EDIT: Maybe just for comments? Downvoats may still help with content quality control
There is some good in the concept of downvoating however in practice we've seen and continue to see the primary use a downvoat button will be an "I disagree with this person" button.
Removing downvoating entirely will not negatively impact the site. Misinformation will still be called out and not upvoated, spammers should be reported(hoping for that report button one day), ass holes will be called out, irrelevant posts and comments will be ignored/receive very few if any upvoats or get reported.
Removing the downvoat ability would also deal with any future issues with brigades, which was a big issue on that other place.
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[–] boater 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
What about for comments which violate sub verse specific rule violations, such as posting spoilers in a no-spoiler thread?
People will want some way to hide these comments, and removing the ability to downvote will remove the ability of communities to do this themselves and instead force them to rely on the presence of extremely active moderators.
I think the ideal solution is to change "downvoting" to "downmodding", where in order to "downmod" a comment, users must select an objective and specific rule that the comment has broken from a finite list of choices specific to each subverse.
Upon clicking the downmod arrow, what will happen is that the site will create either a drop-down menu or overlay containing a list of radio buttons. Then, in order for the downmod to go through, the user must select a specific rule violation from the list, ex. "spoilers", "only contains insults", "spam".
This could encourage users to be more objective and impartial with their downvotes, rather than using them subjectively in the same manner as they would upvotes. It would also allow different subverses to maintain different rules for downvoting, and allow for no downvoting in subverses with no rules.
[–] umpaloompa ago (edited ago)
That why we should have a report as spam button. It deletes the comment until a mod approves it to be a good comment.
[–] boater 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
This presupposes the feasibility of extremely active moderators existing for all subverses.
What about if we are dealing with a smaller subverse discussing a specific book or television series. Say, one where 90% users want to forbid posting spoiler comments in threads not explicitly labelled as allowing spoilers, but one in which there is no moderator on call 24 hours a day.
It would be much more efficient if these smaller communities retained the ability to conduct "soft modding" of comments in a decentralized and non-heirarchical manner rather, than having to turn over all power to hide comments over to a moderator which may either not exist or may not be able to keep up with the workload.
While brigading may be a problem on popular subverses, I think we can decrease the probability of it occurring by tweaking the functionality of the downvoting button without getting rid of it. I believe that disallowing downvotes entirely would case great harm to the ability of smaller subverses to hold structured conversations for a comparatively small gain.