Downvotes / Hiding Survey

@Background Pony #8483  
I think the cause of that complaint was the fact that hiding an image did not affect its score, so even the most disliked images on the database suddenly had a higher rating than many other legitimately good works.
 
If there was a better way of doing a scoring system, it would have had to be done when the site was young, before images had five years of score history behind them - unless the change was conveniently backwards compatible.

@SuperSupermario24  
Well in this context the rules saying mass downvoting is bad and the guy above saying ‘On what basis? Cos you say so?’
 
Part of the reason is because the mods run the site and decided on that rule but people tend to focus on that to forward the tired ‘Mods are nazis spiel’ cos they can’t get their way on a site they don’t own. I’m sure there’s other image sites that allow mass downvoting but this isn’t one of them.

@Pagan  

 
Exaclty. For the argument of “innocent pony != kink/fetish” i can provide the example from my own: there is totally safe “canon x oc” shipping that annoys and triggers me alot ^tm, so i even wrote somewhere how it’s bad ship and then filtered it out.

@Background Pony #4DD3  
It’s been said a number of times why that rule is in place but people love that strawman.

@SuperSupermario24
 
Arma worded it poorly, IMO. It’d be more accurately “it’s my site and I get to decide the rules”. World of difference.
 
Thing is, we have and do listen to community feedback on the rules and their application - witness the existence of this thread and prior threads on other issues. We take the thoughts of the community into consideration, but we also have to keep the good operation of the site and protection of the broader community in mind when considering those thoughts, and there are times (such as suggestions of stripping privacy features from users or placing strict algorithmic limitations on particular activities) when the two conflict. In those cases the site and the - _{god dammit} - greater good always come first.
 
So really it’s more a case of “It’s my site and I’ll listen to what you have to say, but I get the final decision”.

@Derpy Whooves  
Oh, and don’t forget that no fewer than 3 users in this very thread have at one point or another been accused of being a sockpuppet account for TSP, on the basis that they argue with him frequently and haven’t been permabanned yet. Which is hilariously wrong and demonstrably so, but it also means you can’t point to anything they’ve said on the matter as proof that he said it, either. That is a level of insane troll logic I don’t think anyone would buy, but I’ve learned never to underestimate the power of stupid.

@Archonix  

 
I take it you are a Tau Player. :P

@warc9
 
I’ve always been partial to the imperial guard, but those blue hotties and their OP strike vehicles are seriously tempting me.

@Archonix  

 
*Creepy monotone*  
THE GREATER GOOD.
 
But seriously, I agree wholeheartedly with your post. I don’t think most of the userbase understands the struggles the mods go through to keep this site from going up in flames, myself included. Keeping this site nice and healthy precludes userbase preference and demands about 9 times out of 10.

I’d just like to dart in to point out that if the booru were really run as I “wanted” it to be run, there’d be about 50k images tops and far fewer features.
 
But much like anything else here on the site, what I have the “power” to do and what I actually think is what should be done are different things; more people than just me use the site now. The whole “It’s his/my site” isn’t an argument made for “just deal with it”, it’s just a way to give some people a little bit of perspective of what they’re angrily arguing over or calling a tyrannical haven of censorship: a free privately owned My Little Pony fansite operated by a few people.

@Derpy Whooves
 
The quote is a paraphrase of the logic a few people, including a mod, argued to Locky when he asserted that participating here is a right, which I didn’t agree with, but defended his later response against people who used private ownership as a counterargument against being allowed to participate here in this post at @Locky
 
No one has been accusing the admins of saying that; it’s a mockup quote I made and people threw around for a page or two.

@Background Pony #8483  
you have to use your words to dislike something instead of silently downvoting  
Were you not here last week? They tried that; people responded by breaking out the pitchforks and Frankenstein rakes and rioting. There are a lot of users who dislike a thing enough that clicking a little red arrow is enough to mollify them and they move on, but don’t dislike it enough to open the page and yell about it in the comments; forcing them to indicate their dislike in written form is almost 100% guaranteed to exacerbate that dislike, and too often to the point of being obnoxious about it.
 
