One of the aggrevations Elsewhere were all the vandal and retribution downvotes. They never took the problem seriously. Now it's happening here. Andy was the latest target, twice, recently. I've also had this happen to me on other Codidact sites, like Outdoors.

All downvotes should be public

I have long felt this was the best way to address the problem and make votes honest, long before Codidact existed. I proposed this when Codidact was forming, but got the same tired arguments in response. Maybe this wouldn't fit with more touchy-feely sites, but we're engineers here. This would be a great place to give it a try.

Rebuttal to common excuses against open downvotes:

• People will be afraid to say what they really mean.

  If you don't have enough conviction in your judgement that something is wrong, then it's not worth listening to in the first place. If this discourages some borderline downvotes, OK. Downvotes aren't for when you think it might be wrong. They are for when you're reasonably sure something is wrong, and are prepared to defend your point.

• It will lead to retribution wars.

  No, it won't. With everything out in the open, everyone, including the mods, can see who's acting like a child. Users with throw-away accounts aren't going to care, but we already have that problem. Everyone else is going to be restrained by wanting to maintain a positive reputation (not the numerical kind).

  Of course I can't prove any of this, but neither can those who claim there will be retribution wars. Nobody knows for sure since it hasn't been tried. So let's try it and settle this issue. This EE site would be a great test case.

The advantages of public downvotes are:

• More thought behind each vote.

  Since you are publicly saying "This is wrong, here is why...", you are putting your reputation on the line with each downvote. People are going to be more careful in claiming something is wrong.

• Downvotes won't feel like insults.

  Right now, anyone can say "You're wrong", then run away and hide. That's sometimes used to mean, or feels like it means, You're an idiot.

  However, "I'm Joe Shmo, and you're wrong because ..." is no insult. It's a statement of fact that can be objectively evaluated. As engineers, we consider it a favor when someone points out a mistake because that gives us a chance to make the design better, and maybe learn something.

• Downvoter's misconceptions can be addressed.

  The person claiming something is wrong can actually be wrong themselves. We've all done that, and we've all had it done to us. The best remedy is openness. An open discussion let's the crowd-mind pick apart and probably resolve the argument.

• Vandals can't hide.

  This is of course the big one. Vandals enjoy poking at the system and watching what happens. They know what they are doing is against the rules. They feel comfortable breaking the rules because they are anonymous.

  Put another way, vadalism requires anonymity. When we take that away, vadalism will stop. Anyone downvoting for disingenuous reasons will be visible to everyone, including mods that can do something about it.

Proposed mechanism

Upvotes will continue to work as they do now. There doesn't seem to be a problem to solve here.

For the first downvote to a post, a special kind of downvote comment is created. The title is automatically generated, something like "Downvote: username". The user then must fill in some minimum characters in the comment body. This is intended to explain the reason for the downvote.

On subsequent downvotes, the user is given a choice to "sign on" to an existing downvote comment, or create a new one. We don't need five separate comments all saying "Diode D2 is backwards". Instead, we'd have five user names shown on a single comment.

This also makes it easier to clean up the comment and downvotes if the error is addressed. If the OP fixes the diode, for example, he can reply to the single comment and all five downvoters automatically get notified.

When a user retracts a downvote, their name is removed from the comment. When a mod deletes a downvote comment, all the downvotes are automatically retracted.

It's time to do something

I realize this will take some coding effort. Unfortunately web coding is not in my skillset, so I can't help with that. But I'm happy to work with this as a mod. There will probably be some kinks to work out once we get some actual results, and it will require additional mod vigilance.

Most of the arguments against doing this are theoretical. There will always be nay-sayers against trying anything new. However, we won't know whether something really works until we try it. This EE site is about the best test case there could be. I believe strongly that it will work well, and other sites will want this mechanism too. However, even if it fails miserably, we'll at least know that. Remember that the problems this is intended to solve are quite real. Let's not have hypothetical scenarios get in the way of evaluating solutions.

What should happen to existing downvotes once the functionality goes live?

Good question. I'd leave it up to the implementers if some ways are harder than others. Code probably needs to be run as a pass over the database once. It would be good to burden the volunteers doing the work as little as possible.

If all solutions were the same work, I'd prefer a single comment be generated for all existing downvotes to a post. This would have the "Downvote: user, user ..." title, with an empty body or a body indicating conversion from the old system.

Anyone who downvoted for the right reason (genuine belief that the post is wrong, badly written, or misleading) shouldn't have a problem being exposed. Those that downvoted for disingenuous reasons might not like it, but then they were the ones doing something wrong in the first place.

I just checked, and I have cast 27 downvotes (out of 325 total votes) on this site. I probably already left a comment for most of those downvotes. I would have no problem standing up and explaining any of them.

Per-category?

Another good point. I don't see a reason not to track who did all downvotes. However, votes have different meanings in different categories. On meta they can mean disagreement. Receiving downvotes on meta shouldn't effect your rep. But, if someone disagrees with an opinion on meta, they should be prepared to explain what they disagree with.

posted about 2 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

2y ago

Olin Lathrop‭

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