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I Have a Question About Upvoting/Downvoting Threads(Discussions?)

Riv x Kobe·11/18/2014, 2:06:23 PM·4 votes·1,047 views

First off I have no problem with it. It gives people an idea of what players are responding to. Or does it?

(I'm going to be calling them Threads in this post because its what I'm am use to, just started recently using the boards. First thread!)

My main question is about being able to Upvote/Downvote a thread without actually clicking on said thread. Why is this here? Why are we allowed to do this? Sure you can highlight the title and see an excerpt from the main post (like this one) but is that enough? Discussions are being had in many threads (or as you call them Discussions) that could make you think about if the OP deserves said vote, and many OPs go well beyond what is shown during the highlight.

I know it isn't a huge deal (or it is. Depending on how you view the votes), but it seems silly that posters can come onto the board and Upvote/Downvote without actually looking at the Discussion. Upvoting/Downvoting has a mob mentality attached to it. Many people who see a high Upvote/Downvote count seem to follow the trend, and having it so that we can Upvote/Downvote a thread just by looking at the title and seeing how others have voted seems silly.

The upvote/downvote-ing of threads may not seem important, and just an added feature to the boards, but it can influence people into checking out a thread or just disregarding it. Sure, the title should be what pulls them in and what ever they read from the excerpt, but the votes also play a key role in this.

I'm not suggesting you change this, because I don't know how much work is involved in doing so, I'm just curious as to why this is a thing.

8 Comments

Alljoy11/18/2014, 2:11:28 PM2 votes

Because 'muh Reddit'.

Daen11/18/2014, 5:05:25 PM1 votes

My main question is about being able to Upvote/Downvote a thread without actually clicking on said thread. Why is this here? Why are we allowed to do this?

During the Community Beta, this was a heavily debated feature. Overall, the community decided that it was more useful to be able to quickly downvote posts that are clearly in the wrong place/trolly/blatantly wrong and upvote posts that users agree with/feel deserve discussion.

For most topics, the title and first few sentences is enough information to create an accurate assessment of the content's validity. Do you have examples of threads where the content doesn't warrant the votes it has received?

Upvoting/Downvoting has a mob mentality attached to it. Many people who see a high Upvote/Downvote count seem to follow the trend

This becomes kind of an interesting topic. Is the mob mentality primarily attached to the vote frequency, or to the discussion surrounding the thread? Big numbers are definitely something worth checking out, but it doesn't mean I should be a sheep and vote with it. If for some reason someone makes a thread that I think is horrid but hundreds of people have upvoted it, I'll still downvote it.

Basically, from my experience, it seems that the vote present on a given thread is more of an indicator of potential quality rather than something on which I should just blindly vote. If something is +50, probably worth checking out. If it's -50, chances are it's breaking rules or a terrible thread.

Hyrum Graff11/19/2014, 12:44:30 AM1 votes

In addition to what Daen said, according to Pendragon, there are not significant numbers of people abusing the system as it is. Turning off the ability to view before you enter a thread is really simple for them (edit 1 line of code), and if people start abusing the feature, they'll just turn it off.

dustwind811/19/2014, 1:02:10 AM1 votes

This system is easily abused only for certain topics...

Community Creations Gameplay & Balance Skins & Champion Concepts

As these are usually creative concepts, or suggestions to improve on an aspect... The problem comes with the ability to spam down votes on anyone whose ideas you don't feel are more important then your own. Or in the case of the creative threads, you and your friends down vote another person because they disliked your idea, or theirs is similar to yours and you want people to think that yours is superior. This is a problem as threads that are negative in votes will be avoided by most people, or for those who enter, people enter with a negative mindset already.

My biggest issue is people who down vote or up vote, but don't say anything (especially the down votes). I don't mind the system staying, as long as they make it so that if you want to vote, you HAVE to leave a comment, hopefully briefly explaining why. This does a few things... It brings hot button issues to the top more when you have split communities. It relays more information and opinions. It also allows people to see if an account is just spam voting down.

If they don't want to change the system like that there are two other things they can do. Instead of a negative or positive score, they simply show the number of voters, and don't reveal the results till the bottom of the first post.

Or they can block the visible down votes to everyone but the OP.

I prefer either the first or second solution.

Phrytning11/20/2014, 2:05:42 AM1 votes

How about we let people upvote without leaving a comment. But to ** down**vote you have to make a post within the topic. That way noone can abuse the system either way and if you really think a topic deserves a downvote you can make a post at least explaining why? I think this is a win-win in both situations and should be fairly easy to implement?