SiLo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 8:59 pm
Going back and looking through some of my older posts that got a negative vote, it's quite funny. Whilst they were in technical threads, the reasons for downvoting were nothing to do with being technical, it was just to disagree, or because a fan of a team didn't like my post.
How frequently is downvoting used to highlight a technically incorrect post? I suspect it is much more common for users to downvote something because they don't agree with the sentiment of the post rather than for any technical reason. I've said this before but I think we should rely on positive reinforcement (upvoting) of good technical contributions and ensure users can easily find posts that have been upvoted. Then you don't need downvoting as inaccurate posts will be ignored along with the general chat in a thread. That is the principle of stigmergy in the animal kingdom (termites, ants bees, etc), it relies purely on positive feedback (upvotes) without the need for negative feedback (downvotes).
Would it be better for the forum, if users used the report button instead of downvoting, given that most downvotes are to express that a user considers a post to be off-topic, trolling, or worse? It would be good to hear from those with the ability to downvote what they use it for.