Change Down-Voting mechanisms
IMHO, down voting a proposal is not a bad thing, it should not reduce karma, systematically.
Only when
- User only down-vote
- User down-vote without explaining why.
Perhaps the down-vote button should open a popup with a list of reason (duplicate, irrelevant, existing as an addon, custom reason, etc ....)
The reason this proposal is that there is a few proposal I would like to down-vote, because I think developers should note spend time on it or the proposal doesn't make sense. Also if a comment is mandatory for down-voting, I'll notified if the proposal is updated and I'll be able to change my mind.
5 Comments
For now, I wouldn't worry too much about if/how downvotes affect karma. Karma isn't currently used for anything in the system, so its value doesn't mean much at the moment (I should probably just hide that number from the site for the time being).
There is already a plan to add a tagging/flagging system to the site for duplicate/incomplete/etc. indicators on proposals. It'll just take some time to develop.
And while I agree that it would be great if everyone would give a reason for their downvote (I know I try to), we should also recognize that not everyone is interested in having a discussion... so I'm a little wary about making a comment mandatory when downvoting. That could either prevent people from voting at all or, worse, lead to worthless comments.
I think making comments necessary (or at the very least, strongly encouraged) when down-voteing would be extremely helpful. Because otherwise when people down-vote a proposal without saying why, it's basically the same as someone saying: "I don't like the idea, I'm not telling you why, I just don't like the idea", not very helpful is it?
Would you rather have that implied or just an empty comment that says exactly that ("I don't like it and I'm not telling you why")?
I'm sure there would be a lot of comments like that, but I think overall there would be more comments actually explaining a problem in a proposal then there are now.
pff, I'm down-voting this and won't explain you. (just kidding I up-voted)