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So it's been 4 months, are you going to remove downvotes or what?

Capn Evan·7/8/2017, 1:54:48 AM·7 votes·499 views

Downvotes are toxic. They hold no meaning. We have a report button for posts that shouldn't be on the forums, we don't need the downvote button whatsoever. The worst part about it is that you can never know if 10 people upvoted you and 9 people downvoted, or if you only received a single upvote. Downvoting cancels out someone else's opinion of you. It makes zero sense, and Riot read my last tread about it 4 months ago, and I see zero changes to the boards. Are you in Riot really content with the way your boards invite toxic circlejerks and remove constructive debate from the forums?

I know you're like a huge company and probably won't listen to a single forumer in a small corner of the world. But you claim to be one of the most user-focused companies out there. So prove it. Fix your boards before it's too late. We demand change, we've had to put up with this joke of a forum far too long.

Thank you.

15 Comments

nGio7/8/2017, 2:00:30 AM5 votes

So you're one of those under the belief that only positives are okay? A downvote offers what an upvote does, either "dig it, don't wanna talk about it" or "hated it, don't wanna talk about it".

"Downvoting cancels out someone else's opinion of you". No, upvoting cancels someone else's opinion of you. I'm not advocating an upvote/downvote system, but you can't have one without the other, or you're just controlling opinions to keep people happy in their safe space.

Capn Evan7/8/2017, 2:15:52 AM2 votes

Not really. It just means challenging a vocal opinion should also be done vocally. And it's totally unfair to compare an upvote to a downvote. Upvotes say "I want others to see this", while a downvote says "I don't want other people to see this". One is true to an open forum experience, the other chokes discussion and contributes to toxic circlejerking.

What would you think if the state decided to run a railroad right through your house to demolish it, and when you tried to speak about it to other people, they not only disagreed with your reasoning, they also prevented you from talking to others about it? Wouldn't you feel unfairly treated? As if your freedom of speech was being violated?

I think the reason people accept downvotes on these forums is because they see it as equivalent to an upvote. You think all posts are gonna be heavily upvoted if we don't have downvotes? Wrong! People can just ignore those posts if they want, they don't have to say "someone else who agreed with you never existed".

I've seen it happen so many times, not only to myself, but to a lot of people. They post a thread, 5 minutes later it has 0 points. And every single time the first response is a negative one, or it receives no responses because people inherently think it's a bad thread.

Only positives are okay in a non-vocal system. Negatives should be challenged. That's how every discussion should work. If you say something someone disagrees with, you get a discussion. If you just say "no" and move on, that's not a discussion. That's ruining a discussion.

Capn Evan7/8/2017, 2:23:16 AM2 votes

I just want to get out there that a Riot employee said he agreed with some of my sentiment in the last thread I created, I just haven't heard back from them in 4 months, so I assume it's been shoved under the carpet, just like all the unpopular threads on this forum. Which is very frustrating.

Laughing Fish7/8/2017, 3:45:23 AM2 votes

While its not removing downvotes, the boards have had some pretty significant changes in the last couple months. Most notably, a change in moderation to allow members of the community to lead and moderate their sub-boards, so that the community can have a voice in moderation decisions.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/community-moderation/TP4y93oc-introduction-to-the-riot-games-volunteer-programs

Eedat7/8/2017, 10:57:14 PM2 votes

But then you get people with multiple accounts that can abuse the hell out of the system. I don't know about you but I've had multiple comments/threads go from like +5 to -2 in a matter of 2-3 minutes. These same people can abuse that to upvote their own thread/comments and drown others out.

Removing downvoted isn't necessarily a better way to get opinions heard

Scary Door7/12/2017, 3:29:09 PM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Capn Evan,realm=EUW,application-id=6heBIhQc,discussion-id=hsvE20Br,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-07-08T01:54:48.291+0000)

Downvotes are toxic. They hold no meaning. We have a report button for posts that shouldn't be on the forums, we don't need the downvote button whatsoever. The worst part about it is that you can never know if 10 people upvoted you and 9 people downvoted, or if you only received a single upvote. Downvoting cancels out someone else's opinion of you. It makes zero sense, and Riot read my last tread about it 4 months ago, and I see zero changes to the boards. Are you in Riot really content with the way your boards invite toxic circlejerks and remove constructive debate from the forums?

I know you're like a huge company and probably won't listen to a single forumer in a small corner of the world. But you claim to be one of the most user-focused companies out there. So prove it. Fix your boards before it's too late. We demand change, we've had to put up with this joke of a forum far too long.

Thank you.

100% agreed.

If you want to have a meaningful platform for discussions then a forum should be about conversations, not some gimmicky thumbs up/thumbs down metric where only popular opinions flourish and others are shoved aside without even having a chance for discussion.

Let's say I see post about a champion that someone believes is overtuned, but I don't want that opinion to get much visibility, I simply downvote it and then use my 20 other accounts to do the same. The system of upvotes/downvotes is very easily manipulated, but If you took away those silly little numbers, it's much harder to game the system.

Sadly, in the social media-instant gratification type of world the current system is likely to stay for awhile, but as i wrote elsewhere, we all know that Riot follows the trends of other gaming companies sooner or later and after I saw that Blizzard had phased out upvote/downvote metrics then I knew that there was hope for Riot---so they'll be doing that within a year or two.

rtbf2216514127/12/2017, 8:47:33 PM1 votes

He's right though, hence the down votes on this thread. The circle jerking of down votes and up votes exist, no matter how much you deny it. This means great advice has a chance to become not shown because of a huge amount of down voting. What community wants that?

Rektagon7/12/2017, 12:08:41 PM1 votes

The irony is that you're being downvoted for this.