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Zkuq on 24 August 2016
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LivingMetal said:
Zkuq said:

1. Of course it shouldn't be a reason for not responding, especially since one party might not even know the other party isn't able to respond. However, removing the ability to comment further from the original commenter is not good either. There are other ways to handle with bad comments, such as reporting (if there was something against the rules), discussing (if it makes sense), or just simply ignoring it (e.g. if, like you said, one party has refused to agree to disagree even though that's obviously the right thing to do).

2. Instances where the system work aren't necessarily enough to prove the system is good though. If there's enough instances where the system doesn't work, the instances where it does work aren't necessarily enough to counter the ones where it doesn't. Ultimately I guess it's up to each person to decide whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Personally I think there's so many instances where the system doesn't work that whatever value it adds in some cases is lost due to the number of cases where it doesn't.

The problem comes from using the downvote button for both disagreeing and marking an outright bad comment. The system assumes a comment is bad because it receives a lot of downvotes when in reality a large number of downvotes often (but of course not always) means disagreement instead of a bad comment. The problem would be solved by having two 'negative' buttons: 'disagree' and bad 'comment'. I've seen something like that being used somewhere, although I don't know how well it works there. It's not ideal though, because it makes the user experience slightly more difficult. Some services avoid the problem simply by having an upvote system only.

The system is assuming NOTHING.  The problem is human nature.  Systemwise, you currently have the option to vote and/or report.  There is NO WAY to accurately account for human intent and behavior in a voting system such as the one on this site.  And what's to stop someone from abusing the "two 'negative' buttons" system you proposed?  Nothing.  Then, you're back at square -1.  :p

The system makes the implicit assumption I said it does. By hiding the comments, it implies that those comments are bad. It doesn't make much sense to  hide comments that people simply disagree with, does it? Technically the system doesn't assume anything, I agree, but the people that designed the system obviously assumed the system, and in this case I don't think it makes much difference to simply say that 'the system assumes' instead of 'the designers of the system assumed'. But surely you agree that the designers had a reason to hide those comments, and wouldn't you also agree that the reason was that those comments were probably assumed to be bad? I personally can't come up with any other reasons they might want to hide those comments.

And yeah, I know the solution I described has potential for abuse. That's why I said I'm not sure how well it works where I've seen it (I don't use said site regularly). However, assuming that most people are still reasonable and fair (which, I'd say, is a fair assumption on this site because the userbase is pretty good), it could be much better. At the very least, even with a bad userbase, it would still be slightly better and not worse. I don't really see it as being any worse than the current system. But yeah, it's a problematic solution, and knowing whether it would really work or not is pretty hard in advance.