11
votes
A pilot study conducted on r/politics on Reddit found that removing downvote buttons did not offer substantial benefits
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Do Downvote Buttons Cause Unruly Online Behavior??
- Authors
- J. Nathan Matias
- Word count
- 1881 words
It's important to note that this is hiding the button for those viewing the custom css in /r/politics, not actually removing the ability to downvote entirely.
This study has two major, self admitted problems. First, the downvote button is actually hid from less than half of people. Between people who use mobile, which was 55%, and people who block r/politics' css, which was not mentioned, they are likely affecting less than 40% of the voting group. Secondly, they say themselves that they do not have enough data to reliably come to a conclusion on anything.
More importantly, the study did not change or attempt to change the culture of the environment around the comments themselves. We are.
If they removed the downvote for the entirety of the study, they might have gotten better effects. A culture takes time to change, and randomly hiding downvotes just doesn't do it.
I totally agree. On reflection, I think I was speaking to the "where is my down vote button" people about the cultural differences we're aiming for here at ~ .
This came up in another thread here asking for “disagree button.” When I first starting using Reddit, I found the downvote really frustrating. I feel like a downvote should require a comment to explain why, to support the “genuine conversation” that Reddit purports to have as its goal. I know my idea has plenty of issues, but it was my first thought.
If you're going to make that a requirement, you might as well get rid of the downvote altogether, the way ~ does. If you see a comment that you disagree with, you can either voice your disagreement in a reply (supporting genuine conversation) or just ignore it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think any sort of downvote/flag/negative-feedback option will end up being used as a "disagree" button regardless of the site's etiquette or community rules, so it's probably best not to have them in the first place.
That's one of the motivations for the "comment tags" mechanic (which is currently disabled until I get a chance to make some changes): https://docs.tildes.net/mechanics#comment-tags
I think moderating that would be tough. If there were a text entry requirement to downvote I could see a lot of people just putting "downvote." as their reply. I think you touched on something important there though in saying that you found the downvote frustrating. This is exactly why we don't need one here, it creates a hostile debate environment. I saw a thread yesterday where one commenter was getting 20-30 votes and the other 2-3. It was clear who had the most support but if it were reddit, the lower score commenter would probably have negative karma for those posts and thus would have that same sense of frustration you had. It's like a political or academic debate, you don't have to (and shouldn't) boo the speaker you disagree with, you stay silent after they speak and cheer louder when someone you agree with speaks.
I completely agree with this, and just to be clear, I don’t want a downvote feature on Tildes.
I just joined this community and I’m personally very appreciative that there is no downvote feature. Speaking from a purely arts/design perspective, I can’t help but think how the down arrow icon, as a symbol, has connotations attached to it that many users don’t consider. Each person to some degree has some preconceived and subjective idea of its meaning in a given context, that may or may not align with the stated or intended use. Perhaps the interpretation of a symbol can even depend on a person’s given mood, even when logically they know well it’s intended use.
I also can’t help but think how an interpretation of an icon’s symbol can also be affected by the use of other frequently used sites or media, which might employ (somewhat) similar symbols for very different purposes. This can muddy the waters.
Arrows, thumbs, trophies, dots, etc., can all provide a similar message when posed as a binary (e.g., voting up/down, rating up/down approve/disapprove, like/dislike, agree/disagree). When you put all of the items in the right column together you get: down, disapprove, dislike, disagree. Each of these can and often are, viewed as negative regardless of the designed intent, and when attached to someone’s personal idea or opinion, can unintentionally anger or offend regardless of the design purpose. Voting upward, only for those ideas which you support or view as additive to a balanced view, is less binary and perhaps even a bit more democratic in nature (my artsy interpretation for what it’s worth)?
It’s hard to be personally offended at a lack of upvotes, rather people seem to perhaps internalize and identify more with the social pressure of making a recognized contribution, hopefully to share and to expand the view, rather than to earn popularity or upvotes.
[Apologies for spelling and grammar, the autocorrect I usually rely on doesn’t seem to work here and I have these “cute” little Gremlins in my brain from MS that cause communication malfunctions ;)]