Heckler's veto
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@Testament I agree.
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@sao said in Heckler's veto:
I also wanted people to know it was me when I downvoted tho. I don’t actually like anonymizing things. I think anonymity on the internet tends to make things worse, not better.
I mean, I was perfectly happy that people knew I downvoted them, but this is a personality thing that has umm pros and cons lol. And anyway I don’t think any serious discussion is being had about bringing them back in any form (though I could be wrong).
Which is how I view anonymity, really. I think it can be very toxic because part of what it does is remove some inhibitions about how you’re responding to people, some of which leads to very bad behavior but some of which can also be productive in terms of shaking up whether you’re responding to the person as you know them or the person’s opinion, which aren’t always the same. Ultimately this isn’t an anonymous environment, for some of us more than others but I never engage with it with any particular anonymity. Within my post history I always have to own what I say. I’m also not someone who terribly cares about what form upvotes take or even if they go away, it’s just annoying when somebody goes through psychological yoga to read motives onto a click that don’t exist.
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If downvotes have served any purpose, is that once, on a different forum, not here or MSB, downvotes were visible and after downvoting about a topic, that person reached out to me to just ask why. This delved into a rather lengthy discussion that we both came out of it for the better. Now, do I expect this in every situation? No, but it did help me take the stance of “If you disagree with me or don’t like me, I’d like to know why.” as I’ve become a large proponent of open communication when that communication is viable. Not everyone will, and that’s fine.
That said, I doubt I’d want downvotes back in any kind of capacity, as despite my few good instances that were caused by them, overall I don’t believe they’re worth it.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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Another vote for no downvotes please. I think Just Upvotes works really well for this community where people are very willing to spell out in no uncertain terms what they don’t like if they see it.
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Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to start a discussion of downvotes as like an actual potential thing happening. I was just talking abt the anonymizing thing and wandered off into the weeds.
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@sao said in Heckler's veto:
Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to start a discussion of downvotes as like an actual potential thing happening. I was just talking abt the anonymizing thing and wandered off into the weeds.
All good, fam. I was just piling on to get ahead of it. I like (in theory, there have not been any serious disagreements in the short time I’ve been here) that this community is willing to speak up when they see something they don’t like. But downvotes to me are the equivalent of throwing rotten vegetables at the stage.
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Back in THE DAY, before social media with upvotes or downvotes, there was Usenet.
And one of the things that came out of those days was the rueful acknowledgement of the Usenet Nod, which was basically that no one responded to your post. Because if they thought you were WRONG, you’d fucking hear about it (at length), but most people, if they see a post that they mildly agree with, then they’re just going to nod at their computer and move on to the next post. They’re not going to go out of their way to respond.
If we did away with upvotes, there would just be silence after a lot of very good posts, because people would just Usenet Nod, and spend their energy telling that other asshole over there that they are wrong on the internet. Likewise, most posts that don’t have a lot of upvotes aren’t disliked, they’re just nodded at and moved on from. So, when at all possible, just imagine that most of the forum goers, if they aren’t currently calling you names or telling you where they think you screwed up, are reading your post, smiling, nodding, and then moving on to the next post.
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If we got away from upvotes I’d be just fine with a litany of gif responses. Not that I don’t already do that.
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Best I agree gif.
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@dvoraen said in Heckler's veto:
@Meg I don’t envy your direct message inbox.
(psst @hellfrog – live up to your name and give @Meg hell for not having 100% upvote rate from her)
i have given her hell by making the two posts she won’t upvote
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@Testament said in Heckler's veto:
If downvotes have served any purpose, is that once, on a different not here or MSB, downvotes were visible and after downvoting about a topic, that person reached out to me to just ask why. This delved into a rather lengthy discussion that we both came out of it for the better. Now, do I expect this in every situation? No, but it did help me take the stance of “If you disagree with me or don’t like me, I’d like to know why.” as I’ve become a large proponent of open communication when that communication is viable. Not everyone will, and that’s fine.
you are saying this like this situation is a good outcome! this is so foreign to my way of thinking, lol
i think if you contact me personally and privately for any reason you should go to jail
I’m kidding. Sort of.
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@hellfrog For sure, that is an absolutely fair response. But it was a conversation meant in earnestness, so I didn’t mind having it. Besides, I respected that person’s willingness to ask straight up. Not everyone one is, and that’s fine too. But I will say it was an odd situation that ended turning up good simply out of the mutual respect that was offered.
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@junipersky said in Heckler's veto:
Who are these people with TIME to see who upvoted what?!
