156 votes
allow negative votes?
sometimes, especially in cases where there's a lot of traffic on a suggestion, allowing someone to vote *against* something might be worthwhile.
Obviously negative votes should still count against the user's vote total (except as a positive subtraction, if you know what I mean... ;)), and to avoid slashdot-style battles, perhaps setting the maximum negative vote to -1 would be a good idea.
rrwhite
It's a very interesting idea, one that we've toyed with ourselves. Right now we're focused on some of the integration aspects of the site but we'll come back around to tweaking the game theory after that. Your proposal is conservative enough, since it's tying negative votes to the vote pool, that I could see us implementing that as is.
7 months ago
dankeldsen
Definitely vote downs (and potentially thresholds to shield the junk)
5 months ago
TylerRick
Related idea: Show # of - votes in addition to sum.
Many sites (newegg, amazon, ...) have done this successfully. I like to see "product X has 20 - reviews and 30 + ones" better than just "+10".
Might be too cluttered to show # of -'s in search results, but definitely on suggestion DETAIL page, could show it attractively below vote total... Even a full histogram like amazon does...
4 months ago
sir_Jibi
To make it less cluttered, you can show the details as mouseover hint.
2 months ago
riffian
An absolute must!
2 months ago
malk.zameth
not only an abslout must, but, one should not be limited to -1, just limited in vote use and in givi ng the same negative maximum as positive.
if the maximum positive is +3, the maximum negative should be -3 and both in this case should eat 3 votes, anything else would compromise balance.
about 1 month ago
goelp
I think this is implicitly implemented in the sense that - since you are limiting the number of votes that a user can cast, it automatically prioritises voting, hence negative voting will be redundant.
Moreover, if a person in the community gets a few negative votes, he may be discouraged to post more suggestions, which wont be good for the site owners.
about 1 month ago
duff
Votes against a feature are a good idea. That way you get to not only see what users want by their positive votes, but what they *don't* want by their negative votes. But, I think you'd have to show both votes for and votes against (like www.perlmonks.org does) rather than the net sum. Plus with this comment system, you can have good discussion about why a feature is loved or reviled.
about 1 month ago
RBraxton
If I could vote against this, I would! Ever here of the Negativity Bias? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias ...Is Zantac sponsoring this idea?
16 days ago
RBraxton
Treated people negatively without giving a reason... ! This is UserVoice so if you disagree USE youR VOICE! Let's leave name calling to uninformed children.
16 days ago
malk.zameth
voting something down is no name calling, is just voting something down! the most tried and true method for aeons (back to the roman vote of thumbs up and thumbs down)
comments are important (for and against) but the total of votes is also important (or we could just stop the votes and turn into a forum) taking the comments for both sides but the votes for only one is not a good game theory.
15 days ago
malk.zameth
also one can easily have negative bias with a positive vote it just depends of the subject at hand! one easy and exagerated example would be the creation of a suggestion right now to `ban malk.zameth from user voice'! while ludicrous it does olustrate the point, I am pretty sure you can find several less exaggerated examples.
15 days ago
furiends
Voting down doesn't overcome a 'slashdot-style' battle but instead gives them even more ammunition to take down an idea just as easily as pushing one over the top. (and yeah, if I COULD vote down an idea, this would be the one) =)
11 days ago
RBraxton
Constructive criticism vs. Criticism. The goal is to derive a social or economic benefit for everyone. You see, people are easily influenced to do bad things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment You can Pay-it-forward positively or negatively. Both are effective. If you walk into a room and everyone frowns at you but no other communication is available, how do you feel?
9 days ago
malk.zameth
Other communication IS available, both sides should comment, if everyone votes down (not asking for negative totals; just votes: no -1. Worst case of 0) you ask their input!
The purpose of this: weight what side has more votes. Ignoring the real total of opinions because people can be mean is counter-productive. Might as well cut out comments they can be horrid there too!
5 days ago
malk.zameth
Either way It is trivial to make such a change so as that the limits of minimum and maximum votes (negative or otherwise) can be chosen by the project administrator!
5 days ago
rrwhite
This is a really great debate and one we've had internally a number of times. Our main reasons for no having negative votes are that it would make the system more complex (it's already much more complex than simple vote up/down apps), that we haven't been sure how it would be implemented (do negative votes cost anything, can you do -1 or -3) but our main reason is one of setting a certain tone.
3 days ago
malk.zameth
@rwhite
probably the best would be to set the exact same limit as positive ones (you have 10 votes be it positive or negative)
1 day ago