Discuss the state of the forums and find solutions

[JWeinCom]

firebush03 said:

JWeinCom said:

Regarding upvotes and downvotes, I'm not sure I see the problem. 

I get that a system like that can be abused. But I'll just say I think the downvotes are reasonable in this scenario. 

prolly best to keep this discussion short since I literally just instigated a conversation over this last time I was here lol, but I do believe that the upvote/downvote system is responsible for Hardstruck’s provocative remarks, not the other way around.

And looking beyond him, the general concept of “downvoting/upvoting” system is problematic on its own. For real-life example, if I make a remark to professor during lecture, and the response includes a portion of the class looking at me with disapproval, I would feel very upset and worried to speak again. Analogously, if I leave an innocent comment on here just to come back w/ net [X] downvotes, I feel very unwelcomed and discouraged from commenting again, or I’ll have to “strategically” comment in a popular manner. (I’ve begun to notice most on here leave these kind of empty popular comments: Nothing of substance, but agreeable to the community.)

Again, it’s a flawed system, and is especially stressful for somebody such as myself who fights (or has fought) severe social anxiety. This is actly why I’m keeping comments to a minimum going forward. It just feels disgusting to comment with the intent of catering to an audience and or dealing with aggression. I believe reform can occur, we need not comments rid the voting system as a whole. I have ideas if anybody is actly open to hearing, tho I’m also fine just not commenting.

If we assume someone is a troll,  not saying anyone is,  I don't think anyone is going to stop them from trolling without a ban hammer. At least this gives the community a way to hide comments they feel are in bad faith or just stupid.

As for the rest, I don't disagree but I see that as a feature not a bug. It allows the community to discourage content they don't like. Yeah that can lead to some degree of group think but if there is a way to make a community that fairly evaluates every utterance, I don't think we're going to discover it with about 2 staff members on a shoe string budget. This may be as good as it gets.

While I do have some social anxiety issues and I sympathize, I think a thumbs down is a relatively gentle way to give feedback. And yeah that may upset some people but at the same time... that's the world. If people don't like what you say they might let you know.

This is something I questioned as a mod. Believe it or not we did (imo) want to help people figure out how to contribute productively and recognized some people may struggle with certain issues that make that tough. But ultimately I just don't think the mods/developers are really equipped for that. I think the comments upvote system is a fair way to outsource some of the power to the community itself. It's not a perfect system but I don't really see a better option.