Forum Reactions [merged]

Either have both options to thumbs up/down, or have neither.Both provide the opportunity to express an opinion without having to comment.One without the other makes no logical sense, unless the end-goal is to create a sense of fake positiveness.

I can't agree. The results are skewed as long as there's a downvoting button because just enough people use that tactically rather than strictly as a "I disagree" marker. Further, our interest as a community aren't symmetrical either: we're generally interested in what ideas are popular and not all that concerned with whether an idea is unpopular.

I wouldn't have argued in favor of removing "thumbs down". Neither am I upset to see it get a :-1:

I feel like I am reading the WoW forums from a month or so ago when they removed the downvote feature. I am personally glad it didn't remain in these forums because I saw first hand there how much it was abused. I think they made the right call here to remove it before these forums became what the WoW forums were.

But on the flip side. I do have to kind of agree that maybe removing both is a better idea and wouldn't be against that. But really, it isn't too big of a deal to me personally. Regardless, this will die down and everyone will forget the downvote feature was here for only what? A week or two?

Orr just use words and state why you disagree. That's my problem with the system as a whole tbh. You don't have to post to say whether you agree or disagree and why. Just get rid of them both at this point since it's creating more hassle than it's worth.

Having only Thumbs Up is really no different from the old forums, which had +1, with the exception of seeing a more precise count. The old forum had a fuzzy count with the underline and/or the star.

I rarely used the old +1, as it seemed to mean little, and now with only Thumbs Up, I'll probably rarely use this feature (as, again, it means little with no counter-balance). /shrug

Without a thumbs down to counterbalance, all thumbs ups do is give a false impression. Sure you can have 100 thumbs ups, but does that really mean anything when there are 5000 thumbs downs that didn't get seen? No, no it doesn't. It's like making a poll for something controversial and giving the options of "I agree" & "I agree". You won't get an accurate result as you deny a voice to those who disagree.

Personally, I think it's better, I mean, changing "Thumbs Up" with "Agree" would be a better option overall, because I believe we can do without a bunch of posts that say nothing more then "I agree" however, if you disagree with someone, you should be required to put up a post and explain why.

IF for whatever reason, they bring back the "Thumbs down"/Disagree option, it should be made public who disagrees with the poster, so they can at least ask why they disagree with them.

i think there needs to be a "LOL" button...

The thumbs down feature would have been a good idea if it weren't for all the trolls who abused it. See, when there is an opinion posted, you have the right to disagree, of course. But often, it was used on posts that did not represent an opinion whatsoever, that were 100% neutral and contained mere information (no more, no less), only to troll the poster (and since it was made anonymous it was even easier to troll someone).

You still can disagree on something the old-fashioned way, by simply posting your counter-opinion, and I am certain many people who agree with you will respond with a thumbs up. :) It has the same effect, but is trollproofed. ;)

@Ashantara.8731 said:often, it was used on posts that did not represent an opinion whatsoever, that were 100% neutral and contained mere information (no more, no less)

Indeed, often I couldn't figure out why someone might have :-1: because there wasn't any response that said that the information was inaccurate. (Unlikely my colleague, I'm not ready to ascribe a motivation to why this might have happened, even as much as I agree that the feature was being ill-used if not misused.)

I don't really care for "helpful" but thumbs up should definitely be gone.

Can't vote, my friend, because you didn't include a "don't think it will matter in the least" nor a "probably fine based on how people were using it".In other words, I neither approve nor disapprove and I certainly don't think it's fair to combine that with "they should also remove" as it biases the responses.

Besides that, three are already two threads on the topic. Do we really need another?

I have to disagree with removing the thumbs down button. Reddit is quite possibly the largest forum on the internet, certainly orders of magnitude bigger than the GW2 forums at any rate, and it has kept the down vote button all these years because there is no inherent problem with it. Sure, there will be some trolls. But not nearly as many as people who legitimately use the downvote button.

Its a very efficient way to see the consensus on a certain post, which makes it very good at judging the quality of feedback, much better than just blindly having upvotes does. Like someone mentioned, you could have 50+ upvotes, but if you had 500 downvotes on that same post it shows thatthe majority of people disagree with the idea. Now though you would just see 50 upvotes and be led to assume that hte community agrees with it.