I’ll cop to this, but only in the context of the waning days of Derp’s power trip. Was mega disheartening to be facing down silence, and see most of the staff there instantly upvoting some garbage takes.
On that note: I think the only real thing I have to say on this one is that there’s a very real thing in human behavior about momentum. When we see a post with zero upvotes, some people might pause before delivering that first upvote.
It’s like taking the last appetizer at a group dinner. Several people might want to, but they don’t want to be the first one to reach for the last jalapeno popper.
Downvotes would indeed suck. Of everything in here so far, huge agree to variety of different reaction possibilities. It’s one of the things I love about Discord.
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@Solstice said in Heckler's veto:
@junipersky said in Heckler's veto:
Who are these people with TIME to see who upvoted what?!
I’ll cop to this, but only in the context of the waning days of Derp’s power trip. Was mega disheartening to be facing down silence, and see most of the staff there instantly upvoting some garbage takes.
On that note: I think the only real thing I have to say on this one is that there’s a very real thing in human behavior about momentum. When we see a post with zero upvotes, some people might pause before delivering that first upvote.
It’s like taking the last appetizer at a group dinner. Several people might want to, but they don’t want to be the first one to reach for the last jalapeno popper.
Downvotes would indeed suck. Of everything in here so far, huge agree to variety of different reaction possibilities. It’s one of the things I love about Discord.
I would be very happy to have ‘cat’ or ‘scream’ or ‘carrot’ as a response to posts here, as additions to ‘upvote’, for sure for sure.
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@eye8urcake carrot is a very important point to be able to make
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Would it be possible to make upvotes only visible or only send a notification to the one getting the upvote? That would prevent a million ‘me too’ posts while still letting the person who posted know they’ve got people in their corner.
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@TNP I mean, yeah, but someone would have to build that plug in.
But the information is available and you could hook into it.
If you wanted.
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I personally don’t think that a flurry of “i agree” stuff would be more annoying than the pile on of memes that sometimes happens. People might even share why they agree. I will be honest that I don’t look at who upvotes other people’s posts and keep a tally. A lot of that is just because my brain doesn’t work that way. It never occurs to me to WHO list stalk or the dreaded wikiupdate alt stalking that sometimes happened on wod places I played. (where people would then yell at you if you played with someone else “more” because they could see it in the logs) The thought of anyone tracking and then confronting me about an upvote, frankly, is physically repulsive to me–it reminds me a lot of that wikistalking stuff that was just…it wasn’t a good thing. I’m glad nobody has ever said anything to me about that. I’m sure nobody would mean upset me as much as it would, but I don’t know. That would make me intensely, intensely uncomfortable.
I do understand about feeling unseen or less liked. And I do think sometimes people put too much importance on the numbers of upvotes (I’ve always hated the most liked list user category for some reason, probably because I don’t think it reflects value over time of someone’s contributions). But I wonder though that would removing the upvotes and then having a post get swamped with replies of memes or other stuff that would make it scroll fast wouldn’t also feel bad. I remember on MSB when for awhile there would be some people that would utilize spamming that stuff if they wanted a person to shut up/drop a subject/they decided that the topic was done so they just decided to drown it in scroll through. I always rolled my eyes at that, but I do know that it didn’t feel great for some of the folks that were targeted by it).
So I’m not sure that feeling is something that can be avoided by some kind of structure or mechanical thing. It’s a vulnerability thing. It’s easiest solved by maybe if it was safe to ask people (or tell them) hey, I’m feeling kinda down about my place in this game/community/friends group, I’m sure it’s just brain weasels but I could really use some positive talk/hearing about something recently i’ve done that you liked, ect. But that is hard. really hard. Don’t want to seem “needy”, I would say most of us are conditioned that is a dangerous or disgusting thing.
The times when I’ve felt unsure, unseen, or unwanted (knowing the latter is 99 percent probably brain weasels) I think it’s never been upvotes that have helped me but reaching out to people and asking them to confirm that I’m an okay person and mostly fun to be around, that I contribute something. I mean I worry about that too (are they rolling their eyes), but it seems to have a more immediate and helpful effect.
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@Ren said in Heckler's veto:
I mostly just keep wishing I could do Discord-style reactions instead of upvoting. >_>
Completely agree with this. Replace the binary endorphin machine with something that is expressive.
No idea if that’s something that can just be installed in this software or not, but it’d be nice.
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There are plug-ins for emoji reacts, but I remain concerned about the possibility that they will act as downvotes. I haven’t actually seen any talk about that or how to mitigate it. Everyone is unified around not wanting downvotes, but you can add reacts that are down pointing arrows, poop emojis, etc. etc.
