Let's talk about Voting

Hyrum Graff·Aug 7, 2014·14 votes·1,597 views

http://www.dstaylor.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/downvote.png

A upvote/downvote can mean...

I (dis)agree with a post.

This comes from GD, where the only time downvotes play a role in visibility is if they lock the thread.

I (don't) think a post deserves visibility.

This comes from reddit, where, well, votes determine visibility.
On GD, a bump is used to give a post visibility.
Is there anything else a vote can mean, that I’ve forgotten?

#What exactly do votes mean? What should they mean?

I hope you'll jump in, because we, as a community, we need to decide.

If you don't feel like reading my ideas, or you want to jump in before you see them, stop here. (tl;dr at end)

#Let's take a step back, and think about the purpose of the platform.

#Boards is Riot games' community platform (forum).

It has two purposes:

Promote discussion between Riot and the community.

Promote discussion amongst the community itself.

It needs to do three (related) things:

Surface content that's relevant to Rioters.

Surface content that's relevant to players.
Hide content that isn't relevant to anybody.

We know why people might vote (see top of post). Therefore, we know what votes are useful for:

Votes can be an indication of community sentiment towards a post.

If people vote based on their feelings towards a post.

Votes can be used for sorting content.

If people vote based on whether they think the post deserves visibility.

I believe votes should be an indication of community sentiment: #People should vote based on whether they agree with a post.

Why?

Some people are going to vote based on whether they agree or not. Even if that’s not what we, as a community, decide to do. If the system assumes people won't vote with their feelings, it will be abused.

An indicator of community sentiment is still useful for sorting. It just doesn’t exactly mean [upvotes -> visibility; downvotes -> hidden].

If a post receives many upvotes and few downvotes, it is probably relevant to Riot & Community.

If a post receives many downvotes, and no upvotes, it is probably not relevant.

If a post receives many votes, it is probably relevant, whether there are more or fewer downvotes than upvotes.

A post with 200 up / 250 down may be more relevant to me than one with 50 up / 0 down.

There’s something to notice here: upvotes are the best indicator of what’s relevant to me.

This suggests we should remove downvotes entirely. However, downvotes also show community sentiment. When I look at a post with 200 upvotes, it looks really popular, even if it also would have had 1000 downvotes. That post is probably still relevant to me, but Riot and I both should be able to see the community’s sentiment towards it.

One problem: This system has no way to deal with low-effort posting. The kind that, doesn’t deserve to be deleted, it just doesn’t deserve much visibility (looking at you, QQ threads). We, as a community, need that. Therefore, I present, “flagging posts for low effort.”

https://i.imgur.com/ZsMNPBm.png

On hover-over, the flag turns red. Fancy!

https://i.imgur.com/FrwiNES.png

On click, the flag stays red. Optional, but IMO a bad idea: “number of flags” counter:

https://i.imgur.com/u2iB8n3.png

When you flag a post,

The post’s visibility is reduced
Any comments you make on the post do not contribute to its visbility.
- If you want to who want to let OP know he’s not being constructive and suggest ways for him to start being constructive, but don’t want to bump the thread, this is awesome (so are current downvotes, in this respect).

There’s a side benefit of having a separate ‘flag’ function: those who repeatedly flag posts that deserve attention can have their flags be worth less, reducing trolls’ ability to kill threads.

We could also implement features like, "You can only flag one thread per 5 minutes," to prevent mass flagging.

As another added benefit, voting from the home page can stay enabled, but in order to flag you must enter the thread.

For more info, read my comment here.

tl;dr, Downvotes shouldn't count towards thread visibility. Instead, add a separate 'flag' feature for that.

#To be clear: New Downvote + Flag = Current Downvote

#Back to you, community. Thoughts?

Cheers, Hyrum Graff

P.S. If this discussion interests you, there's another similar one here.

######edited to be shorter, clearer, and prettier.

28 Comments

12talesAug 7, 20142 votes

I personally think the idea of basing visibility on votes is ridiculous, so I use chronological display and vote to express agreement/disagreement whenever I don't have the time to write out a full response.

I have no particular objections to your suggestion.

DaenAug 7, 20142 votes

I'm going to start a new branch for this, but votes on posts within a thread should probably be discussed as well.

There is definitely temptation to downvote someone else's reply to bring one's own higher or upvote a reply to one's post in order to boost one's post in the Discussion View order. Thoughts?

This might not be a problem with a higher volume of users, but it's probably still worth discussing.

