Fun Boards Fact: Upvotes outnumber downvotes more than 3-to-1
I was just doing some thinking about peoples comments made recently on voting and Krylhos pulled that stat for me so I figured I would share it with everyone
22 Comments
I feel that certain types of upvoting can be just as problematic as downvoting. There were two awful threads early this week that were clearly inflammatory, yet had been shielded by circle-jerk upvotes.
There only needs to be 1 down vote, placed before other votes, to kill a thread. It takes a lot of up votes to keep one visible.
Thanks for the update! That's great to see.
Does this include comment voting?
Comments are a separate beast imho, and actually work a bit closer to what I believe the intent of this system is. Post votes, however, is where a lot of the controversy remains I feel.
It makes sense, seeing as there are more opportunities to upvote then downvote (unless you frequent recent, and like downvoting the lowest posts, which isn't likely, but even then you still upvote as much).
I'm not too sure about the voting either. While I understand the main principle, it does have a utopian feel to it. Phenomena such as circle-jerking and demonising certain forum-goers are very real. Having an unpopular opinion doesn't mean you should be silenced for it, which tends to happen with this system.
Downvoted for justice!
everyone here is a circlejerker, i wouldn't be surprised if the fun fact was true.
Thoughts on Lizard Squad?
Why is it that threads that are downvoted but have tons of discussion on it (an unpopular point that sparks a lot of talk) are quickly taken off the front page?
Do you think that in the future we can get "hot" topics to be based on comments AND votes?
This fact has no bearing whatsoever on the issues of voting. Nice try, however.
Imo, there are 2 main kinds of voters.
There's the "passionate" voter, who will upvote whatever he agrees with/thinks should be seen and downvote what he feels should be hidden/disagrees with. In most cases, these kind of voters probably have a 2-3:1 ratio and probably vote on 50%+ of the threads they read.
Then, you have the "stalker" voter, which uses votes as a way to really commit ot a thread. Personally, I probably open at least 10-20 threads per days on here and similar for Reddit, and I upvote probably 1-2 threads per week (probably 5-15 upvotes per days on ocmments) across both plateforms. Downvotes are used as a soft report usually, you don't think that the coment/thread has a reason to be, but it doesn't warrant moferation. Basically, An upvote really means "I can 100% get behind this thread, and more like this ones should be ccreated". I wouldn't be surprised if my ratio is around 20-50:1 (but is watered down because of the low amount).
Basically, I'm not surprised at all, mainly because a downvote feels more negative than an upvote positive.
I'd be very curious to see statistics on the distribution of votes across threads. My anecdotal experience is that downvoted threads tend to only be bumped down to 0 through -5 or so, while threads that are significantly upvoted tend to get a lot of upvotes. Where it kinda seems that a lot of threads are mildly unpopular, but one in a hundred threads just blow up with community support.
Which makes me wonder if upvotes in general are more localized while downvotes are more evenly distributed. 'Cause if so, that could maybe speak to the general attitude that the community holds towards whether a post should be voted on, and if so, in what direction. And by extension, explain the disparity in their usage.
Regardless, interesting statistic. Thanks for sharing.
Why are posters unable to up vote or down vote you? Sorry not authorized.