Downvotes / Hiding Survey

@shutter  
That wouldn’t be a good idea, since many people use Site or public filters.  
The way Hiding was/ and will likely still work, was adding them to an unseen filter attached to each account. You could search for my:hidden, or flip an option in the profile that allowed you to see hidden images in case you his one by mistake or something. But it wouldn’t affect the current filter system.
 
The update just added that function and included a button on images that did it faster then going to your personal filter and typing id:1234 into the complex field.
 
Especially since anyone hiding images over a long period of time would soon have a very long list in their complex field.
 
@Sufficienttosay  

 
I’m sorry, your comment confuses me. Why would the hide option affect more than that single image?
 
Yes, you can hide a single tag or combination of them if you know 100% that you wish to see none of that content. Like rape, or anthro.
 
But hiding single images wouldn’t cause the problem of accidentally hiding something you would like to see from hiding a tag.
 
Could you elaborate why hiding images one by one as well as by tags you’re certain you dislike is an issue?

This will be the last post I make here unless someone replies to me, and I will then reply simply out of courtesy. I might reiterate some points I said before, but here we go, another wall from everyone’s favourite autistic bastard
 
Before we begin I would like to clarify, while I’m against removing downvotes, I also don’t get the “Erh me GERD the staff is tyrannical Nazis” stuff either. I can get where they’re coming from, but I also think it’s going a bit far. I find, when it comes to this, the moderators are more or less either inexperienced or incompetent about running an art site. Their heavy-handed focus on positivity is proof of this, while it’s not Tumblr-SJW hug-box bad, it’s not a healthy mindset on art and it could escalate to it if not watched. It’s a very “think of the children plz” mindset. Now onto the meat of things.
 
I don’t think that this should’ve been something focused on at all, considering this was over a year in thinking is kind of telling on the priorities. As I said in my previous post I believe in order to see this community properly thrive as an art community we need to shine more light on the behaviour of people when they see comments they disagree with, as I see a lot of people go on about how “comments are more helpful than downvotes” while this is true, you need to look at the reactions given to those who do comment negatively, whether it be a 30-long review, a drunken ramble, or just a short “wtf is this?” It all ends the same way, with fans of the artist, image or whatever have you, jumping on them and pretty much starting a witch-hunt. You cannot expect people to comment when they dislike or disagree with things when the reaction is this severe and utterly childish. I’ve talked to a multitude of users, usually in IMS systems like Discord, Skype, Google Hangouts, etc. Most of which agree that they would comment on images rather than downvoting if the reaction to negative comments wasn’t so toxic. Which I agree with, say anything negative and it’s a given at least one user will do something and from what I’ve seen, the moderators rarely do jack shit, usually calling out the original commenter or telling them to “stop” when all they did was give their opinion and then try to defend it from childish backlash.
 
That I believe is far more important than worrying about what’s essentially a dislike button hurting an artist’s feelings. I’ve been doing artwork for years now and I’ve got something to tell ya’ll, if you can’t handle your score on an image going down a number, or someone posting a mean comment on your image, you shouldn’t be making art. The art world is cold and unforgiving, as it should be. It is not a place where you’ll be coddled and protected from negativity, it’s a world in which you’re told to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and try again whenever things go downhill. Nobody in the art world cares about your precious fee-fees, they care about one thing and one thing only, the art. How you executed lines, colour, composition, themes and subjects will be taken with a fine-tooth comb and any shortcomings will be acknowledged. This is fine as it allows for improvement, things like “but muh style” and “but muh expression” dampens this and makes it more “friendly.” While it is true that art has subjectivity to it, there is also objectivity to what looks good or not, most of this isn’t necessarily a problem on this site (outside of maybe OC design) as most objectivity in art relates to how our eyes and more importantly our brains view colours. I made a few quick examples to help illustrate my point. So to argue that art is purely subjective is faulty as there are things that are objective to it.
 
