As the fediverse continues to grow, let’s reflect on some of the things that we disliked most about posting/lurking on reddit and what we can do differently now that we have a chance to build something new.
As the fediverse continues to grow, let’s reflect on some of the things that we disliked most about posting/lurking on reddit and what we can do differently now that we have a chance to build something new.
I don’t even really think that there should be downvotes. Just different categories of votes, kinda like how Fark does comments with ‘Smart’ and ‘Funny’ votes.
Generally, shifting away from a binary system could be beneficial. What would be the options? What’s enough but not too many options to cover the gamut? Maybe two types of positive (“I agree” and “This is quality”) and two types of critical options (“I don’t agree” and “This is poor quality”) ?
I’m not sure I want to feel like I’m doing a psychological evaluation or political survey when I’m liking a post. Up and down is fine.
That’s part of the reason why platforms like Reddit took off: they’re simple and easy to approach and people don’t get overwhelmed at first sight
Nothing sounds more fun than a paroxysm of analysis with every 'doot
Granted, you could easily replace the two arrows with a four-part diamond (❖) with those two axes … but I have a strong suspicion that nearly everyone who’s going to vote “I don’t agree” will also vote “This is poor quality” except in extraordinary cases. It’s just human nature: one would be disinclined to explicitly acknowledge the quality of one’s antagonist.
While a better system might be one where you can apply a range of reactions to a post, that would probably make things look cluttered and spammy (if a post has a dozen different reactions on it)
The upvote/downvote system seems like the most useful one, at least right now while people are migrating over and these sites are in the expansion phase
@AnonymousLlama I like forum software that offers a range of reactions (ala vBulletin / XenForo). The default reaction could be a simple “Like” with an additional click or two required to change the reaction to Informative, Agree, Funny, Sad etc. Two of these reactions (probably positioned last to add that extra little bit of friction) might be Disagree and Off-Topic.
But if this is too convoluted, maybe just cap the number of downvotes a post/thread can get. So if a post gets 5 (or whatever the cap number is) downvotes, additional downvotes do not change the downvote counter. This would discourage “piling on” but there’d still be an indicator that a post might be poor quality or contentious. On the other hand, upvotes should probably be unlimited (or have a higher cap number) to encourage positive feedback.
I like how wiki tribune is doing it where you can set trust levels for users. Hey this person comments are always intelligent and useful. I set the trust value to 100. This other guy is always trying to promote some wierd conspiracy. Set trust level to 0. Now I see way more posts and comment from user 1 and way less from user 2.
That sounds nice on the surface, but without downvotes we turn into Usenet, where the top posts are inevitably the trolls and flame wars. “Downvotes to express disagreement” may not be ideal, but it’s way better than the alternative: post personal attacks to express disagreement. In a downvotes environment, trolls and flames alike quickly lose visibility.