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Remove vote buttons?

  • Yes

    Votes: 219 29.3%
  • No

    Votes: 387 51.8%
  • Like Button Only

    Votes: 119 15.9%
  • Other

    Votes: 22 2.9%

  • Total voters
    747
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Regardless of this discussion, and most importantly, how the hell do we now show our displeasure when there rumours sourced from Digitimes on the front page?

:mad:

You leave a comment in the thread. This is a discussion forum you know, not a vote up or down forum.
 
But you can assume that the people in those two categories wanted some sort of change to occur to the voting buttons.

No, you can't. You have to go back and ask the people who wanted to remove both buttons if they had only two options -- to keep the buttons or have like button only, which they will prefer. Because someone's preference could be in the following order:
1. No voting at all
2. Both up and down voting
3. Up voting only

As I've argued, having no voting at all and having up voting only are quite different things. And case in point, I would have loved to down vote this post, but I can't. This discussion is going to get a lot more long-winded than it otherwise would be, because everyone who disagrees with a post will be more motivated to post their dissent. If I could have down voted, I wouldn't be writing this post!
 
And then no one would have understood your reason for downvoting.

Exactly, there’s way too much “drive by” down voting. There was a thread just last week, and in the 20 seconds between where I read then posted, every single post above mine had been down voted and they were all over the board in terms of content. So it wasn’t even a knee jerk “I’ll down vote any mentioned of Steve Jobs”.

I think it’s just a way to empower anonymous people who make little to no contribution to the board. :)
 
Exactly, there’s way too much “drive by” down voting. There was a thread just last week, and in the 20 seconds between where I read then posted, every single post above mine had been down voted and they were all over the board in terms of content. So it wasn’t even a knee jerk “I’ll down vote any mentioned of Steve Jobs”.

I think it’s just a way to empower anonymous people who make little to no contribution to the board. :)

I have seen threads with every single post downvoted... I could never figure out why, other than the people who do that are complete jerks who have nothing else better to do with their time
 
Can you provide some insight as to why you want the voting system in place?

At it's core use, it's to filter the article page comments that appear outside of the forum. It's to give casual readers a sampling from the forums without having to delve into 30-40 pages.

Later on, it may (or may not) have more usage as we integrate it more.

arn
 
You leave a comment in the thread. This is a discussion forum you know, not a vote up or down forum.

Digitimes rumours are not worth my comment. So it's now a vote up forum. How is that better? Change it to make sense. For example, add a way for users to verify an answer. If more than 5 users, or whatever number, verify it, then the post gets a verified stamp on the side, or best answer. That would make sense. The like button by itself is nonsensical and silly, in my opinion. Of another system is not an option, then just remove both buttons.

Imagine the poll was
Should weed and crack be legalised?

34% voted to legalise weed
44% voted no
18% voted yes

So the decision was made to legalise weed and crack. Hold on a moment. You can't just lump the pro weed with the pro crack voters and declare a victory for crack. Legalised weed? Not the end of the world. Legalise crack? 78% said no, yet it's now legal....
 
At it's core use, it's to filter the article page comments that appear outside of the forum. It's to give casual readers a sampling from the forums without having to delve into 30-40 pages.

Later on, it may (or may not) have more usage as we integrate it more.

arn

So basically it's to Facebookify it.
 
And then no one would have understood your reason for downvoting.

I don't feel like I need to understand the reason for every up or downvote. It just indicates general approval/disapproval, and I'm okay with speculating on the reasons for that. If someone feels a need to explain their reasons, they'll reply to the post and say why they agree/disagree.


At it's core use, it's to filter the article page comments that appear outside of the forum. It's to give casual readers a sampling from the forums without having to delve into 30-40 pages.

In that case, is it possible only to have voting on article posts?
 
I don't feel like I need to understand the reason for every up or downvote. It just indicates general approval/disapproval, and I'm okay with speculating on the reasons for that.
While that may be fine for you, the poster whose post was downvoted, as well as other readers of the thread may want to know if the downvote was for legitimate reasons (inaccurate or false statements, etc.), or for the purpose of harassment, trolling, etc. The purpose of a forum is communication. Voting with no explanation isn't an effective form of communication.
 
Digitimes rumours are not worth my comment.

Easy answer: Then don't.

So theSeb doesn't comment, and has no way to show his displeasure otherwise. Arn keeps posting digitimes rumors, and has no idea that there is a number of his readers don't like reading digitimes rumors. I suspect he'll post digitimes rumors anyway, but with the downvoting, those disapproving at least has the satisfaction of knowing they've made Arn cognizant of their displeasure. However, with only the upvoting, we'll only know that an article about a digitimes rumor got so many upvotes, and have no idea how many people disliked it.

So having upvoting only strikes me like a way to get only an incomplete picture. Personally, I find that annoying, and I'd prefer not to have any info at all, rather than incomplete info. But that's me.

Oh, and I guess I should note that I may not feel this way if we had started out with a system of upvoting only. But now that I've gotten used to having up and down voting, it just feels very one-sided to switch to upvoting only.

Voting with no explanation isn't an effective form of communication.

