the downvote feature is going to save letsrun - everyone browses this site but mostly only complete psychopaths post. now we can start to see that the community as a whole actually does not agree with so much of the insane garbage posted
Yep, guilty as charged, same as yourself funnily enough.
Those 32 downvotes already confirm everything OP wrote, no need to read it all. Post voting creates a peanut gallery for whoever wants to smear a post without risking any kind of reply, even anonymously. I think the vast majority of those "votes" came from this type of coward. This doesn't create a better forum; in a good forum, readers are encouraged to have the majority to move on from posts they dislike, not encouraged to engage and judge everything they see. The latter is a genuine societal ill caused by modern social media. Most people who do it fail to realize the mental problems it causes them.
dude, you're an internet troll. Of COURSE you don't want to be told over and over again with little arrows that you are an annoying internet troll. Maybe if you saw the irritation your trolling brings to the world you will, you know, troll less.
You seem to think that your trolling obligates us to reply to your trolls, while using a simple downvote makes us a 'coward,' That's absurd. It takes no courage to reply to an internet troll. Wigins, you troll because you WANT people to respond, but by god thinking down of people who don't feed the troll is absurd thinking.
I'm assuming most people don't like trolling. Maybe I'm wrong there.
^^^. 100% thisNow we can tell useless self-centered blow hards how disliked their posts are without taking up forum real estate and crowding out real content.Trolls are annoying ego seekers and add nothing the forum.
I would like to point out that my original post has now received 22 downvotes and is now hidden from being viewed in the thread, probably because of how many downvotes it received. There have been about three to five people that have legitimately engaged me in discussion about my original post. The silent mass of downvoters that exists outside of the discussion is what turns every upvote/downvote forum into an echo chamber. I encourage the Brojos to think about how the incentive system of posting on letsrun.com changes in an environment like that from what it has previously been for the previous 20 years
It's extremely rare to ever open up a post with 22 downvotes and think "Oh man...hidden gem!" In general , the positives of a down voting system far outweigh the hypothetical loss of a super useful post that gets downvoted to oblivion. This is extremely rare. However, we see decent and useful threads obliterated and crowded out by trolls or bickering nit-wits daily.People who get a kick out of being intentionally obnoxious and offensive just get upset when they get less attention than they want. Maybe find a new way of validation?Try posting about running?
Sites such as reddit.com and news.ycombinator.com use the upvote/downvote system. Over time, this system creates a drastically different user experience from a free speech site like letsrun.com for the following reasons:
1) It encourages group think, which eventually wins and dominates discourse. Over time, one side of any issue, whether it is political, social, or running related will “win out” in terms of the population on letsrun.com. This population will downvote opposing opinions and ideas, until those people leave. At that point letsrun will be just like the aforementioned sites where one can only discuss what the victorious majority approves.
2) It changes the incentives of posters. WITHOUT upvotes/downvotes, posters are incentivized by the desire to help others, to share their ideas, and other (mostly) pure incentives that are caused by the semi-anonymous nature of letsrun. This is why so much good information has been shared on here over the years. WITH upvotes/downvotes, posters gain the incentive to maximize upvotes, which weakens post quality because, in practice, it results in a higher proportion of low quality posts that toe the accepted political party line. And again, the accepted party line will become a major part of the letsrun experience, as it does on all forums that use upvotes/downvotes. The best forum post quality is in the absence of upvotes/downvotes because posts have to stand on their own merit, and their only reward is one or more replies. While not a perfect incentive, it is superior to harvesting upvotes.Letsrun has been a great website and resource for many people. I would hate to see the Brojos change that experience by altering feedback loops that made this site what it is.
Discus
The jist of your post is that the danger of a downvoting system is that most people will ending up talking about what most people want to talk about rather than most people being forced to talk about what only a few people want to talk about.Oh No!
I think what some people are discovering is that most of us do not care for what the other person has to say so most posts will be dominated by downvotes. Could some of you please prove me correct in relation to this post? Thanks in advance.
Hats off to Rojo/Wejo for having a successful site for the past 20+ years (is that the time?).
Part of its charm is that it stayed in the 90s vibe. By succumbing to "updates" and "user experience" it now will become, as other posters mentioned, group think.
Ironic that the book, The Shallows What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains talks about how technology dictates how people think and behave....i learned about here on letsrun.
With upvotes downvotes people will start to think according to the rules of that technology. And it will be very rigid.
Dont believe me? Read that book.
Overall letsrun has been a great site. I would have left it exactly the same. What a shame.
It will eventually become a horrible website filled with sheep.
Agree on all points. Don't mind the upvotes, but would like to see downvotes disappear.
I hadn’t thought of that but might be worth trying a week with only up votes.
No! Keep the down votes. You are not using it to rank posts or to silence voices. The feedback is useful for users and, thus far, only well known incendiary posters are raising objections. Kind of telling, wouldn't you say?
Answer (1 of 3): A (downvote) maybe a good feedback to a Facebook post but based on my assumption I think very active Facebook users are too emotional to handle a downvote, unlike Quora where majority of contributors are open...
The best forum post quality is in the absence of upvotes/downvotes because posts have to stand on their own merit, and their only reward is one or more replies. While not a perfect incentive, it is superior to harvesting upvotes.
The upvote/downvote system will simply encourage the many trolls and degenerates this website has gathered together through the years.
It won't be much of a change, because everyone already knows that's what this forum is about.
Maybe some trolls finally will have their Sally Fields-esque a-ha realization: "This time I feel it. And I can’t deny the fact that you hate me. Right now, you hate me!”
Agree on all points. Don't mind the upvotes, but would like to see downvotes disappear.
I hadn’t thought of that but might be worth trying a week with only up votes.
Please please keep the downvotes! There's no need to sort by them; just keep displaying them. This is the best update to LetsRun since I've been visiting the site. As a rule, I never respond to trolls, so I end up just closing threads with a lot of troll posts, even if there's good stuff too. Being able to click a downvote (and see that others have done the same) will allow me to tune out the toxic stuff and focus on the many great posts here.
Very good site for running news. Like the message board too for running tips and general human experience chatter. I avoid any thread that seems like a waste of time. Once in a thread, I sometimes see garbage posts that cheapen the site and are a drain on the reading experience. I will gladly spend a second to give a garbage post a downvote. Of course, there’s then a responsibility task on the admin side to remove the worst few offenders in volume and frequency of garbage posting. Collecting downvotes may be catnip for a few attention psychos, who need to be sent elsewhere to degrade some other site, instead of this one. Keep up the good work!
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