A DownVote should have an explanation to be valid
I see a lot of good suggestions that have got DownVotes. A lot of them from same user in a nearly obsessive way.
So, I suggest that downvotes have to get a mandatory comment on the reason to be computed. This is because most people just downvote compulsively and that don't helps at all to get a suggestion to be discused and elaborated. And overall to get a better Software.
If people explains the downvote it can make the original poster to change or refine the suggestion so it can evolve into an even better idea and software.
Just my two cents ... Cheers!
7 Comments
Negative opinion hold as much value as positive one.
Implementing this request will create absurd situations where anyone will be forced to explain in detail their discontent about even the lowest quality feature request where its author didn't even bother.
The burden of doing research, providing good quality explanation and proper communication should be on the person making feature request.
Greetings,
I fully agree, and I'd put it into my signature if there was one. Let's see if there is a character limit here.
tl;dr: This issue is well-trod ground across the internet, and I have opinions.
I feel that the considerations around upvoting and downvoting are qualitatively different.
With an upvote, I'm saying that I at least generally agree, even if I have some concerns perhaps. A downvote could mean the opposite -- I generally disagree, even if I like some aspects. Often, though, a downvote is for a specific reason such as, "It would break my workflow."
Knowing why someone likes something is not as useful as knowing why someone doesn't. The originator of the idea likes it, presumably, and upvotes are a nice pat on the back.
Imagine this: your clients look at your concept drawings, and say they like them. Great, you move forward. If they say they don't, what do you do? You sheepishly ask, "Why?" Without an answer, all you hear is, "Stop!"
A downvote is saying, "Stop!" Why? It's a natural question.
An upvoter might comment to elaborate on how the feature could be even better. All good. Or they might say, "This is great!" Or, "Keep up the good work." Not much added value, and arguably is unneeded visual clutter. So maybe an upvote presents some emojis you can give in lieu of a comment.
If the downvoter comments, for instance, that the math is wrong, this is a factual statement that can be checked. If the feature relies on realism, and the math does not provide that, this could be a deal breaker.
If the downvoter comments that it would impact their workflow, this would be good information, but is not a deal breaker - a point I should not have to highlight on a forum named Right Click Select.
If the downvoter comments, "alkhfof ifef fewif," they're not serious about this. This is good information for the community to have.
So, those are the pros; what are the cons?
Hmm . . . it would be extra work, certainly. Perhaps prompts like, "This would break my workflow." Or, better, ""This would break my workflow because . . .", and you fill in the blank.
Frankly though, so far this has been about a bit of physical and mental work, which is the least the original poster should be able to expect from someone in the community engaging with their ideas. The hard part is perhaps the emotional work of publicly stating one's disagreement with another's ideas (and it should strictly be about the ideas).
Maybe the difficulty is compounded by a feeling that it's unfair that only downvotes need comments. Hopefully some of the above will show the utility of this information vs. that of upvotes. More importantly, and perhaps the discussion really should begin here, what is the goal of this whole voting system?
Is it to collect sums of integer values, and then act as if their comparison is somehow determinative? The lightbulb's full! Ship it! I have my ideas, and I've heard other's, and I do not think this is it.
I'd say the purpose of this site (and its components) is to improve Blender. Counting integers does not yield actionable information, therefore asking the dreaded, "Why?" is inevitable.
If you do this, then two issues:
You are surely right... But then I don't see what is the benefit of the compulsory downvoting.
You don't see it, but others do.
Look at likes on youtube or any social media : if you have a massive negative ratio, you know something isn't right. And if you have massive likes, you know what you're doing is good. No need for every single person to be forced to post a dissertation explaining their vote. When people vote for their political delegates, they aren't required to provide an explanation.
You seem convinced that one person is downvoting everything out of the blue for no good reason:
Like that topic asking for the same thing people ask ten times per year, or the other one that's barely readable, or the one where people smarter than me can explain things better, or that other one where it seems so obvious that it's not feasible that I just don't want to write about it. Or maybe I'm just someone that wants to read posts and hit a vote button and never write anything down. There can be MANY reasons to not write things, no matter your vote.
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From what amount of such people do we actually fill a nuisance? Only a few top voted topics get the developers' attention.
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Let's admit we have already fifty people downvoting everything, what is the better solution: annoying every user of the platform by making it more restrictive to use, or annoy these peoples instead?
Websites like stack exchange deal with this issue in a simple manner: when such vote spam is detected, the perpetrators are banned and their votes removed. End of story.These top topics have hundreds of votes, you would need dozens of systematic downvoters to be a nuisance.
In other words: is it better to punish everyone or the people causing problems?
First, how do markdown? I saw a link somewhere, but cannot find it. I stopped halfway through my comment above to look. Anyway, I'll do my best.
Vaguely true, but not applicable here. Most voting allows for you to vote for a candidate, or not. Here, you can vote yes, vote no, or not vote. The reason for this difference from the norm is that this specific system has specific goals.
As above, not applicable. More votes could mean more negative votes, and why should the system give the idea more visibility? Also, see * below.
In your opinion. I believe that commenting is a necessary component of an effective feedback process. Dissertation? Hyperbole. Also, see * below.
Other than the last sentence: Opinion, no data.
The last sentence (no foundation, see previous): Huh? Definitely a strawman. Of course everyone has access to voting. No one says different.
