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Comment on You earned some more dislikes

As someone who down voted your comment, allow me to explain both why I think you are wrong and why I wasn’t going to waste time replying.

Firstly, the problem with not showing down votes is that the posts below would look the same

10k 🔺 100k 🔻 10k 🔺 0🔻

But we obviously know that 100k down votes is considerably worse than 0.

And secondly, why I didn’t comment? You didn’t ask a question, you haven’t haven’t said why you think your version is better to drive the conversation forward. You just made a comment. I disagree with it so I down voted it. if someone agrees, they up vote. Over time the ratio will show what the general opinion is.

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irate944@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I have more respect for you for explaining and taking the time to reply. I have even upvoted your comment, despite disagreeing with it.

For me, upvotes and downvotes should not be used as agree/disagree buttons. Instead, they should be about “brings interesting points to the table"/"this comment adds nothing”.

But that’s not how the majority of people view them. Realizing that, that’s why I don’t believe this system works, as it dicentivizes discussions and - in my opinion - helps creating echo chambers.

A good example of a forum that uses only upvotes is Tildes. You need an invite to participate, but you can lurk and see what people do over there. Popular opinions still get to the top and get highlighted (resolving the issue of most helpful comments appearing first), and less popular opinions still appear down below. But here’s the thing: in my experience in that forum, those less popular opinions are engaged with, far more than what I see in Reddit, piefed or lemmy. Why? Because you can’t downvote them. There’s no button for that. If you want to express disagreement, you actually have to do that.

Because otherwise, using my comment as example: - what did people disagree with? 1. The suggestion that the downvote button shouldn’t exist? 2. The suggestion that neither of them should exist? 3. Me calling 4chan community trash? 4. All of the above?

No discussion is added, no new insights appear, nothing. Without your comment, this comment that I’m writing now wouldn’t exist either.

Thus my point, we are discussing and bringing new ideas to the table.

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x00z@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

10k 🔺 100k 🔻
10k 🔺 0🔻

You forgot that it often looks like:

-90k🔻

In some cases I might prefer the 10k/-100k one to be honest.

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- cravl@slrpnk.net ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yes, but then these…
  
  15k🔺 16k🔻 81 🔺1,096🔻
  
  …both sum to -1k🔻, when the ratios are wildly different. If you really wanted to change the system, I would submit for consideration total votes and down:up ratio %:
  
  31k 🔥 48% ⚖️ 1.2k 🔥 0% ⚖️
  
  In fact, you could easily do that at the client level if you wanted. I’d try it out for sure, I know I’ve seen it elsewhere.
  
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  - x00z@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    -1k looks awful
    
    but +15k/-16k makes it look pretty neutral.
    
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