Official Forums no longer have downvotes.

[Selky]

GD brought it on themselves after what happened to Holinka's goodbye thread.

[Dispraise]

no longer can we use the downvote button if we dislike something

Good. Great, even. Using a downvote arrow to express disagreement is one of the most obnoxiously stupid things in any internet community that has it.

[clevin]

The problem wasn't the down vote itself but the way they implemented it. An up vote means "I like this post for some reason" and if a downvote simply meant "I don't like this post for some reason" that would have been fine. But they implemented it so that it ALSO hid the post if the post got more than some amount of down votes. That asymmetry in function guaranteed that people would use it to try to bury things.

[Ulfric Trumpcloak]

I'm sure it had something to do with Holinka's "goodbye" thread. People clearly weren't fond of him, and the downvote system was pretty much the only way to let them know how unhappy we were without getting banned.

[anon5123]

Much like with Reddit and EVERY PLACE that has downvotes, it was never used to help "moderate" troll or bad posts, but just remove opinions people didn't like from being able to be seen.

Pretty much, yeah.

And that would create issues when a perfectly rational and reasonable post gets downvoted to -50 simply because the hivemind disagrees with it. And that massive negative rating gives the impression that it's a bad post or trolling or something, when in reality, it's just being downvoted because people disagree.

I do love how everyone is screaming about "blizzard censoring negativity"....uhh, no, they're just forcing you to USE YOUR WORDS to disagree with someone, instead of silently downvoting.

I give it about two weeks before people forget about this whole ordeal and stop spamming "DISLIKE" posts.

[Echoherb]

There should really be a dislike button still, but it should work like youtube comments where you can dislike but it doesn't show a negative number. That way if an opinion is unpopular, it just won't have any likes, but it wouldn't be mobbed with negative dislikes and buried.

[nekobaka]

Has it occurred to anyone yet the problem isn't 'downvoting', the problem is people desperately want the community to police itself so they don't have to invest in proper oversight and moderation?

I mean I've seen it literally take hours for a post on the official forums threatening other users with gun violence to vanish, during the US work day.

Because hiring more than 3 people total to moderate a forum with thousands of users is just too dern much to ask.

If you want a 'positive' community experience you have to be active and set a goddamn example and stop trying to get cute automated or user-generated systems to fix it for you.

I assume you mean Blizzard and yes for the most part when Blizzard released the system that is what they described it as for both feedback and helping to self moderate faster than the GMs. This was touched upon in the recent CM post as well. It was no secret. Unfortunately the forum users will still upvote toxic stuff including hate speech as long as they agree with it. Though it is largely the fault of the mods not enforcing their policies which promote such behavior as acceptable. I have had to report some people for hate speech multiple times over a week to get them to take action.

For those who have not read OPs link.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...7587012#post-8

Yes, we’ve recently pushed an update to the WoW forums that removes the ability to downvote posts made by other players.

We originally added this feature as a means for players to assist with forum moderation by upvoting helpful posts and downvoting inappropriate or toxic posts. In practice, however, we found that it was primarily being used for things like downvoting a post simply because they disagreed with it, which was not the intent, and too often led to different opinions getting unfairly buried. Moving to an upvotes-only environment will remove this unintended abuse, while still allowing players to give recognition to posts that have a positive impact on the World of Warcraft community.

As a reminder, you can still report inappropriate or abusive posts to the moderation team by selecting the “Report Post” option located in the dropdown menu on the right of the offending post.

Also keep in mind overall service support took a hit when around 200 non-development staff got let go a while back and in-game support tickets could hit upwards of a week. Since then Blizzard has been beefing up their staff along with implementing more automated systems.

Personal experience though if it is an issue that involves another player the customer service is still 3rd rate. Well except Overwatch which seems to be the only team that cares about harassment and griefing.

[rda]

Has it occurred to anyone yet the problem isn't 'downvoting', the problem is people desperately want the community to police itself so they don't have to invest in proper oversight and moderation?

I mean I've seen it literally take hours for a post on the official forums threatening other users with gun violence to vanish, during the US work day.

Because hiring more than 3 people total to moderate a forum with thousands of users is just too dern much to ask.

If you want a 'positive' community experience you have to be active and set a goddamn example and stop trying to get cute automated or user-generated systems to fix it for you.

Yes, of course.

It's just that people thought that big communities can self-moderate, removing the cost of moderators and dealing intelligently with what's worth a ban / hide / whatever and what isn't. It turned out that while people perhaps mean well, the collective voting does not work this way and quickly deteriorates into a stable pattern to the detriment of the discussions. It took time to learn that lesson (and realize that no, you can't get away with having no moderators, sorry, life is more complex).

[Armourboy]

I see what you mean. I've only had limited encouters with the system as I largely use MMO-Champion, so you probably know more about this than me... Be that as it may here is my post from the official WoW forums last year that got down-voted a lot (because people didn't agree) despite being well-reasoned and constructively put. Did I deserve it just because people didn't agree? Did I do something wrong?