Hyrum GraffAug 7, 20142 votes

I'm going to start a new branch for this, but votes on posts within a thread should probably be discussed as well.

Now, wouldn't it be nice if you could have a handy little system to link your new branch to this comment? ;)

There is definitely temptation to downvote someone else's reply to bring one's own higher or upvote a reply to one's post in order to boost one's post in the Discussion View order. Thoughts?

Yes. At a community of this size, think it's even a problem from OP to OP. For example, I was tempted to downvote Mi Rafman's post, because it's nearly identical to this one, and I'd prefer for the conversation to happen here. I didn't, but I didn't upvote him either like I normally might have.

mi ramfanAug 7, 20143 votes

I didn't know there was anything in the rules against making my own thread. If anything, more threads on the front page means more visibility for the issue, which we should both be interested in. I also didn't start linking my thread in your thread.

That being said, I think the flag function is just redundant. It doesn't do anything that report doesn't do, and it's just as abusable as the current downvote system is. It's back to square one with a new piece of pixel art cluttering the page.

DaenAug 7, 20142 votes

I didn't know there was anything in the rules against making my own thread. If anything, more threads on the front page means more visibility for the issue, which we should both be interested in. I also didn't start linking my thread in your thread.

Are you referring to "For example, I was tempted to downvote Mi Rafman's post, because it's nearly identical to this one, and I'd prefer for the conversation to happen here."?

From my understanding, this was just an example he was using to substantiate my post before: "There is definitely temptation to downvote someone else's reply to bring one's own higher or upvote a reply to one's post in order to boost one's post in the Discussion View order. " It wasn't meant to be insulting or demeaning.

Hyrum GraffAug 7, 20142 votes

Your thread -snip-

Let me back up a minute, because I think there was some implicit context that was maybe only clear to me (and maybe Daen). It goes something like this:

Everybody wants visibility for their content. We want responses. We want discussion. It's why we post.
When there's a ranking based on votes, your content is ranked relative to everyone else. If you upvote other comments or posts, it gives your post a relatively worse ranking. Therefore, there's a temptation not to do so.

That much I think is clear. Here's the part that wasn't:

I'm one of the most active posters on these boards, and I try very hard to be a model poster.

Why is this relevant?

A reader might think, "Sure there's a temptation, but that doesn't mean you have to give in to it." I was trying to make the point that this temptation exists, and strongly, even for someone who's trying to be a good forum user.
Reading over my post again, I think it comes across almost like I'm trying to say, "My post is better than his post," when I was really trying to make an admission, to prove a point to anyone (particularly rioters - @Affordance #biggestlurkerNA) who were peeking in.

I linked to this thread in your thread for 3 reasons (not in order):

I wanted more visibility.
I felt like I had already responded to the points Daen was making
I want to derail your thread or mirror content.

Your thread is about the merits of ignoring downvotes for the purposes of sorting. Mine is about splitting downvote functionality into an aesthetic (downvote) and a functional (flag) part. They're related, but not exactly the same, so I'd like to try keeping discussion in the thread that it's most relevant to.

In summary, you are right on all points, and my behavior was not up to my standards, so I apologize.

I added a link to your thread into my OP here, because you're right: more visibility is good for everyone interested in the issue. I'm also planning on going through this post and adding in links to your post where I think it's appropriate (ie, where the discussion has more relevance to your post than mine).

Flag/report redundancy; it's abusable

I think I responded to these down here.

DaenAug 7, 20141 votes

A downvote doesn't necessarily lower visibility. There was a thread on the top half of the front page of Hot in Boards Feedback for about a week that had a vote score of -10, significantly lower than everything around it. To my knowledge, a large volume of votes in both directions as well as a large volume of comments ensures that a thread stays visible.

Riot seems to be handling the visibility system pretty intelligently, though I have definitely noticed problems with the first downvote & early discouragement of threads. I guess I might be a bit of a purist, but personally I feel like just tweaking the variables should be enough to resolve visibility issues we as a community might have.

As for the flag function, I think it definitely has potential to be useful. However, it also has a couple of issues. Here are a few:

Scenario: flag a post because I disagree and want to lower visibility
How will a system that lowers their value over time be handled?
Scenario: flag a post because I want to be able to comment on it without giving the OP visibility just to spite them
How will flags be calculated & what will their effect be to players other than the user that flags a post?
Significant overlap with the report function
A limitation on mass flagging could feel like a restriction to users that want to use the feature effectively.

