Discussion on:

Remove the '-1' vote option?

Should the '-1' voting option be removed in the next site overhaul? Should '+1' be the only option?

I think the '-1' should be dropped. It's being overused by by people who systematically vote down anything they disagree with, no matter how well reasoned the poster presents his position. It doesn't require any response to indicate why the post was voted down, just that some unknown member didn't agree. It may be encouraging the creation of multiple accounts by a single user just for the purposes of repeatedly voting down a post.

It seemed like a good idea in early 2011, but it's time for it to join TR points and hosted blogs in the catalog of obsolete site features.

If you -1 a post you have to leave a comment or the -1 doesn't register? That way even if they don't fill in the field you'd at least be able to see who voted and call them on it.

You should have to comment to downvote.

but you can already post an opposition comment without having to downvote.

We can tag anything that we think of as Spam with a Down Vote.

Of course if it meant that I had to place a post every time I down voted Pally it would give him some idea of who is constantly placing those -1 Votes.

Personally I do it just to get under his skin and drive him nuts.

No not really I have better things to do with my time and I must say that it's very easy to accidentally click on a Down Vote when the page is loading. I find that the page jumps up enough during the loading to move it from a +1 to a -1 quite often.

Col

We list the people who are doing the voting next to the Votes. Then we could ignore down votes by clowns.

We already have the 'Flag' button for that. I've recently noticed that negative votes for spam remain added to the discussion total even after the spam is deleted. See the ever-popular 'Fix .PST' discussion; it has a total of 17 negative votes, greater than the number of votes visible in each post. Ah, synergy.

I have trouble with clicking before the page finishes loading, usually hitting the 'Start Discussion'. If I aim for the 'Last Modified' column title to resort before the page finishes, the topmost ad will push 'Start Discussion' under my cursor.

Flag doesn't show all those who down voted. The idea is that every down voter is automatically list next to the votes, regardless of whether they post.

Or am I missing something and there is already a way to find all who down voted and flag them?

It's so last century.
Also caters to the wrong attitude/people.

We'd love to hear the opinions/suggestions of the downvoting

Opinionate away

-Tammy

well shucks, that would mean I wouldn't get any votes at all! Not to mention,
it would render moot the point that Col makes in regards to the TR Community
Scoreboard votes being listed as " - XX"...anyway, I say get rid of them.
Most of the people that downvote a comment aren't brave enough to voice
their reasons!
I'm now going to sit back and count my down votes here! Hehe!

why not do something to stop the innumerable zombie posts...sure, some of
those old articles can and still do serve a useful purpose...but there is no
point in allowing a new comment or reply to a thread that is some 5 or 6 years
old. Close them after 6 months inactivity, close after 1 year of original posting.
Just my opinion...yes, I know...that a a few $s will get me a latte at Starbucks...
but we don't have a Starbucks, hehe!

And there are plenty of them around here. I'm reminded of a recent vote-down for one of AV's perfectly legitimate messages - a very good one, in fact.

Just because it illustrated how utterly stupid a few people were being (and it was a very respectable message, by the way, as opposed to what I might have said).

The whole thumbs-up thing was a ploy - yes, a ploy - to get rid of the old points system.

Quite a few people dedicated hundreds of legitimate hours earning the old TR points, but those who abused the points system were the ones who compelled TR to do away with it. Gee, punish the achievers because of the non-achievers. Sound familiar?

Then they (TR) converted the points to some number of "Thumbs Up".

That didn't last long, however, and they backed away from that, removing the accumulative (and earned) Thumbs Up - totally disregarding the contribution made by those "points earners", without whom, this site may not have even survived those early days.

Then came the bogus up and down vote.

Next will come taking that away. End of story.

The camel's nose theory in reverse, but certainly illustrating how those who really do contribute are punished for those who don't.

Just take away the whole recognition thing, TR. That was the goal from the beginning. And anyone who's been around here long enough - and has been paying attention - knows that to be true,

(Damn! And I need to jump through hoops just to post this message! I wonder which browser I should use this time? Another PITA TR glitch that can't seem to be fixed.)

If you're using Firefox, the site is incompatible with versions 18 or higher. The PTBs have filed a bug report. You can downgrade to 17.x; open the 'Flag', 'Reply', and other links in a new tab; or switch browsers.

http://www.techrepublic.com/forum/discussions/103-401131

Even those pesky corporate web-apps that used to only take IE.
I guess it might be supplanting IE as the one browser to get baseline compatibility for.
Not the worst that could happen.

to me it seems counter-intuitive to code your site to only 1 or 2
rendering engines. If you have a web site, its purpose is to attract
visitors...unless you have some sort of under-the-table deal where
you receive something for promoting browser A over browsers B
through Z.

I didn't like Chrome the last time, but that was a couple of years ago. Back then there wasn't much customization possible on the toolbars and there was no RSS capability or plug-in. I'll see if it's changed to better suit my needs.

I don't get downvotes with no comments.
I mean what's the point?
This is a discussion forum isn't it?
Saying that I'm not sure how upvotes add to it either (Points for questions is/should be a different thing).
I see a load of pluses against one of my posts, that just means it's popular. If I cared about that, I'd go in to politics...