An open chat. Recent comments on the right —>

  • testuser1
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    4 years ago

    I talk about many legitimate questions, not ones with the intention to troll. Like, where actual content is happening, debates and such.

    I have to ALWAYS ask what the reasons are which is really annoying. Like, i don’t know what to do when i read an article, agree with it but it has some downvotes.

    Or when i see some minor issues, i wonder: was this the reason for people to downvote it? Or was it something else? like factual errors or missing out important things? Or did the person reading it just disagree with the opinion stated there or just dislike it?

    Downvotes itself are fine. but the lack of reasons is annoying for me, not the downvotes itself. What i seek is intellectual debate, understanding concepts. And this is so much harder when negative feedback is not explained properly.

    • abbenm
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      4 years ago

      I talk about many legitimate questions, not ones with the intention to troll. Like, where actual content is happening, debates and such.

      I agree with this. I have had experiences where I felt like I was saying something as simple as 2+2=4 and downvoted for reasons that seemed inscrutable to me.

      I think it is healthy to challenge irrational mobs who downvote for no reason, or for petty reasons. Reasons, that, if challenged and put into language, would turn out to be ridiculous and expose the pettiness driving downvotes.

      This is part of a concern I’ve had with the irrational mobs at reddit. A long time ago, there wasn’t really any set rule about downvotes, but if you asked why you were downvoted, irrational mobs don’t like that. So they like when you don’t ask, and so a norm was created that you’re not allowed to ask about downvotes, which helps reinforce the mob behavior.

      So if anything, I want that to have to be normalized: it’s regular, normal, expected, reasonable, appropriate, to ask from time to time why the downvotes are happening and expect an explanation, especially in unusual cases where the downvotes seem to have no reasoning behind them.

      • testuser1
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 years ago

        So if anything, I want that to have to be normalized: it’s regular, normal, expected, reasonable, appropriate, to ask from time to time why the downvotes are happening and expect an explanation, especially in unusual cases where the downvotes seem to have no reasoning behind them.

        This is what i do, but i feel many people downvoting don’t read that, so i never know the reason

    • testuser1
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 years ago

      So ideally, i would like to force users to explain their downvotes. And every explanation is fine, for me. Like also things like “troll” and just that.