Redoing this thread a few years after the first and now that it has sat with people for a few years, this isn't an official team response but my own curiosity as a result of a number of users both publicly and privately complaining about the system to me and requesting I make a thread on the topic to gauge the overall opinion of the site and my own negative thoughts on the whole system, so I wanted to poll once again what people now think about it and if any opinions have changed from when it was first implemented.

Some Possible Choices (Not All)

• Keep It All (Article Upvotes/Downvotes and Forum Agrees)
• Remove Article Upvotes/Downvotes, Keep Forum Agrees
• Remove Article Upvotes/Downvotes, Change Forum Agrees
• Keep Article Upvotes/Downvotes, Remove Forum Agrees
• Keep Article Upvotes/Downvotes, Change Forum Agrees
• Remove Only Article Downvotes
• Remove Only Article Downvotes, Change Forum Agrees
• Remove It All (Article Upvotes/Downvotes and Forum Agrees)

Keep it civil, it's just a minor feature, Lol.

Down voting serves no purpose other than apparently making the person doing it feel big about themselves. If you do not agree with something then simply jog on.

I think remove downvotes for everything. A lot of truth gets downvoted in articles just because people don't like to hear it.

If a comment is really that bad it should just be moderated the traditional way

I think threads show the upvote system in a pretty good light and it should also apply to articles.

Hiding heavily downvoted comments is weird. Whenever a comment is hidden, it makes me want to click and read it.

This is still a thing? This should be removed, the major reason we hid heavily downvoted comments was because this system was implemented when VGChartz was being hammered by spambots so mass downvotes was a way for users to hide the spambots until a Mod dealt with it. This isn't really an issue anymore so I see no reason why we need to keep hiding comments, in a way you could say one of the reasons we even had downvotes in the first place was because of spambots.

Yeah, it's a thing. More than 10 downvotes on an article comment and then you have to click the little "+" to view it. (See screenshot example below)

My views have changed since it was implemented, I'm pretty sure that I fully supported all the upvote/downvote and agree systems implemented at the time, but nowadays I'm more in favour of just dumping every single system because I feel like they all discourage discussion in their own way, Lol. But I'm going to start with my issues with the upvote/downvote system in articles.

- I think the upvote/downvote system in articles can encourage clique-like behaviour, between fans of certain platforms, Xbox fans downvoting PlayStation fans, PlayStation fans downvoting Xbox fans, etc. Or in the case of a disliked user, that user will be disliked no matter what they've said, even if it's totally harmless, I would say I've seen all these examples in the past.

- The upvote/downvote system in articles can be easily cheated, and it has been in the past.

- I've seen the downvote system used in quite mean ways often, for example downvoting someone's totally harmless opinion, I've literally seen users downvoted before for simply posting they were looking forward to a videogame, I've seen people ask totally harmless questions and get downvoted, thus discouraging discussion, some of the comments downvoted in articles are frankly baffling.

The last reason has been a major source of annoyance with me lately, I've seen multiple instances of it which just feel plain cruel, even if I don't agree with a harmless opinion, or I'm not excited for that videogame, downvoting a user because they're excited about something, or for asking a totally harmless question, is shitty, and discourages discussion.

Also I hate and I'm 100% against that Supporters get extra voting power but that's a separate issue, Lol.

My issue with forum agrees is a lot lighter, I can take it or leave it but I find myself lately questioning whether they too hurt discussion, I know the main counterargument would be that it discourages low-effort "Agreed" posts but I start to wonder if it discourages responses entirely, especially when VGChartz is as low activity as it is now.

Are we not presenting people with the option of either thinking up a reply or simply slapping an "agree" on a comment and moving on? Because if I'm going to be honest, I've done the latter quite a bit, Lol. There have been times where I could easily write up a reply but out of laziness just slapped an Agree on a comment and moved on and I seriously doubt I'm the only one if we're being honest with ourselves, Lol.

I do appreciate every single one of my agrees, and I get that people want to show their support, but I have my doubts about if it helps or harms thread discussion and it is something I'm conflicted on. I was thinking a possible solution could be to change "Agree" into something more meaningful that actually has to have thought put into clicking it, something more along the lines of "This comment is my favourite/I love this comment" over something as light as "Agree" and I think that would change my mindset about how it's used.

Are we changing our behaviour, as a result of these systems, into "I'll just agree with this" instead of thinking of a written response.

It's possible someone could give me a convincing argument that it doesn't hurt forum discussion and has more positives, I'm not as against it as I am with the article upvotes/downvotes, my core issue with forum agrees is worry about discussion, my core issue with the article downvotes is it being used in shitty ways which discourages discussion/users and genuine annoyance, Lol.

I get that as well.... (that itch to see what the person wrote)
However I appreciate that if you say something the majority deem too stupid to be real, and get alot of downvotes, your message is hidden.
There have been times, where its like bots and other stupid comments, that were then removed, where I feel like they should have been removed.
This means even if mods are asleep at the wheel or don't deem it a issue, if the majority think it off track or dumb,
its gone from view (unless you click it).

I think overall that's healthy for the site.
So my stance is "Keep it all".

I don't think, as a example that removing the dislike button on YouTube did anything good. You assume if its removed there's a reason for it.
It just removed people's ability to show dis-content. Its a less honest take, on likes vs having a dislike button as well.
I think the ratio thing was a overall positive as it allowed you to get a feel of how people felt.

I would say keep the agree and upvote system and get rid of the downvote system.