Is the vote button an agree button?
This is specifically about voting on comments, and not articles. I think voting for topics is clear and intuitive.
I've noticed that, while reading users' comments on topics, I have a tendency to think "This is right, so I will vote it up," or "I agree with this, so I will vote it up." I'm not sure I should be doing this, or rather, I'm not sure that's the best use of my ability to vote on comments. I always worry that sites I frequent will morph into echo chambers, and I want to avoid that for this site. I want to encourage expressing alternate viewpoints, because exposure to alternate views helps me grow a human. The vote button is a low-effort means of accomplishing that, and I intend to use it as such.
I think the vote button should be used on comments that enhance the discussion, and help engage people, and not necessarily only on comments that make me feel happy, good or righteous. So, lately, I've been trying to explicitly vote up comments which have replies, especially ones which have several replies, but aren't voted as highly as their children or peers. If someone's comment can engage several people to reply and contribute positively to a conversation, then that comment is worthy of being seen and so I vote it up. I do this regardless of whether or not I agree with the substance of the message.
I've noticed a trend where there will be a low-voted comment with many replies. These aren't trolling comments, because if they were, then they would be removed. These are comments which are engaging people and furthering the conversation, but it seems like the community doesn't value these comments due to their low vote count. This leads me to suspect that the number of votes on a comment might be merely a tally of the number of people who agreed with it.
So, I'm curious. Do you vote on comments?
How do you decide to vote on a comment?
How should we collectively be using the vote for comments?
(As an aside, I also wonder how the psychology of reading comments would change if vote tallies on comments were hidden.)
I definitely spend time reading comments and often times updoot comments that I think don't align perfectly with my own point of view but still add to the discussion. If it's well-thought, considered, nuanced, and expands the aperture of the conversation, I try to sprinkle my updoot dust.
I'm just as guilty of quickly dropping a vote on something that I strongly agree with. And I certainly see the comments that have next to no votes as a ... data point? Either they're new-ish, or folks are generally not feeling an emotional reason to give it a vote.
That being said, activity here is still quite small and relatively light. I try to not give too much attention to the numbers overall, and simply try to engage with the conversation where it's a topic that piques my curiosity.
One indicator that this behavior pattern is pretty common here (as on other social media sites) are the comment chains where every other comment with one view down a chain will get votes, the comments in between that are facilitating the exchange don't get nearly as many.
The use of Exemplary labels takes the pattern to another level.
I try to vote early, vote often and vote in ways that correct what I see as imbalances in existing voting. At the same time, some contributions are simply more important than others, irrespective of length/effort.
Sometimes you’ll see chains like that but both views (or, rarely, only the unpopular one) have the exemplary label.
Here's something ironic: only people who agree with you will upvote your comment.
Yes, I have written enough comments that I put a lot of time and thought into only to get one or two votes while the flippant nitpick response gets many more votes, enough to not really see the number as anything beyond making me feel good about using a website where x number of people were open to my ideas. It's not necessarily that I'm glad to see people agree with me in a way that affirms my position, but rather in a way that affirms the discourse.
I treat it like "This deserves positive attention"
Some people have articulate, contributive comments that I think negatively impact discussion or push a distasteful point and I don't vote for them. Some people have funny but off topic comments and I vote for them.
I am not engaging with the vote system to cosplay as some arbiter of objective conversational quality, I use it to give support to things I think are neat or useful or interesting within my own set of biases. A vote for something with no election winners and no downvoting is functionally just a "Like" and I treat it that way. A symbol of generic positive support.
People do what they want, but I think the most important use is letting the author know that their comment was appreciated.
I'm of the opinion that the displayed vote should be capped, maybe at 10 or so. If you got 10 votes you won. Too many votes is discouraging for people who disagree.
Yeah, the majority of my votes are more acknowledgements that I've read the comment rather than a judgement of the worth of its content, unless there is something truly objectionable in it. I also tend to upvote most comments I read, just so that it's easier for me to tell which I have read already, if I come back to the topic later.
When something is truly worthwhile, and I think it deserves some praise and more attention, that's what I use Exemplary for.
Oh man, now I feel really bad about the comments I've made that have just one vote on them. :P
I kind of do the same thing, but only when it comes to replies, though I've made a decision to stop it when it basically amounts to an "I agree" or the rare bad take on my stance. I try to vote for them even when I disagree but I am probably petty more times than I'd care to admit.
LOL, yeah, I always feel a bit bummed when my comments only get one vote, but it's better than none! :P
And hey, focus on the positives, I'm certain I've given you plenty of Exemplaries over the years too. :)
❤️ :)
At least we now know the truth...that no one liked our comments, @cfabbro just happened to browse past our comments...
Maybe this is a cope, but it's always possible that nobody else read your comment.
Those aren't mutually exclusive. Often times I enjoyed the comment I read and voted on too. :P
I vote for comments that contribute to meaningful discussions. Sometimes it’s things I agree with. Sometimes it’s things I disagree with.
I’ll also exemplary comments I disagree with, so long as they are an exceptional comment otherwise.
It could be a short comment, it could be a long one. It could be well cited, it could be purely anecdotal but well written.
I’ll also upvote funny jokes and tag them as joke, but only on occasion.
I personally tend to vote for comments along the following lines:
They add something new and well-articulated to the discussion. Viewpoints, respectful counterpoints, supplementary information, etc. Likewise, relevant personal stories or anecdotes that are thoughtfully written.