Hyrum GraffAug 7, 20141 votes

A downvote doesn't necessarily lower visibility. There was a thread on the top half of the front page of Hot in Boards Feedback for about a week that had a vote score of -10, significantly lower than everything around it. To my knowledge, a large volume of votes in both directions as well as a large volume of comments ensures that a thread stays visible.

If this is true, then I think we're at the stage of my analysis right before the mockups - how do we, as a community, deal with low-effort threads that may get upvotes because other people are butthurt, but don't really deserve much visibility, because there's nothing constructive in them.

Riot seems to be handling the visibility system pretty intelligently, though I have definitely noticed problems with the first downvote & early discouragement of threads. I guess I might be a bit of a purist, but personally I feel like just tweaking the variables should be enough to resolve visibility issues we as a community might have.

I think this is a separate issue - not really related to

As for the flag function, I think it definitely has potential to be useful. However, it also has potential for abuse. Here are a few such scenarios:

Scenario: flag a post because I disagree and want to lower visibility

This is an abuse of the system, and I already addressed it in my OP:

"There’s a side benefit of having a separate ‘flag’ function: those who repeatedly flag posts that deserve attention can have their flags be worth less, reducing trolls’ ability to kill threads."

How will a system that lowers their value over time be handled?

I'm not sure, exactly. I would draw inspiration from the way false reports in-game are handled. Perhaps an automated system could run along the lines of, "If a person flags a great number of posts, and they are amongst the only people

Scenario: flag a post because I want to be able to comment on it without giving the OP visibility just to spite them

How will flags be calculated & what will their effect be to players other than the user that flags a post?

Downvotes currently have two functions (show community opinion, decrease visibility). I'm making them into separate functions. So a flag would work essentially work like a downvote currently does, as far as visibility is concerned, but the total # of flags would not be visible.

^This response also helps to answer your next concern; there won't be any more overlap than there currently is between report and downvotes:

Significant overlap with the report function

The report function says, "Mods, delete this post."

The flag function says, "This post deserves to exist, but not high visibility."

I'd guess a report should auto-flag a post.

A limitation on mass flagging could feel like a restriction to users that want to use the feature effectively.

Fair 'nuff. It was just another idea of a feature that could be used to prevent abuse.

The point is, because all I'm doing is separating the "visibility" and "quality" use cases of a downvote, any and all abuse cases that can arise from flagging, already arise from downvotes.

Furthermore, because the two use cases are separate, it's much easier to identify and limit abuse.

DaenAug 7, 20142 votes

how do we, as a community, deal with low-effort threads that may get upvotes because other people are butthurt, but don't really deserve much visibility, because there's nothing constructive in them.

This might be the minority opinion, but imo if a thread gets visibility and people are discussing something that isn't breaking the rules, it has value. It might not necessarily be constructive or high-effort, but if there is a discussion on a topic that's within the guidelines I'd consider it to be valid.

I would draw inspiration from the way false reports in-game are handled. Perhaps an automated system could run along the lines of, "If a person flags a great number of posts, and they are amongst the only people

My assumption would be that false reports are handled by essentially throwing out the ones that don't put someone in the Tribunal and calculating them with some magical wizardry in the process. I am not sure this sort of system would work on the forums, as unlike the Tribunal there isn't really a concrete end result.

I'm making them into separate functions. So a flag would work essentially work like a downvote currently does, as far as visibility is concerned, but the total # of flags would not be visible. This response also helps to answer your next concern; there won't be any more overlap than there currently is between report and downvotes:

So upvotes would increase the popularity of a thread/comment and flags would decrease the popularity of a thread/comment? Would downvotes have any functional place in the system at all other than a user being able to show their opinion on a given comment?

The point is, because all I'm doing is separating the "visibility" and "quality" use cases of a downvote, any and all abuse cases that can arise from flagging, already arise from downvotes.

Is this really a necessary thing to do though? In the current system (where downvotes actually seem to boost popularity when combined with other factors) is the "correct" usage case of downvotes a problem? Specifically what problems are you trying to solve by moving the functionality of downvotes into a different system and making downvotes purely a visual representation?

Hyrum GraffAug 7, 20142 votes

I'm going to address this all together.

So upvotes would increase the popularity of a thread/comment and flags would decrease the popularity of a thread/comment? Would downvotes have any functional place in the system at all other than a user being able to show their opinion on a given comment?

Is this really a necessary thing to do though? In the current system (where downvotes actually seem to boost popularity when combined with other factors) is the "correct" usage case of downvotes a problem? Specifically what problems are you trying to solve by moving the functionality of downvotes into a different system and making downvotes purely a visual representation?

