the community more than help it, because people don't use the system for what it is made for: essentially "disposing" of either irrelevant or toxic posts or comments on/in the boards. People do not use it for it's actual purpose because people are FAR more likely to disagree with someone elses opinion on the boards then they are to post toxic comments OR post useless comments on the boards, and because downvotes essentially serve the same function for both these instances, they are abused and can put important messages down the pecking order or create a barrier between people, understanding and the community at large. On the flipside, upvotes can be just as bad: someone can post an opinion that might be wrong and have no backing, but might be upvoted simply because they are a popular opinion and nothing more. All in all, the system fails A LOT of people, but the area where people are failed the most by the boards is with downvotes.

Ironically, my other post got downvoted by three seperate people who simply didn't agree, that additionally did not input anything to the post.

So, I would like to pose a few questions, to both test down-voters, and see what the general community would think.

Do you think that the boards would be better with a DIFFERENT system to moderate the boards? Do you think that the boards would be better without downvotes? Do you think that downvotes do more good than harm, and if so, how did you come to that conclusion? Lastly, How often do you downvote posts, or at least how often do you think you downvote a post? (1 in 10, 1 in 5, 1 in 3 etc)

DISCLAIMER THIS POST DOES NOT STATE FACT, BUT OPINION I AM PURELY MAKING THIS POST TO CREATE DISCUSSION AND FURTHER MY UNDERSTANDING I DO NOT INTEND TO OFFEND PEOPLE HERE, I WANT TO HAVE A HEALTHY DEBATE WITH THE COMMUNITY <3 IF YOU DISAGREE, PLEASE SAY WHY AND STATE YOUR OPINION IF YOU DO NOT LIKE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY HERE AND DONT WANT TO COMMENT, THEN PLEASE MOVE ON

Thank you all!

3 Comments

HalcyonDweller11/8/2017, 7:04:50 PM2 votes

I think that a lot of the time people just downvote things when they disagree with them, but offensive and low-effort content gets downvoted as well so there are some positives to the existing system.

Its original purpose was to allow players to filter through bad content, when lots of people downvote something it is supposed to mean the content is bad or offensive and nobody in their right mind would want to read it... in actuality it kind of serves as a reverse of going-viral on the internet, where a few downvotes can doom a post to a fate of obscurity

One thing to consider is that when players have the ability to downvote a troll, they don't have to engage any further with their behavior, and they are not required to type out a response to refute the comment. I agree that this could also be done by reporting the behavior, but that is much slower and leaves the comment visible for longer where it can continue to anger people until it gets dealt with.

I agree with you that it has problems, but take heart; the boards volunteers are working on it. If you look at posts in GD you will see that they are testing the removal of the downvote function, especially in the comments.