They foster new and productive discussions. These might be replies that allow for further exploration of the topic or ideas, include insightful questions, etc.
They present a perspective that I feel is well presented but doesn't seem to be well represented in the discussion. Vote for visibility, I suppose.
I avoid voting on a comment that I feel is rude, judgemental, or unnecessarily brash, even if it is insightful or well articulated.
That's my personal view, at any rate. I suspect a great many people vote based on whether they agree or not. This isn't wrong I don't think, but I do wish I would see fewer highly voted comments verging on rudeness of unfair judgment. I suppose I think that one should consider reasons to upvote and reasons to not upvote and take the balance of them.
I vote for two reasons typically.
A comment says what I would have said, so instead of commenting I leave a vote to indicate that. You could see this as voting out of agreement, I suppose. I don't really think this is bad though.
A comment positively contributes to a discussion. This happens often when I am in a back and forth, often with someone I disagree with. If they are engaging in good faith even if I disagree I typically will leave a vote on their comment as a super minor "thanks" for participating. This also happens when its a conversation I'm not participating in but I think someone is being a good sport or raising good points, even if I disagree.
Other than that, I don't really see a need to vote. Off topic, but I typically vote for any post I click on. Sometimes I just vote for everything on the front page, a habit I formed when this place was much less populated and I thought it helped to show some life.
EDIT: I just noticed your question at the end, about how the site psychology would change if vote counts were hidden. That experiment was actually run, a few years ago. You can see the discussion there before it went into effect, and also the postmortem after the experiment ended to get a sense of what users thought about it. My feeling at the time, and still now, is that without visible votes it really felt like I was shouting into the void here. Unless I got a response, it was impossible to know if anyone had even read my comment, and I certainly don't expect a response from every person reading. Still, it's nice to know! I think without an aggregate vote tracker a la Reddit's karma, the worst effects of vote manipulation/pandering to the masses is mitigated here. I personally don't give a shit about how many votes my comments get here relative to the comments I'm responding to, and I don't know why anyone would if it doesn't matter in the long run. Their main benefit is just knowing someone out there has read what I've written.
You can get rid of the red number in your notifications by clicking "mark all as read" without having to vote, if you don't want to.
Yeah fair enough. The Tildes documentation is pretty thorough but in my experience most people learn about these things either by seeing others mention them, or by being explicitly told when it comes up. Works well enough imo as the core functionality of the site doesn’t depend on any of those. I hardly use labels, for example, and I think I use this site pretty well.
The demographics here skew progressive. A comment which reflects a progressive viewpoint will receive more votes than an equivalent liberal or conservative comment.
It's frustrating, especially when it devolves into progressive insults like "bootlicking" being allowed and highly upvoted.
If you see anyone calling another user a "bootlicker" or their comments "bootlicking" here on Tildes I would highly encourage you to report it using the Malice label. I still read a significant amount of the comments posted to Tildes, and can't remember ever having seen a comment like that which didn't eventually get removed by @Deimos... and in many cases the user who made such comments was also banned, especially if that sort of behavior was recurring. So I don't know where you're getting the idea that something like that is "allowed" here, because that sort of behavior falls squarely under the "don't act like an asshole" rule, IMO.
I appreciate that, but my example wasn't hypothetical.
I reported it, but only my "If you're going to call me a bootlicker there's no point in talking to you" reply was removed.
I have to concur here, unfortunately. My experience reporting comments I found problematic here was that I was privately told to stop.
For all the suggestions otherwise, Tildes is nevertheless, ultimately, a space largely focused on a particular demographic, and is largely not welcoming of other perspectives. That's alright, but it's unfortunate that there seems to be an insistence otherwise.
Though, too often of late, claims of "my conservative view point" (in general and not necessarily here) seem to be a fig leaf for forms of hate.
As an American, I miss John McCaine so much. He was perhaps the most decent well-known person in the GOP in the federal government. He was a conservative who I could disagree with and still respect most of the time. This is difficult for me to say about any prominent GOP official these days.
Me too. And it's insane how someone I loathed like Bush would now be a welcome source of reason.
But I also see polarization from the left, and an attack moderation and the value of listening to and working to understand both sides.
In retrospect, I think both Trump and Bernie were amplified by Russian troll farms far more than we ever suspected.
I mean he was pushing back against his base back when he was running for president. This clip I think exemplifies his disappointment in what the Republican became.
Oh there are definitely people here like yourself who do.
Obviously that's an important qualifier.
The problem these days, however, is an increasing attitude from progressives that hate and racism can only be defined in progressive terms. It amounts to having one's cake and eating it too: "I don't want an echo chamber, I just want a good discussion [where everyone agrees with these core progressive values]."
I'm not saying that's you or anything, and again of course no one wants to be voting for hateful or racist crap. But if one is just using progressive definitions of what's hateful and racist then one is simply amplifying a progressive echo chamber. If someone wants to encourage a wider discussion then the acceptable core values also have to be wider.
Yeah, I grew up in a conservative but not crazy household and had the benefit of my favourite professors being communists. Learning from and loving good people who care in different ways is incredibly helpful later in life.
I've settled on being something of a classical liberal who is happy with others living their own life but doesn't feel we have a moral obligation to help them do so. That leaves me on the outs with both conservatives as well as progressives, so I generally just keep my head down everywhere these days.
How’d that Dharma and Greg pairing happen?!
"This is my dog, Stinky and Stinky's dog Nunzio."
Loved that show!