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You can upvote comments again
By adamg on Wed, 09/25/2013 - 9:51pm
Just installed a jaunty little thumb thing, which you'll now find at the end of every single comment.
The software has the ability to do both up and down votes. I decided not to enable down votes, at least not yet, because we're already a fairly cantankerous group as a whole, and I didn't feel like adding still more negativity to the site. I do need to see if I can move the thumb to the top right corner of a comment, if only because that's how the old system worked, and, you know, tradition.
Let me know what you think. And should I enable this on the posts themselves, in addition to the comments?
Free tagging:
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Comments
Down Votes Are Bad (Except At 'The Herald')
I agree that down votes create negativity, and I'm glad you're leaving them turned off. (However, on the rare occasions I post to 'The Boston Herald', I consider whatever I write is positive, if it gets a huge number of down votes there.)
Also, hoping you'll turn the BB codes on again, for adding images and videos.
BBcode
It's back now, sorry about that!
Still Not Seeing Them
I'm still not seeing BB code images or videos. For example, this old post had lots of images.
Hmm ...
I see lots of links in there, so I wonder if the BB tags got stripped out on the upgrade, which would suck. I'll look.
The Tags Are Still There If You Click "Edit"
If I click "Edit" on one of my old comments, I see that the BB tags are still there, but the image and enclosing link are stripped out when I click "Preview". Here's the full text that's there when I click "Edit":
Note, I had to add a space in the first [ img] tag to keep it from being stripped out of the quoted code block. Otherwise, all you see is this:
Imo, down votes ≠ negativity
I regularly follow dozens of sites with active comment sections, many of which allow downvotes (eg any site using Disqus). I don't see any evidence that the ability to downvote negatively influences the tenor of conversation - quite the opposite, in fact.
Having the ability to vote both up and down allows more people to register approval or disaproval without threads degenerating into endless back-and-forths loaded up with "me too" type comments. A perfect example is this recent citizens complaint thread where several folks just being nasty at each other should be getting downvoted to make it clear they're acting like children.
When a comment gets both up and down votes, responders seem to take more care to address the actual content of the post, rather than just slam it off-handedly. Otoh, blatant trolls tend to be refuted by one or two comments that get voted up so much compared to the troll's large downvote that most people seem to feel they can move on and not bother responding - the troll hijack fails because it's hard to snipe back at a downvote.
No.
The posts you don't have to click on (if it's likely to be a "bike fight", I'll often skip clicking that post); but once you're in, you're stuck with the various One-Note-Johnnys (Y'all know EXACTLY who you are) who do not deserve to be rewarded.
Kudos for not including a down button. I'd have a very hard time not down-thumbing some peoples' comments just because I saw their names :(
I believe you're better than that.
So are most people here.
I think Adam should change
I think Adam should change the thumbs up to some other Uhub meme'd icon. Perhaps the weather alert toast?
A thought on downvoting
On Disqus, Guests (anon as we like to call them here) can upvote but only registered users of the site can downvote. That might be interesting. Otherwise, I up vote for leaving downvote off.
By the way Adam, I didn't get a chance to comment on the other thread. Thank you for all the hard work you put in here. I'm sure you didn't anticipate it having to think about server capacity and comment formats when you started this site many moons ago.
Bigger is better - the old vs. the new
I liked the old design better because the numbers indicating the
number of upvotes were of a large font size. The "magic" of the
upvoting process (transforms from small to big size on the screen)
is, alas, gone.
Also, it appears that the older posts comments did not get their
number of upvotes carried along with them in the new system.
Not that's it's the end of the world but all that hard work of us cantankerous
types - just gone.....
Some agreement
The number needs to be more prominent and the thumb/icon less so. As it appears now, it looks like every comment has been upvoted at least once (and how many times is not obvious on first glance).
Upvotes on posts would be useful
Sometimes there are no comments but the post is interesting. Sometimes I'm wondering if people are ignoring the post or just don't have anything to add. The upvote count would help give some idea of the community's opinion.
Adam G
I did notice a performance hit once you enabled upvotes. Seems like it takes longer for the pages to load now.
FYI..
I don't like the idea
of upvoting posts. Upvoting comments is reasonable, because most often include clarifications or opinions. But IMHO the posts themselves should be regarded as neutral. If a person doesn't like a post, they can always voice their opinion in a comment.
Still not sure if the ability of downvoting comments is a good idea.
Trolls!
Now all you need is a jaunty little app that's trolls the trolls! ;)