I personally enjoy some level of feedback from the community to understand how the community feels about a particular comment or post. Completely turning off upvotes makes it very hard to know if content I’m posting is welcomed, unless behavior changes. It also makes it tough for me to have some kind of judge on whether a moderation action or warning a user was appreciated by others or whether I was out of line.
how does one actually know “how the community feels about a particular comment or post” once one’s disable downvotes (when it only tells one how much people liked it, not how much they disliked it) and there is no limited scale to measure against (e.g. 0 to 10)? in any case, if one really wants to see upvotes, then one can just opt-in seeing upvotes for one’s account, while by default gamification/votes are hidden as to decrease its influence in people. even though commenting requires more effort (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/reputation-managers-are-happening/), i feel it could provide a better place for authentic discourse.
Seeing numbers relative to other comments in a thread, based on when it was posted can give an idea of how much a community agrees with a particular viewpoint. It’s not a perfect measure, and it gets even more hazy when downvotes are included, but it gives an idea. I’m not looking for a perfect capture of sentiment, but seeing a thread where a lot of people agree or upvote a particular comment gives me an idea of what content to focus on. Normal sorting methods miss highly upvoted comments in response to not upvoted content, which can be useful for me to see.
In the end while I agree more heavily with removing the ability to vote things down or dislike them without voicing your opinion, I believe that seeing things are liked or voted up does not cause for a hostile environment. People who struggle with approval on the internet will likely look to other sources of approval, such as replies or praise instead and I do not believe that removing positive votes will solve their problem.
I personally enjoy some level of feedback from the community to understand how the community feels about a particular comment or post. Completely turning off upvotes makes it very hard to know if content I’m posting is welcomed, unless behavior changes. It also makes it tough for me to have some kind of judge on whether a moderation action or warning a user was appreciated by others or whether I was out of line.
how does one actually know “how the community feels about a particular comment or post” once one’s disable downvotes (when it only tells one how much people liked it, not how much they disliked it) and there is no limited scale to measure against (e.g. 0 to 10)? in any case, if one really wants to see upvotes, then one can just opt-in seeing upvotes for one’s account, while by default gamification/votes are hidden as to decrease its influence in people. even though commenting requires more effort (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/reputation-managers-are-happening/), i feel it could provide a better place for authentic discourse.
Seeing numbers relative to other comments in a thread, based on when it was posted can give an idea of how much a community agrees with a particular viewpoint. It’s not a perfect measure, and it gets even more hazy when downvotes are included, but it gives an idea. I’m not looking for a perfect capture of sentiment, but seeing a thread where a lot of people agree or upvote a particular comment gives me an idea of what content to focus on. Normal sorting methods miss highly upvoted comments in response to not upvoted content, which can be useful for me to see.
In the end while I agree more heavily with removing the ability to vote things down or dislike them without voicing your opinion, I believe that seeing things are liked or voted up does not cause for a hostile environment. People who struggle with approval on the internet will likely look to other sources of approval, such as replies or praise instead and I do not believe that removing positive votes will solve their problem.