It was my original idea that (most of the time), downvotes would be purely visual. Their purpose is to inform players and rioters of the community's opinion of the post.
- There would be some exceptions, Notably, if a post gets a huge majority down (195 down / 5 up), its visibility should be reduced.
The specific problem I'm trying to solve is that Downvotes can mean different things, so can't tell what a given downvote means. As a result, we can't use them to sort effectively.
- Maybe downvotes should increase the visibility of a thread.
- Maybe downvotes shouldn't have an effect on the thread.
- Maybe downvotes should reduce the thread's visibility.

I don't know exactly how downvotes (or flags) should be used under the flag system.* I'd need to implement the flag system, then get metrics on how voting and flagging correlates with worthiness of visibility, before I know exactly how downvotes should be factored in.* The point is that stratifying the functionality allows for more precise metrics and therefore better sorting algorithms.

mi ramfanAug 7, 20141 votes

The purpose of votes has always been to flag quality content, even if you disagree with it.

People voting based on whether or not they agree with the post is what creates the "echo chamber" effect that is what many GDers despise about Reddit and the Boards beta.

If we as a community can't use the downvote the way it was meant to be used, then it should be removed from the platform. This has always been and will continue to be my stance until I see evidence that the community can be trusted with the power to silence other posters.

Hyrum GraffAug 7, 20141 votes

While it doesn't get all the way there, I think my suggestion is actually a change in the direction you're looking for.

The purpose of votes has always been to flag quality content, even if you disagree with it.

Agreed. This is one of the things I like about Boards. On GD, a post can have 3k upvotes, but if it's not being bumped, it's not going to get any visibility. That just seems silly to me.

People voting based on whether or not they agree with the post is what creates the "echo chamber" effect that is what many GDers despise about Reddit and the Boards beta.

My solution doesn't do a great job at fixing this issue, though it's possible that by flagging a post AND upvoting it, to indicate that we agree but don't think the post deserves such attention, the community could curb the "echo chamber" effect.

In perspective, though, I view this as the lesser of two evils, with the practice of bumping threads as the greater.

If we as a community can't use the downvote the way it was meant to be used, then it should be removed from the platform. This has always been and will continue to be my stance until I see evidence that the community can be trusted with the power to silence other posters.

I think it's important to keep downvotes around, so we can see what the community's opinion on a post is. However, I don't think we can use it in a "responsible" manner. This is why I'm suggesting that downvotes should have NO or very little influence on sorting - almost the equivalent of removing them.

Linna ExcelAug 7, 20141 votes

I voted other. IMO if you vote on a post either up or down, say why you did.

Hyrum GraffAug 7, 20141 votes

In an ideal world, I'd totally agree with you. But let's face it, not everybody is going to do that.

Maybe we could come up with a system to get people to do it. But I'm inclined to think that it wouldn't work. The people who would comment, comment anyway; The people who don't, would find a way around the system.

This makes a downvote essentially harmless to the post's visibility, so it's OK if people just downvote without commenting.

MajorPain9Aug 7, 20141 votes

I honestly don't think you have much of a community to make a sound judgement on how votes are going to influence a post. There isn't enough people posting here to determine how a large influx of posters will manipulate the voting system. While its an interesting discussion to have, I feel like its falling on deaf ears.

Hyrum GraffAug 7, 20141 votes

I honestly don't think you have much of a community to make a sound judgement on how votes are going to influence a post. There isn't enough people posting here to determine how a large influx of posters will manipulate the voting system.

That's a good point, although I'd contest that we can still talk about how votes should influence a post.

While its an interesting discussion to have, I feel like its falling on deaf ears.

Again, this is true. We'll need to have this discussion again when more people do migrate over.

On the other hand, though, I think it's necessary to have discussions like these while Boards is in Beta and has a fairly large team of people dedicated to it. Sorting is one of the things that people on GD don't like about "leddit 2.0," so we need to make it better in order to get people to migrate over.

And, even if nothing comes out of it, I like good discussion, so there's that :)

CommandShockwaveAug 7, 20141 votes

I'm all for voting based on whether or not visibility is deserved. Even if you don't, others may want to see that content.

Hyrum GraffAug 8, 20141 votes

What about people who disagree-vote, though?

If it's assumed that votes are for deserved visibility, then the people who downvote on a whim throw off the system.

Angry MonsterAug 8, 20141 votes

So their is alot of good posts in this thread. I do not have the time right now to read them all, but the back and forth is good to see.

