I’m very curious about the reasoning different people use when deciding to downvote a post or comment. Often, when something gets “heavily” downvoted, the OP will ask some variation of “why the downvotes?”. This is sometimes answered with sincere criticism, but sometimes is received even more poorly than the original offending post.
Do you downvote people who ask “why the downvotes?”? What informs the decision?
It’s actually since I created this account that I really started thinking about the role of downvoting in social media. I honestly do not miss it at all, I think turning them off makes the internet better. I recognize this is not true for everyone, and I think people who find downvotes useful deserve to have useful tools. But I do like that I have the option of not thinking about them.
Yeah, having my account on blahaj has been great not seeing downvotes and not being able to. It honestly has made me have discourse more often with others. It would be nice if people used the upvote/downvote system for what its actual purpose is but unfortunately it is just used to express being mad at the person pretty often over a petty disagreement. I’m fully guilty of it myself so just having the option gone has been only beneficial for my needs
The difference between the rules for downvotes and how they’re actually used by users is one of the things that brought this to mind. Some forums specifically forbid complaining about downvotes, but even in fora where such complaints aren’t specifically against the rules, they’re still generally frowned upon, and that is expressed in downvotes. It’s sort of like community rule enforcement: if enough people think a rule should be followed, they’ll make their opinion known, even if it’s not one of the written rules.
why not turn off voting altogether?
oh right, because that would take away the incentive for people to use it…