The problem is that it’s publicly shown. Let me pull an old comment:
When you have an upvote/downvote structure, there is an incentive to not go against the grain and just post stuff that’s considered “acceptable” in the local community.
Not everyone treats the votes the same way as well. Some people downvote because they don’t agree with the content, the poster, just because they sound disagreeable or simply because the post is too much to read. You can apply the same myriad of methods to upvotes. Not one motivator is the same.
If we’d ditch showing the numbers and just have them work under the hood, discussions might start looking a lot more genuine.
The problem is that it’s publicly shown. Let me pull an old comment:
When you have an upvote/downvote structure, there is an incentive to not go against the grain and just post stuff that’s considered “acceptable” in the local community.
Not everyone treats the votes the same way as well. Some people downvote because they don’t agree with the content, the poster, just because they sound disagreeable or simply because the post is too much to read. You can apply the same myriad of methods to upvotes. Not one motivator is the same.
If we’d ditch showing the numbers and just have them work under the hood, discussions might start looking a lot more genuine.