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The classic justification is of course that we need downvotes to flag bad posts, so that users can skip, filter or sort them to the last page, and moderators can prioritize them. Except we alread...
Answer
#2: Post edited
by
trichoplax
·
2023-06-11T16:26:34Z (over 1 year ago)
Typos
- > The classic justification is of course that we need downvotes to flag bad posts, so that users can skip, filter or sort them to the last page, and moderators can prioritize them. Except we already have a "flag" action which is much more direct and logical.
- How should the flag action work to sort posts? Say you disagree with an answer here on Meta. So you flag it to disagree. Now what should the moderator do? Manually count the number of flags thrown on the post and manually reorder the answers accordingly? That just sounds like downvotes with extra steps.
- Delete the post? That is much too extreme, especially if it doesn't violate any rules.
You may say that downvoted posts are often deleted, and yes, purely downvoted posts often are, but that doesn't take into account posts with *mixed* votes, such as of it has say, 10 upvotes and 3 downvotes. This is still a generally useful answer by community voting consensus, but we would probably want to order it below say a post with 8 upvotes and no downvotes.Without downvotes, we would have 10 upvotes to 8 upvotes. We would a similar problem to reputation, where by simple virtue of existing longer, it accumulates more points and is higher rated, despite the *ratio* of people who find it helpful being different.
- > The classic justification is of course that we need downvotes to flag bad posts, so that users can skip, filter or sort them to the last page, and moderators can prioritize them. Except we already have a "flag" action which is much more direct and logical.
- How should the flag action work to sort posts? Say you disagree with an answer here on Meta. So you flag it to disagree. Now what should the moderator do? Manually count the number of flags thrown on the post and manually reorder the answers accordingly? That just sounds like downvotes with extra steps.
- Delete the post? That is much too extreme, especially if it doesn't violate any rules.
- You may say that downvoted posts are often deleted, and yes, purely downvoted posts often are, but that doesn't take into account posts with *mixed* votes, such as if it has say, 10 upvotes and 3 downvotes. This is still a generally useful answer by community voting consensus, but we would probably want to order it below say a post with 8 upvotes and no downvotes.
- Without downvotes, we would have 10 upvotes to 8 upvotes. We would have a similar problem to reputation, where by simple virtue of existing longer, it accumulates more points and is higher rated, despite the *ratio* of people who find it helpful being different.
#1: Initial revision
by
Moshi
·
2023-06-09T22:14:21Z (over 1 year ago)
> The classic justification is of course that we need downvotes to flag bad posts, so that users can skip, filter or sort them to the last page, and moderators can prioritize them. Except we already have a "flag" action which is much more direct and logical. How should the flag action work to sort posts? Say you disagree with an answer here on Meta. So you flag it to disagree. Now what should the moderator do? Manually count the number of flags thrown on the post and manually reorder the answers accordingly? That just sounds like downvotes with extra steps. Delete the post? That is much too extreme, especially if it doesn't violate any rules. You may say that downvoted posts are often deleted, and yes, purely downvoted posts often are, but that doesn't take into account posts with *mixed* votes, such as of it has say, 10 upvotes and 3 downvotes. This is still a generally useful answer by community voting consensus, but we would probably want to order it below say a post with 8 upvotes and no downvotes. Without downvotes, we would have 10 upvotes to 8 upvotes. We would a similar problem to reputation, where by simple virtue of existing longer, it accumulates more points and is higher rated, despite the *ratio* of people who find it helpful being different.