Onto the downvoting. You guys failed from the start with your intentions of this. “The original intent of downvotes is primarily to filter out low-quality shitposts, not just as an “I don’t like this for whatever reason at all” button as many seem to think it is or should be.” It should be and it kind of makes you into hypocrites. Someone doesn’t like a certain fetish? “ER ME GERD JUST FILTER THE TAG!” Someone doesn’t like shitposts? “Well that’s what downvotes are for, not expressing your opinion.” Nevermind the fact that you could easily just… y’know, filter the “Shitpost”/“OP is a duck”/“OP is trying to start shit”/etc tags.
 
You cannot simply expect to introduce downvoting to a site and then expect people not to use it the way it’s been used since its inception. Downvotes have almost always been an “I personally dislike this” button, be it through YouTube dislikes or even Reddit downvoting for the most part (though certain subreddits make it clear to only downvote comments unhelpful to the discussion, but Reddit’s system is far different than Derpis, which uses more of a YouTube-style approach.) Imagine if Google came out and told people “You cannot use the dislike button to express your dislike of the video, it is to only be used on low-quality or shitpost videos!” That’d be fucking madness. But back to Derpi, the “intended use” of downvotes is still flawed because of people’s reactions to negative comments, to put it simply, downvoting an image is easier than writing out why you don’t like it, because a shitshow will usually ensue if you do that. No matter how kind or blunt you are, it causes drama in the comments. Again. That should be something you focus on as a site staff.
 
Finally, I don’t want to hear any “Oh but you don’t know how to run a site!”/“You don’t know how hard being a mod is!” Because I have been an admin/owner on many sites and forums over the years, some with thousands of members on it and I have never and I mean never seen a staff team this, for lack of a better word, broken. I don’t blame the staff for this as much as I blame it on the foundation of the site and the creator’s ignorance on the topic of art. Because it’s a lot like humour, when you see art it makes you happy and you like it because it’s good. But what you don’t realize is how much climbing, through fire and ice that the artist had to do to get to that point. They had to learn to accept negativity, maybe even embrace it, in order to improve and create that fantastic piece of art that is put on the site, when they got criticism they got it, no matter how cold or cruel it was, they got “downvoted” through whatever means. They weren’t surrounded in a bubble of positivity. And that (and a bit of practice) is why they improved.
 
Could you imagine for a moment, if the greats like Vincent Van Gogh or Michelangelo Simoni weren’t ever criticized? If they didn’t live in the time they did (in which art quality was heavily criticized, to a point that would be considered cruel now.) I highly doubt that Starry Night, Irises, David or The Last Judgement would’ve ever been made. Because they would’ve never been scrutinized and criticized for their early works, and thus wouldn’t of improved.

I think the “cite reason for downvote” requirement is a very good idea.  
If someone’s so convinced of an image’s quality (or rather, lack thereof) that they decide to downvote it, they ought to be able to speak about it too.

@DanTheMan  
Then the same logic should be applied for upvotes, which wouldn’t be practical.

I dunno if this has been said already (I really do not feel like reading through 33 pages of comments.)
 
But I feel like removing downvotes takes away the right to dislike something.

@Eeveeinheat  
Yeah, but downvotes have a larger potential to ‘do damage’ to the image and its uploader, so they should be used much more responsibly.
 
Nobody ever asks for the reason why you like their artwork (they’re just glad that you do); but they will sure as hay come asking for the reason for your downvote (understandably enough).
 
I, for one, would be happy to follow up a downvote with a zesty explanation.

A third option to consider:
 

@DanTheMan  
Were you attempting to reply to someone else?

@Klavinova  
Not all alternate accounts are used to abuse things, some people use multiple accounts to keep faves of fetishes away.

@Mike  
Apologies. It’s fixed now.

@LightningBolt  
Aren’t filters made for that?

@DanTheMan  
No problem~

@Klavinova  
No, they use an alternate account so when people go Googling their screenname they don’t see what fetish/porn pics they’ve faved.
 