I personally feel that their is another reason to down vote that should be considered. Low quality threads should be down voted. An example is the WOE is me threads, some call them dear diary threads.

I am tired of getting trolled/flame all the time. I am muting everyone and just locking my character.

We all have seen this type of thread. It is not about talking, figuring things out, or making things better. Its to complain and say I am mad so their.

Their are other types of low quality threads but I feel this type we can mostly agree on.

Thoughts?

Hyrum GraffAug 8, 20141 votes

With the flag system, you'd flag those kinds of threads (and maybe downvote, too, depending on whether you agreed with them or not).

Angry MonsterAug 8, 20141 votes

A upvote/downvote can mean... I (dis)agree with a post. This comes from GD, where the only time downvotes play a role in visibility is if they lock the thread. I (don't) think a post deserves visibility. This comes from reddit, where, well, votes determine visibility. On GD, a bump is used to give a post visibility. Is there anything else a vote can mean, that I’ve forgotten?

I must apologize and say I did a quick skim of the topic. Which i had such a short post. I saw your listed reasons and was speaking directly to that part of the post. I just feel that what i posted should be a valid reason to down vote also.

And system changes at this point would be good. At least Reddit shows total up and down(a better system though flawed).

The real question is what kind of boards are really wanted by riot and the community. Riot has a biiger say obviously but the problem with the community is that their are like 5 different preferences. From free for all to controlled. The community regulating it self has been time proven to be a failure(with others companies also).

Til the community can come with a desired goal of the forums riot will not be able to meet us(players) anywhere.

PryotraAug 12, 20141 votes

So basically a "Sage" button?

Hmm..... I think limiting this with cooldowns is a bad idea, and also that it also has too much power with this iteration. Maybe if it were toned down ALOT, to the point were a single person or small group of people spamming it would have little impact, there might be potential. But as it stands the downvote is simply too easy to use to have the current weight it has attached to it, and if the flag does what I think it does, it has too much power to be spammed, and simply isn't effective at self moderation of the community.

Why? Simply put, if it needs a timer or limiter, chances are it's not healthy for a forum. Reason being, this means that after a certain point the forum can no longer moderate itself. Give this board even 1/10 of GD and this idea will crumple alongside the current system. Now you see why this cannot work. The hope is that one day this board will be naturally popular enough that GD can be evicted, without the fear that the response will be an angry mob outside Riot HQ. This means that the board must be useable with less people, but also can naturally scale with population without becoming unwieldy or, well, GD.

I hope that all makes sense, because I am going to give you some food for thought. Let the solution be elegant in it's simplicity, without being ineffective or broken. Reducing the voting weight below the activity per poster ratio (essentially make average posts per poster > up votes over down votes in terms of weight when determining visibility) is the solution I see, but I wonder what you would come up with. I could see a scenario where a "sage" button could fulfill this, but if you have to give it direct manipulation of visibility with a single/couple mouse clicks, I don't think that it's a good idea. Like wise, a system that is too hard or too unwieldy to use in terms of self moderation, thinking cooldowns here, is essentially useless, unless the effort made is overpowered to the point of it being abusable and broken.

Think about the Homer Simpson raid, if you were around GD for that. If not, imagine 1 person spamming both threads and comments with embedded images that were disturbing and large. Your solution not only has to minimize the damage of this, it also has to be ineffective at single handedly stifling a thread that is of good conversation material even though it is not popular with the sheeple. And it needs to be able to work at both the current Boards pace, and at GD's pace.

Now I hope you are starting to grasp the problems that these Boards are faced with tackling. It is by no means easy, but that isn't why Riot chose this path. They chose it because it was a better option to start from scratch than attempt to repair vbulletin and GD's community. Time to start thinking with portals!

Hyrum GraffAug 12, 20141 votes

Your concerns

The simplest way of describing what I propose, which I'm not sure that I did effectively in my OP, is splitting the function of a downvote into two parts. One part is ONLY cosmetic. The other part is ONLY functional.

To start, flagging a post would do the exact same thing for visibility as what downvoting does right now. Therefore, any any issues that are present with flagging, are also present with downvoting. At the same time, any solution that can be applied to downvotes right now, can also be applied to flagging (yours included).

The advantage of this system, and why my OP isn't exactly clear, is that, as we learn how people use flags and downvotes, we can adjust our algorithms to use both. Maybe a downvote actually usually means, "people care about this issue," so it deserves more visibility. We don't know yet, though, and we won't know unless we try.