Bottom line, let's not go borrowing hypothetical trouble by basing decision on the idea we are as busy as stackexchange, or will be anytime soon; for instance, worrying about what every single user has to contend with. RCS is a niche within a niche within a niche. And that's fine.
Section Two
I question your premise that the OP is "convinced" about this issue. I suspect they might amend their statement to "many" or "some" if asked about it. Regardless, this is second-hand speculation, and so any conclusions drawn don't merit going deep down a trail of, "What if this were true?" But still, . . .
bp1- This makes the case for why downvotes should have comments - to know what they are thinking.
bp2- Strawman. See above.
bp3- Problems existing elsewhere, especially hypothetically, do not impact the topic at hand. Forced? Again, incorrect.
bp4- Everything? Are you proposing that all users are required to vote on every post? Of course not, I was being hyperbolic.
bp4a- Translator? Aside? Anecdotal, hypothetical, and a trap question. What's the basis for implying this bias?
bp5- You bring up interesting issues:
bp5a- The effort required to write a comment as being too big a hurdle to overcome: see my initial comment way above and the * just above, and also . . .
bp5b- Relatedly, recurring topics. Pablo has noted that this is a problem, so let's assume that it is solved. For example, say I am into game design, and propose that Blender include a game engine. Perhaps the Blender Game Engine? Pretty snappy, huh? A user seeing this could vote it up or down, or flag it as a repeat. A moderator would then agree, "Yep, another one," and append it as a comment to the OOP (the original original post). So the repeat idea is now a comment on a post, not a post, and any comments that had been made to the post before moderator intervention are now comments on the comment. Thus searching for Game Engine brings up one long post. Just a thought.
bp5c- We are back to effort. If a user finds at the end of the day or week that they only commented on a half or a tenth of the posts they would have liked, that's not just OK, it's a feature. Presumably the posts they took the time to compose some coherent thoughts about, and responded to, were ones they most cared about. Think of it as a filter.
bp6- I, personally, have not witnessed this behavior so cannot admit to it.
bp6-1 The goal (I submit) is to gather ideas to improve Blender. If a user is being a nuisance, that's a whole 'nother matter, and not relevant to how to design a voting system. And again, summing integers is not a fruitful way of generating good ideas, so the number of votes a topic has doesn't matter. Truth be told, it's not actually a vote, in that there's no consequence if an idea wins, nor even a definition of winning. It's about gathering feedback.
bp6-2a I have not seen 50 people around here, much less 50 people doing the same thing (like downvoting), so I cannot admit to this premise. On the other hand, if true, maybe our time would be better spent developing an app ala cookie crusher (or whatever) and have a downvote button people could click all day (copyright, TM). This way we could profit from their affliction rather than punishing them for it.
bp6-2b- Every user will not be annoyed if downvotes require a comment. Users that do not vote wont care. Users that only upvote won't notice. Users passionate about an idea who exert their will to express themselves won't care. Who is it that we are trying to not upset? More importantly, why might they be upset? Fruitful discussion always seems to lead to that question: Why?
bp6-2c- I do not feel that punishment should be on the table. As I said previously, problematic users are a different topic.
bp6-3- I doubt that anything stackexchange does is simple.
So that about covers it, but one last hypothetical:
Imagine a poll about the local sports team (0-4). The question is: Do you approve of how the team is being managed? Even if 90% disapprove, what does that tell us? Let's say you asked them to say why.
It turns out that half think the offense is not aggressive enough, and the other half think the team is young and uncertain and should not be as aggressive as it is, but rather should focus on the fundamentals.
Requiring an explanation if you decide to downvote something is not a hurdle or imposition, merely a consequence born of choice. It does not solve all issues, but it does keep the conversation moving.
I am not going to reply to every point made here because I'm on limited data. But in short:
We have a voting system, and a comment system.
Both systems are equally accessible. You can vote whatever you want on any topic, and you can comment whatever you want on any topic, unless you abuse any of the systems : which the users can report and only the moderators can act upon.
Both systems impact the topic's position in the topics list. "Top" sorting seem to favor "upvotes", while "Hot" sorting seem to favor the amount of comments posted in the recent days.
I do not know exactly how these sorting methods are done precisely (I.E. how downvotes are taken into account exactly).
What I do know is that, as of today, if you want a proposal to have attention from devs, your best options are either a massive upvote or lots of comments. If you get lots of upvotes, you usually get lots of comments too, so votes seem to be the one stone two birds solution. That's an observation, which could inaccurate, but can't be wrong.
Voting, in this context, affects a topic's visibility. That's a fact.
Voting, in this context, is feedback on itself. Which is even more clear the greater the numbers are and the more uneven the distribution is. That is also a fact. Voting, in this context, affects a topic's visibility. That's also a fact. But commenting isn't feedback on its own, that all depends on what it contains. That is a fact too. Feedback is to make the proposal better. Whether you agree with a proposal or not. So it makes no sense to make commenting required for one vote option and not the other.
Making any of these systems unequal will introduce bias. In the posts' visibility, and in the comments quality (i get to that later) which also impacts feedback. That's statistics.
Making one vote option require more actions from the users than another option, is unequal, and will make the vote results biased. That , is my main issue with the idea. There is a solution, though: Remove the inequity, make all vote options require commenting. You still filter out some people from voting, which isn't worth it in my opinion, but at least you don't orient the vote.
But then is the comment quality issue:
If you require people to post a comment, people will post "a comment". That could be any of these:
And i forgot I was supposed to be short... Oh well...
Silex did a better job at it .