Debate thread: About downvoting (modnote:no, not being removed again)

I’m still salty about the time that a mod deleted all my downvotes because I embarrassed them in an argument. A very childish action on their part to try and “get back” at me, and frustrating on mine. I didn’t even have that many downvotes a couple hundred compared to my thousands of upvotes, I guess they though my opinion of what should be down voted was worthy of censorship.

@cuckchan  
“Member for 19 minutes”
 
so this was very recent or are you multi-accounting to hide the circumstances behind it? actually nah, don’t even bother answering. this thread isn’t the place to sob about that.

@DanielTepesKraus  
He could just be a user that would rather not have his identity known.

@DanielTepesKraus  
You might try to find such point of view where you can’t thecnically evaluate any action as abusive. It could be like 20% of the work.
 
To work in paradigm of abusive–nonabusive behavior you need transparent rules, that you have, and resources for rules enforcement, that you don’t have and will not have in the near future.
 
From the current point, as i see, the only way to resolve the collision you have is to privilege one of the group of users or another. @Rod Hungwell offered exactly the same way. Removing downvotes also was the same way.

@Nonymous  
so he asks in a thread full of site moderators who can see as-anon posts and multi-account usage even through vpns or whatever trickery? i’m calling fail.

@ushiki  
theoretically we could also give users the option to toggle downvote visibility on and off (so say i was sensitive about downvotes or just didn’t care about them: i just click visibility off and let downvoters downvote). i think that’d get us pretty close to a balance that would give both sides what they want.
 
edit: i should clarify that this is purely cosmetic at the user level. if i turn downvote visibility off, i simply don’t see them through my account. they’re still 100% visible to anyone who has downvotes on, and under any circumstance they still work for the purposes of score-based filtering.

We could vote on several different aspects of an image, that could give artists examples of what to improve. Instead of a big fat arrow and “oh, what did I do wrong 😖” they can see what needs to be perfected.

@DanielTepesKraus  
kinda better than changing something for the majority though right? I would think most people don’t have dozens of alts and use the system relatively responsibly.

@Badheart  
So, similar to a dropdown menu mentioned earlier, where it’d have options such as:  
“poor linework, poor shading, inconsistent anatomy, meme image, etc”?
 
While yes, those who do cause problems though downvotes could still just select whatever option their mouse hovers over first. At least it would give the opportunity for those who do wish to at least give an idea of what they disliked without having to leave a comment.

@DanielTepesKraus  
>even through vpns and other trickery
 
[x] Doubt

Could we please stick to the actual topic of the thread…

@Rod Hungwell  
if you’ll take this as an entirely personal opinion of mine (rather than anything reflecting the stance of the site or the mod team as a whole; i don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth here)… no. not at all. honestly, read the reasoning behind killing them again. never mind either that a lot of people were in favor of them being killed as well, and even more people were largely indifferent.
 
it’s why this debate thread is even being entertained. if it was the universal “we want downvotes back” outcry that a lot of people seem to think it is, we would have just restored them and moved on with our lives, and if it was the “most people use them responsibly and it’s not that big a deal” thing most people seem to think it is, the change would never of happened to begin with.

@DanielTepesKraus  

 
possible counter-argument: “i know they are still there and any other people can see it”. That’s the reason why well-known group of users denies to use filters and claims that hide button doesn’t solve anything.

@DanielTepesKraus  
It just seems like no matter what is changed here you guys are just going to be shifting your focus and not actually making things more convenient for yourselves. It’ll go from you dealing with the aftermath of downvote bombings to you dealing with more rule breaking comments or whatever complications may come from implementing a new system. Grass isn’t always greener, ect.

My humble and honest opinion is to leave it as it is, don’t try to fix what works.

@Princess Trixie vi Equestria  
Except it sadly doesn’t work as is.
 
 
@Rod Hungwell  
Honestly, it’s far easier dealing with comments than downvote abuse.

@Rod Hungwell  
it’s possible. however, it could also work like a charm and make the site better for everyone involved from mods to regular users. same way the commissions directory, new dnp system, or webm support could have been utter failures but were all three spectacular successes.

@DanielTepesKraus  
Because you were basically adding features not taking them away.
 
Honestly any site feature can be abused even upvotes and comments and the ability to upload images on this site in the first place. Just because it can be abused doesn’t mean we should get rid of it. I don’t think that something is inherently wrong with downvoting either or ever was. Some people might not like that porn gets more upvotes than other art and some people might not like that the comments on their images say certain things and would like to deactivate comments on their images. Some people don’t like that certain types of images are uploaded to derpibooru and would like to see them banned. And some people don’t like that certain images reiceive downvotes. As mods you probably strife to make derpibooru the best it can be and you have indeed done things to improve this site but not everything needs to be improved. Derpibooru worked fine with downvotes up until this point, didn’t it? Don’t fix it if it isn’t broken. Now I am definitely in favor of adding features to derpibooru instead of removing them. Things like an additional hide button or the option to disable visibility of downvotes could be great. Or advanced feedback through additional buttons. Add things instead of taking them away from us.

@Zeb
 
Imagine if every democracy would turn back into some sort of dictatorship solely because it didn’t work perfectly the way every one expected? there will always be deviations it is up to us the ones who does it right to try to find a way to make it work rather than exclude it altogether, that isn’t going to fix trolling and miss usage it’s just going to upset the honest users.
 
I’m all for Downvotes to stay, if people change it slightly as the addition of hiding once downvoted or something that’s fine but rip it entirely off would be a wrong move.

You could just disable voting for problem users.

@Badheart
 
Not a bad idea.
 
Who defines what makes someone a “problem” user?  
Is it well defined, or like Rule 0?

@Princess Trixie vi Equestria  
Which is exactly what was supposed to happen. Discussion about options after the announcement, much like this thread. But as was explained earlier: A rather large mis-communication lead to both the announcement and the change being rolled out at the same time.

@Zeb  
And as I was sleeping too. D:

I like the “cosmetic” downvotes idea myself, but the main reason I comment is because I wanted to mention the hide button. I assume the it worked the same as adding “id:xxxxxx” to the complex filters? (Didn’t have opportunity to try it out myself) If so, that’s a really great feature that I’d love here