Please either reinstate the thumbs down button, or remove thumbs up.

If you keep thumbs up, at the very least let us thumb down top level posts in threads. This at least gives some realistic feedback as to how the community feels about the topic

I'm going to miss the downvote as well. Guess I'll just go back to engaging in 150,000 characters days-long arguments with people.

The problem with having both is that people become more emotionally tied to disagreeing than they do to agreeing, so gauges of real opinion remain at least as equally skewed. At least without a thumbs down button you aren't making it ridiculously easy to contribute nothing but negativity to a forum.

Sorry, but I disagree.

People were already using it without even getting in the trouble of posting in the threads they were down voting.Glad it was removed.

I think we are now back to the old forums' implementation of 'Thumbs up/+1', and it will mean little.

@kurfu.5623 said:Either have both options to thumbs up/down, or have neither.Both provide the opportunity to express an opinion without having to comment.One without the other makes no logical sense, unless the end-goal is to create a sense of fake positiveness.

your very right on this but they will never see or get it . case in point the storage post for pof . they really are just so happy on that post which I think that is up to page 8 or 9 now

can not delete this posting and have noting to add to this topic good bye

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:often, it was used on posts that did not represent an opinion whatsoever, that were 100% neutral and contained mere information (no more, no less)

This is the EXACT reason why I was opposed to them making the votes anonymous. I said it would happen if they changed it while they were still visible, and sure enough, as soon as they changed it to be anonymous we saw downvotes galore on everything. I am 100% positive, that if they had never made the votes anonymous we never would have seen a massive burst of downvote spam. We would have seen downvotes, yes, but they wouldn't have been from people who just want to troll others. They would have been from people who honestly disagree with the post.

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Having only Thumbs Up is really no different from the old forums, which had +1, with the exception of seeing a more precise count. The old forum had a fuzzy count with the underline and/or the star.

I rarely used the old +1, as it seemed to mean little, and now with only Thumbs Up, I'll probably rarely use this feature (as, again, it means little with no counter-balance). /shrug

It is different because thumbs up are shown and can/will be used as a reason to ignore disagreement.The +1 in the old forum didn't show and there wasn't even a way for us to know how many we've got. All it did is rearrange posts in the "most liked posts" page on our account.

No more than the thumbs up/underline/star could be used in the old forums.

Does it really influence your opinion of a post? It makes no difference to me; I can form my own opinion.

@kurfu.5623 said:Either have both options to thumbs up/down, or have neither.unless the end-goal is to create a sense of fake positiveness.We are gettin closer...

@Haishao.6851 said:

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Having only Thumbs Up is really no different from the old forums, which had +1, with the exception of seeing a more precise count. The old forum had a fuzzy count with the underline and/or the star.

I rarely used the old +1, as it seemed to mean little, and now with only Thumbs Up, I'll probably rarely use this feature (as, again, it means little with no counter-balance). /shrug

Except that it gives a completely false impression. For the most part, the bulk of the votes will always be centered on the first post in the thread. This means, without a downvote option, those who disagree with the thread will mostly be ignored. Unless the 2nd post in the thread is disagreement, there will never be a highly upvotes post that shows disagreement with a topic. And even with a 2nd post that shows disagreement, it will only be upvoted by those who bothered to read past the first post and who share the same view as the 2nd post. People who disagree but have a completely different view generally won't upvote the 2nd post as they still don't agree with them either. As a result, people will look at the number of upvotes on the initial post and say "Nah, you're wrong, and more people agree with this than disagree" since there is no way to prove otherwise. Quite frankly, most people who disagree with a topic will read the topic and if they can downvote/disagree on the post itself will do so and then leave. They don't read the whole thread, they don't read and react to replies in the thread, unless they are passionate about the subject. Without both options, things will be skewed, and it will always look like more people agree than disagree regardless of what the truth of the situation may be.

As the title says, I do think that removing the thumb down was a bad idea.1) You did it on the day one Anet post was massively down voted. Most definitly a coincidence but it will stick in people's mind as "they did it so we can't express our disagreement so easily". So bad timing.2) You did not remove Helpfull nor thumb up. If I have to type a message to express how I disagree with a post, with don't I have to type a message to express how I agree ?3) It promote the idea that only positive thoughts are allowed on the forum. But without criticism there's no progress only stagnation.