I think this is where we disagree. I've found voting with no explanation to be an effective form of communication that provides something not avaiable through everyone just posting. That is, a clear approval / dispproval of a particular post. You could go on reading through endless discussions of pros and cons for a particular argument and have no idea which side of the argument had more support, but if one post representing one side of the argument has +10 votes and the other side has -50, then it's clear which side has more general support among the forum readership. It's a different form of communication than writing out your arguments in a post, and it serves a different purpose.
 
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I say remove the down votes .... look at the poll results -- put together REMOVE and LIKE BUTTON ONLY and you get a clear winner.

Poll seems ambiguous to me.

Remove vote buttons? Like Button Only.

Couldn't you read that as removing like buttons or removing dislike buttons.

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well, if you want to leave negative feedback on a post, you'll have to engage the post and leave actual comments now.

-1
 
So theSeb doesn't comment, and has no way to show his displeasure otherwise. Arn keeps posting digitimes rumors, and has no idea that there is a number of his readers don't like reading digitimes rumors. I suspect he'll post digitimes rumors anyway, but with the downvoting, those disapproving at least has the satisfaction of knowing they've made Arn cognizant of their displeasure. However, with only the upvoting, we'll only know that an article about a digitimes rumor got so many upvotes, and have no idea how many people disliked it.

So having upvoting only strikes me like a way to get only an incomplete picture. Personally, I find that annoying, and I'd prefer not to have any info at all, rather than incomplete info. But that's me.

Oh, and I guess I should note that I may not feel this way if we had started out with a system of upvoting only. But now that I've gotten used to having up and down voting, it just feels very one-sided to switch to upvoting only.

I have to disagree.

If Arn posts a digitimes rumor that gets 100 downvotes doesn't mean anything unless there are negative comments about the article to back them up. No one would have any idea why the article was downvoted. Is it because they don't like Digitimes rumors, or Arn, or any other unknown reason.
 
Personally I'd like to see both the voting buttons remain but rather than a down vote canceling out an up vote, that instead a tally was kept of both up and down votes with another score detailing the difference. Similar to the cbc.ca news website. I find the canceling out of each votes doesn't tell me much but rather a tally of both can tell me if an issue is controversial.
 
Maybe remove the anonomisity by letting everyone know who up/down voted would improve the system? Kind of like how when setting up a pole, you can select the option to display who voted.
 
Not if you add the "Yes" and "Like Button Only" votes, both of which favor doing away with the downvote button.

I don't think that is how opinions work. There are bound to be people who would prefer to get rid of both buttons but dislike the idea of just getting rid of one.

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No. No it isn't.

You are wrong.

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But you can assume that the people in those two categories wanted some sort of change to occur to the voting buttons.

All you know is what they voted for. Assuming anything else is just vote rigging.
 
But for better or worse, the powers that be here at MacRumors have decided that down voting hurts feelings, self-esteem, etc. that they have decided to do away with it. Which is their right to do so. But as for me, I won't be using the up vote button.

No no no, you have it all wrong. They BAN people who call out other members for being moronic, children, and people with self-esteem issues. That is the order around here. If you call someone out for making an uninformed, childish, or completely idiotic argument, you get put in Time-Out, or Banned completely if you do it too often. A sad state of affairs considering how fun this community used to be.
 
No, you can't. You have to go back and ask the people who wanted to remove both buttons if they had only two options -- to keep the buttons or have like button only, which they will prefer. Because someone's preference could be in the following order:
1. No voting at all
2. Both up and down voting
3. Up voting only

As I've argued, having no voting at all and having up voting only are quite different things. And case in point, I would have loved to down vote this post, but I can't. This discussion is going to get a lot more long-winded than it otherwise would be, because everyone who disagrees with a post will be more motivated to post their dissent. If I could have down voted, I wouldn't be writing this post!

Dude, the question was "Remove vote buttons?"

It is safe to assume that the people who voted for "Yes" and "Like button only" probably understood that in order to make those options happen, something regarding the vote buttons needed to change. So, it is safe to assume that they wanted some sort of change to occur. That's all I said.

If they didn't want the system to change, they would have voted "No".

You are wrong.

No I'm not.

All you know is what they voted for. Assuming anything else is just vote rigging.

They voted for options that would require change. Therefore, it is safe to assume that they wanted a change to the voting system. I never said what kind of change they wanted, but that they wanted change. I know. It's hard.
 
It was a flawed system anyway, only showing a cumulation of votes, essentially disregarding a lot of peoples' impressions of the post. It really should display the number of up and down votes to provide a more whole feedback.

Then again, voting isn't exactly paramount in a forum. We could very well do without it.
 
Interesting decision, seeing as the most popular poll choice was to NOT change the buttons, and the second most popular was to remove the like button only*.

But I guess it's more like real life now, where everyone is a special person, whose drawing deserves a place on the fridge with the other kids.

*Yes, that's what it says.
 
Arn, allowing highly voted posts onto the article pages is not how I would place content on the website I earn my living from. You say it is for readers of article pages to get a feel of the forums without having to read 30+ pages. It would be easy for a several members to up-vote the most idiotic posts and that's what your potential new members are reading. I'd have an employee deciding what makes it on those pages. FWIW.
 
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