Wrong? No? Was it an opinion people did not agree with or to use another term, disliked? I guess so. See that's why I put much of it on Blizzard as a failure rather than just " trolls " or " toxic people ". People had a button there that said Like or dislike, to some that may mean good or bad, agree or disagree, I don't like you as a person so I'm going to " dislike " you. Blizzard didn't set it up, nor did it ever try to steer players into a proper use in any way shape or form and that's on them.

I'm not a toxic poster at all, never have been, but if I disagreed with someone's opinion I hit the dislike button. I didn't agree with it, so what logic would there have been to give it a like? The button didn't say " I disagree with this person, but they made a logical point ", it was just yay or nay. So yes I'm sure there were people that would just find people they didn't like and dislike every single post they made, but even if that was the case, the way Blizzard themselves handled it was going to get down voted regardless if the mass didn't agree with it.

[Orby]

They should replace it with a reputation meter instead. award people for making good posts by having people give rep and have a point system that awards good posting, while also punishing the trolls without silencing them.

Something I have felt strongly this forum should have

[Dracullus]

They should replace it with a reputation meter instead. award people for making good posts by having people give rep and have a point system that awards good posting, while also punishing the trolls without silencing them.

Something I have felt strongly this forum should have

For this forum, simple counter how many time that person was banned would be enough. Trolls just keep coming back from the nether. I personally never take someone seriously if he ever got banned.

[nekobaka]

They should replace it with a reputation meter instead. award people for making good posts by having people give rep and have a point system that awards good posting, while also punishing the trolls without silencing them.

Something I have felt strongly this forum should have

While I would like to see such a system the current state is it would end up being just as is due to many trolls with a long history of promoting false facts and harassment that fall in approval of the hive mind continue to get up voted. The problem is not that trolls are getting downvoted as it is that trolls are abusing the current system to manipulate feedback and harass other players. It is largely a moderation issue or lack there of. Given the toxicity generated in response in the forums I would say it is a good time to clean house and show that Blizzard is serous about dealing with said trolls. As of right now it seems the increased GM staff are doing jack shit. Blizzard needs to suck it up and alienate their toxic vocal minority for their shitty behavior. Overwatch should not be the only community they give a shit about.

[Greenmagoo]

Oh my has that thread turned vile. Lots of trolling along with personal attacks against a CM calling them a gutless coward for not staying in the thread. Getting rid of downvotes is not going to do anything about dealing with those toxic posters.

[Lime]

Has it occurred to anyone yet the problem isn't 'downvoting', the problem is people desperately want the community to police itself so they don't have to invest in proper oversight and moderation?

I mean I've seen it literally take hours for a post on the official forums threatening other users with gun violence to vanish, during the US work day.

Because hiring more than 3 people total to moderate a forum with thousands of users is just too dern much to ask.

If you want a 'positive' community experience you have to be active and set a goddamn example and stop trying to get cute automated or user-generated systems to fix it for you.

Most of us realize this, but like any change, it's silly to think it's solely because of one thing, which is what I believe rda was arguing.

Edit:

Wtf... For some reason, it showed that as one of the latest posts. But that was like 2 days ago.

[emilylorange]

Oh my has that thread turned vile. Lots of trolling along with personal attacks against a CM calling them a gutless coward for not staying in the thread. Getting rid of downvotes is not going to do anything about dealing with those toxic posters.

*plugs in a bright neon sign that reads HIRE MORE MODERATORS*

- - - Updated - - -

It's just that people thought that big communities can self-moderate, removing the cost of moderators and dealing intelligently with what's worth a ban / hide / whatever and what isn't. It turned out that while people perhaps mean well, the collective voting does not work this way and quickly deteriorates into a stable pattern to the detriment of the discussions. It took time to learn that lesson (and realize that no, you can't get away with having no moderators, sorry, life is more complex).

The famous Penny Arcade Greater Internet Jerkwad Theory comic was posted in 2004.

We have known that largely anonymous communities of people are idiots for as long as the net has existed, we did not have to wait til 2017 to 'learn' a god damn thing.

It's not 'oh we had no idea', it's 'oh it wasn't cost effective'.

[TyrannicalPuppy]

They most certainly can. Nobody is silenced by having someone upvote an opinion. You just seem like the kind of person who abused the downvoting system and now you want everyone to "suffer" as you have.

Glad you're capable of discerning my entire personality based off of one post.

[Strangewayes]

It's pretty interesting lately, because some people have tried to post Flying threads in General, and previously they were just buried with downvotes instead of explaining why they did/did not think it was a good idea. People tend to respond to posts more often now.

Now instead of downvotes some people simply respond with "troll" even if somebody put together a coherent argument.

The report thread function is now being used more often which just deletes the thread entirely. Even if there was an active debate going on.

[Detan]

The War sniffed to the capillary, although the hammer would not never take the low road to simplify the problem of Fleming's and Zoroastrians in the kitchen pans and pots.