No matter how downvotes and flags come to be used, though, the original point here stands: Any solution that works for downvotes, will also work for flagging. Flagging is an addition, not a replacement, to other sorting solutions, with the added benefit of "more data to work with for the sorting algorithms."

Your suggestion

I think that's a really good idea. It probably won't solve everything on its own, but it might have that potential when combined with other solutions.

PryotraAug 13, 20141 votes

So, basically move the real downvote accross the page, but leave the old one to fool GD'ers? Oh, and give it a cooldown?

Not really effective, seeing as your security comes from a weird combination of the ignorance of the power levels and the good will to not abuse it when you figure out what it does. Not to mention essentially cuts us off from self moderation if you apply a cooldown to it.

I honestly beleive that a cooldown will only hurt this forum, considering the population is too small for it to be a usable feature now, and at GD speeds it becomes irrelevant.

Hyrum GraffAug 13, 20141 votes

So, basically move the real downvote accross the page, but leave the old one to fool GD'ers?

Well, that depends on what you think "the real downvote" is. The flag is for self-moderation; the downvote, as I said in my OP, is to express disagreement or disapproval. Your opinion, as it were. If you disagree, answer me this: If a downvote's primary feature is moderation, why is the downvote counter visible? It's not as if the visibility has anything to do with closing the thread. I contest that the downvote is visible so players can quickly ascertain the community's opinion of that post. I'm proposing that we start thinking about that as the downvote's only purpose.

Oh, and give it a cooldown? Not really effective.

Apologies if this was not clear: A cooldown is an example to illustrate a point; That when you create a separate tool for self-moderation, you can introduce regulatory solutions that would not be possible, otherwise.

Here's another example of something we could implement:

If Player X consistently flags player Y's threads,

And Player X doesn't flag anybody else's threads,
And other players don't consistently flag Player Y's threads,

Then, let player X's flags carry less weight than other players' flags.

We can't do this with the downvote,* because it's possible players X and Y just disagree about, well, everything. But when you split the functionality, it's much more clear that player X is just trying to stifle player Y's ability to post.

*This specific case is so black-and-white that we could probably do it with downvotes, but there are other cases that are much less clear-cut; I just wanted to pick one that I would not have to argue, "Is it OK to do this?"

PryotraAug 13, 20141 votes

I still don't feel that this is a good idea, as it doesn't address the ease of abuse issue. Fact of the matter is, if it only requires you 1 click, it can't have too much power given to it. Why? Because anyone can abuse it as easily as the down vote button.

While tribunal logic might work in game, the forums are different. What if 1 person is "flagging" a single poster, because that poster is actually terrible. But, thanks to his actions, no one ever sees it, making that one person the only person who even bothers to flag it. Should we really reduce his ability to keep at it simply because it is effective? If your "black-and-white" example is flawed under your own proposal, I think we can agree that this idea still needs work.

At the end of it all, the system needs to be intuitive, effective when used correctly, and ineffective when incorrectly used. This Idea fails all 3 points. To an average user, who doesn't understand all these little nuances, how could they know the difference between flagging and reporting? Alot of boards use one or the other, and both usually fulfill the same purpose. If used correctly, it's no better than the current system at best, and at worst almost completely ineffective. Reason being, most people will not understand the nuances, and as a result will not even bother if they are trying to be part of the community self moderation as they will think that like most other boards, that is the job of down-votes. And when incorrectly used, you simply made no difference from how CB used to handle voting. Oh no, they have to actually walk into the thread, that is something they used to have to do anyways. The power is still there, the ease of use is still there (1 click OP), in the end all you did was highlight another avenue to sabotage a thread.

I'm sorry you don't quite see the point I was trying to make a couple posts back, but let me try to clarify it one last time. This system that you have is simply to convoluted to be a good solution. It needs to be simple, and easily inject-able so the average person doesn't need to bother with the nitty gritty (oh look, another reddit failing point, I wonder why people hate it so?). At the same time, it still needs to be effective, whilst if abused would have minimal results. The problem with down-votes currently is that they are too powerful, and that 1 can hide a really good point of view if abused. Why are you transferring the power to a different button when the problem of "That's too powerful" is never addressed?

A version of this idea that might work is a "sage" button where when used make your actions in said thread not bump it upwards in visibility. That is simple, easy to figure out, and hardly abusable. It would allow you to post on something to tell the OP WHY they are wrong/bad at posting, while not increasing visibility to the thread. If abused, it ignores all your actions in the thread when calculating visibility, therefore opting you out of downvote moderation.