I like upvotes for article comments; pretty much any place I read articles I like to be able to read them in order of popularity. I definitely don't think downvoted comments should be hidden any more now we don't have an issue with spam bots on articles. I think maybe downvotes should either be removed or at most take a comment down to 0, but not into negatives, as I think that definitely discourages people from posting opinions that they know will be unpopular even though they're perfectly valid. I'm often upvoting comments that are in the negatives, even when I don't agree with them, just to counter the fact they're in the negatives.

On the forums, the thumbs up is a nice feature in a way but, yeah, unfortunately I think it discourages 'I agree' type posts, as people just give a thumbs up instead.

I was going to suggest that as a compromise if it turned out it was a more even split, a compromise would be that, making it so that no comment goes below 0 (but in the backend it would be) so if I received 4 downvotes on a comment, my comment would never go below 0 but it would require 5 upvotes to go to +1, I think that would be a fair compromise. But thus far the vast majority seem in favour of just dumping downvotes altogether, which I'm absolutely fine with, Lol. At minimum removing the "hidden comment" thing.

Forum thumbs up is more complicated, it's hard to say, it's nice if it discourages low effort posts which are simply "Agreed" so there's the positive, but it's difficult to say whether it discourages the type of "Agreed" posts which offer more substance and discussion, I can personally say that there have been times where I could have easily thought up a response to a comment but just clicked "Agree" and moved on. But there are also times where I've "Agreed" with posts which honestly I can't add anything to so it's a bit 50/50.

But eh, I can live with it, my major dislike is towards article dislikes.

Yep. Another vote for this right here.

Allow it to show the total thumbs up and the total thumbs down as well as a 3rd maybe open hand symbol that totals both of them together to gage the total interactions. This, I think would eliminate the stigma of negative reactions to the thumbs down. For example, 7 thumbs up displayed, as well as 9 thumbs down displayed, would total 16 on the open hand displayed. The new "new" would be the total engagement whether it was positive or negative and would gauge more or less the reactions that "said comment" elicited.

I think people would post in such a way to garner the most attention/ regardless of an up or down vote, just to garner the highest possible engagement to their comments/statements. Possibly eliminating the anxiety that goes along with posting for some individuals.

This should remove the sting of negative thumbs down or the pride that comes with all the thumbs up and also eliminate the unnecessary
automatic thumbs down trolling to individuals who are hated by fanboism. If total engagement is being tracked, people may not be so quick to automatically thumb down someone and help them rack up a high score.

I believe this could result in a massive increase of posting the article section.


Imagine what a scorecard leaderboard system being added to something like this could have in overall activity. Weekly leaderboard, monthly leaderboard, full year leaderboard.

Little bit off-topic but I did want to expand the leaderboard area once, though it's just a minor amusement feature and we have far bigger issues to deal with first, it could be a thread with Bandorr just pulling the data Tbh. Then maybe in the future rewards could be handed out (like no-ads supporter, Lol) but obviously we never got around to it, too much stuff to do on VGChartz first. But I had ideas of leaderboards like; Most Posts, Most Threads Created, Most Agrees, Most Engagement (Posts) Received in Created Threads, Most GameDB Contributions, Most GameDB Reviews Written, etc. Could easily think of a few more, it was just a fun idea that would hopefully encourage a little more activity across the board.

The thumb down has been removed. Long live the thumb pointing up.

A little more detail on the update for this:

I asked @Bandorr about it and, since the consensus here is generally that upvotes are fine but downvotes (especially when they go into negatives) probably put some people off posting and act as a disincentive to discussion, he's removed the downvote option from articles. By extension this means from now on no comments will be hidden due to excessive downvoting. 

Obviously only a small number of active users posted their views about these features in this thread, so this isn't necessarily permanent; if the quiet majority actually quite liked downvoting and now start posting saying how much they miss it then we can always go to the compromise option (allow for downvoting but the lowest a comment can go is 0) or even revert the change altogether, though I think that's unlikely.

Will users that became supporters to get the extra voting power be getting refunds?

Alright Pa- 👀

I'm going to be real, if someone bought Supporter for the sole purpose of the extra voting power...Alright I should probably not be honest, Lmao. Supporter mostly be about supporting the unpaid Staff and shit paid Staff keeping this site alive with next to no help from the owner, it should be to show your support to the website, the perks are just an added benefit. Although the no-ads perk would be understandable as being a major reason for subbing, the extra voting power though...Bruh.

Of course it's not my business on who gets refunded and what for, or how any of that works, Lol. But I would find it disappointing to know people are subbed solely for that reason, I don't think it's an issue though, right now there's 13 supports and 4 of them are Staff, 1 is a Test Account, so if the 8 remaining are angry about the decision it should be fairly easy to refund them.

Lol! I’m very happy to lose my voting power tbh. I only pay the bronze fee b/c I like browsing ad-free on mobile.