I don’t really have a problem with a reduction in people making nonconstructive whine comments about things they don’t like, instead of using the filter/hide system  
They demonstrably will not do that, though. Maybe over the long term it might taper off, but in the interim the comment sections would be on fire and there’s only so abuse much the moderators’ livers can take.

@TexasUberAlles  
Damnit, wrong browser.

You may have already considered these ideas at some point, but they may be a good compromise. Just some thoughts.
 
#1 Make a daily downvote limit. Every account could only downvote something like 5 images per day/week. This would make each downvote that much more meaningful. This also means that if someone creates multiple accounts, they can only downvote a few times per account. I would think that might reduce your moderating workload a bit.
 
#2 Much like on youtube, allow the artist/op to decide if they would like to allow voting on each individual image. They could click a checkbox to disallow it. This could also be used for disabling comments too, which is that much less moderating work for you & that much less stress on certain artists.
 
I don’t know how difficult something like that would be to implement.

Would rather have a hide than a downvote.

@The Smiling Pony  
tsp wat r u doin

@ComradeFluffski  
Eh, it might just be easier to just programmatically track suspicious behavior beyond a report list, i.e. warn when multiple accounts created by one IP gave the same rating to the same picture.
 
Although I would not be surprised if they’ve already done something like that.

@TexasUberAlles
 
I too briefly once suggested that upvotes and downvotes alike be shown on a list like faves already are. I mean this ex post facto, not to leak all the existing downvotes. I mean the rationale of protecting the privacy of downvoters is kinda interesting if it’ll show faves. Because golly, if it hurts someone’s “fee fees” to be downvoted surely the brave souls who have well reasoned evaluation reasons for downvoting won’t get their own fee fees put in jeopardy for showing their sophisticated tastes as art critics right? Someone could just as well-kink shame that hypothetical guy who faves diapers or whatever.
 

Dooting my way into this.

Hiding is for stuff I don’t want to see. Still good art, I just don’t want to see it. Downvotes should be for shit posts.

@The Smiling Pony  
I lol’d

@ComradeFluffski  

 
I honestly don’t think that’s a good idea. Whenever I’ve seen the ability to selectively disable a feature like that, it always results in drama when used. Cries of censorship and accusations of people only wanting hugboxing echo chambers are just the start of it. And that’s without considering the opposite problem: Artists turning off voting and comments and then intentionally uploading stuff they know will rile people up.
 
If a user wants to disable the display of elements on their end, they should have that ability. But I don’t think if the user is an artist they should be able to disable the functionality on their works for everyone.

I think a big part of the issue comes from a difference in the perceived purpose of downvotes.
 
TSP has clearly stated that the original intent of downvotes is primarily to filter out low-quality shitposts, not just as an “I don’t like this for whatever reason at all” button as many seem to think it is or should be.
 
Not trying to make any judgments about which one is correct, I’m just trying to see if I can pin down where the main disagreement is.

@Vinyl Fluff  
Yeah that’s a good point. It might cause more drama than it saves. =)

@shutter  
No one has a “right” to use this site, but at the same time, we don’t ban people “just because” either. Every ban has a justification attached to it, and beyond that, the bulk of the bans we hand out are 1-3 days long. It’s fairly rare to get a permaban on this site.
 
@ArkyNoid  
Showing new votes “from this point forward” likely won’t happen either. The way faves/upvotes/downvotes are setup, we don’t keep track of when they actually happened. Additionally, it’s still a privacy thing as well - a lot of people want to give positive feedback on images, but they may not want their name publicly attached to it like a favorite would do (fetish content, controversial themes, etc).
 
@SuperSupermario24  
That’s kinda how I view downvotes as well. We do have score based filtering (I believe the site’s default filter hides anything with a score less than -50), so downvoting an image is kinda a means of community-based quality control on images, which will automatically filter out pictures where the bulk of the community believes they are less-than-desirable.