To be fair, it’s something I’ve considered for a while myself.

@Dusk Ealain  
Safe search

@Dusk Ealain
 
Unless I overlooked it I don’t think anywhere in that you addressed the issue of deliberate duplicate downvotes. Nobody is actually trying to deny people their ability to like or dislike anything and vote accordingly. That interestingly enough would really hurt fee fees.
 
They aren’t even directly entertaining downvote removal (which was already tried briefly with great controversy) they’re just surveying users’ thoughts on the matter. This whole “you shouldn’t take away downvotes” thing is almost becoming a misplaced plea because that’s quite unlikely to happen by all I can see.

@ArkyNoid  
Deliberate duplicate downvotes are already against the rules as they should be. I’m discussing the removal of downvotes as that was the original idea (which was put into action for like… two hours) and one still included in the survey. As well as the post you’re replying to trying to bring light to how… unimportant, this whole discussion was, to begin with when the site and community as a whole already have bigger problems to address before one like this should’ve even been conceived as something to solve.

@Klavinova  

 
I don’t think that is possible nor reasonable here.  
I know people here who use multiple accounts for legitimate purposes. Such as organizing, having one account for art uploads and another for interacting with the community. There are also those who wish to just “start over” fresh, I had a friend here who had some anxiety issues who went through 4 accounts before finally leaving for good. Just as long as you declare that you are the same user and not go around sockpuppeting, I think you should be fine.

@Dusk Ealain  
First thing asked in this thread was about that and the response was it’s not likely, the survey is just asking what people think about the idea.  
And from how very few have actully said in the thread it should be removes(you can count them on one hand I believe) and with most being people saying not to remove(ignoring how it was said to be unlikely now) it or giving ideas for ways to implement it differently, the removal of downvotes is basically off the table.

@Prof.NightJack  
I’m well aware, my post goes into more than just not removing downvotes, it also tackles how silly the fact the staff chose downvotes as the thing to worry about where there are already issues to address in the community beforehand and the reasons why negativity is good for artistic growth.

@Dusk Ealain  
So addressing this one issue is wrong, they have to address all others first?  
They made a mistake, they admit it, your comment is kind of moot when it’’s just pointing out how they are wrong AFTER they admitted it, that more like kicking them when they are down.

@Dusk Ealain  
Priorities for staff are mostly judged on how much of their time is involved in a particular issue; I remember the guidelines behind rule #5 were updated because it felt like half of the things we were discussing were whether or not something in the gray area violated the rule. The only thing more important than that is if something breaks the site.
 
So when the downvotes were removed, it was because they felt the problem had been going on for too long and was entirely out of hand. But then, of course, there was enough backlash that it essentially “broke the site,” so this is now priority #1 for dev work given the raised awareness surrounding it, and the chance for useful feedback.

Here’s my quick opinion, downvotes are a nessesary evil
 
Kind of like how nuclear weapons are dangerous but they keep us safe from others that have them
 
But in this instance, yes it can be abused but it’s also very constructive for some people(those on this site who can handle criticism and don’t just nuke everything they’ve made)
 
Personally I think you should be able to hide the artist, for those really terrible images that are intentionally made to be bad(like those on the last page of the top scoring) I think hiding posts should be an option as well but keep the downvoting system
 
Thanks for reading-to fat

@Background Pony #3828  
I can’t tell you how refreshing it is for a random background pony to join the conversation this late in the game and have a rational, well-thought out response. Thank you, too!

@Dusk Ealain
 
I’m not sure how to really rank what’s a bigger or lesser problem unless said problem is really obvious. I see what you mean, and hopefully all problems will be worked on.
 
For what it’s worth these guys work as unpaid volunteers so I give them props for trying when due no matter.

@WingbeatPony  
This is the only website I use for pony porn so I deeply care about it
 
As far as fandom drama I normally stay in the woodwork but part of me wants to be more involved and help too