node/10550 - 626 views 
Our downvoting's been acting up a bit lately, resulting in a few stories that were downvoted pretty hard not sinking down the front page like they should have. While working on the issue, it occurred to me that perhaps we should just do away with down voting altogether and just ignore stuff we don't think belongs on the page. What say you, Windy Citizens? I've disabled downvoting for today as an experiement that may run a few days. Let me know what you think.
Comments
Hmm. Hard to say. I'm a little anxious about not being able to push down lame stuff, but I can count the number of times I've voted stuff down on one hand, so maybe that's immaterial?
While I agree with lana4d that downvoting gives you the opportunity to push down the lame stuff, usually even if I vehemently dislike a post, I'll respond by ignoring it and upvoting the posts that have good stuff. And for the record, I don't have to agree with a post to upvote it, I figure that if it's a good post, it's a good post. So for me, not being able to downvote wouldn't be a much of a problem for me.
I never used it. If people know they can't downvote stuff, maybe it'll lead to better stuff getting upvoted.
I personally think down voting is not needed. If something is good news it will get more votes. If something gets a lot of votes but not everyone feels it is news (like the egg billboard of yesterday) then that is what comments are for. With or without down voting, the best news will reach the top, so the purpose of the citizen will stay the same.
I've downvoted things in the past, and see it as a valuable counterbalance to such things as upvote gaming.
I've only down voted a few stories and like many others have already said, I just ignore stories that I don't feel are newsworthy enough to be on the front page. I also agree with Nelson about the purpose of the comment box should be used to discuss whether or not someone liked the story or not and why.
On further thought, maybe down voting should be allowed, but perhaps not right up front and given the same size of property as the up vote. As me3dia it is a useful tool. Although I may not vote down often, when I do it is far more important then when I vote up. If I wanted to vote something down though I would be willing to go one extra click to do it.
I seldom use the vote down, it seems the vote up would work just as well and weed out the less popular, true?
I think just having the upvote accomplishes the same weeding, but without any explicit negative judgement to the story and/or submitter.
If people are gaming the upvote, the only way to counter that would be to game the downvote, so there's no gain there.
I rarely use downvoting. For silly or boring stories, I just give a non-vote. The only time I downvoted something was when I did not see the connection to Chicago-based news.
On quality, I just vote for what I think is good, and leave other items be.
One suggestion: maybe the WC should keep downvoting, but use it differently. Here's my idea: instead of reporting the "score" as upvotes minus downvotes, report both numbers (upvotes and downvotes).
As it's not clear that one downvote should be worth the same as one upvote, maybe both counts should be available for the readers to see.
With regard to how to sort the best articles, my friend Evan Miller has some interesting thoughts on the issue (here's a link: http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html). He even provides some code to implement his idea. It's a bit nerdy, but I think he has some good thoughts.
Oh, and if you're wanting to introduce a "fading of older news," Evan has some thoughts on that as well: http://www.evanmiller.org/rank-hotness-with-newtons-law-of-cooling.html
Thanks for the pointers over to Evan's stuff. I'll drop him a note to talk about the algorithm we're using. Stories do in fact "cool off" via exponential decay as Evan describes in his second post. Getting the variables just right for this community is an ongoing effort that could perhaps use more expert advice from some PhD guys like you two. :)
"One suggestion: maybe the WC should keep downvoting, but use it differently. Here's my idea: instead of reporting the "score" as upvotes minus downvotes, report both numbers (upvotes and downvotes)."
I like this solution. Beyond that, it seems like there may be a perception that downvoting means a post sucks or is "bad" in some way. I see it more as indicating that a post is less important or of less value than others.
Just because a tool is used less often doesn't mean it should be eliminated. You don't use a hammer every day, but on the occasion that you need one, it really sucks not to have one.
I vote in favor of keeping downvoting. As others have mentioned, maybe it just needs to be rethought and reworked. I personally downvote stuff not only if it's lame or spammy or not about Chicago, but also if I think a particular issue or story doesn't deserve the attention. And I bet I'm not the only one who uses downvoting in this manner. It's pretty obvious a lot of us here are amateur media critics.
Sweet lord, keep it!
The Up Vote loses it's virtue without the counterbalance. Whether people use it or not, its presence forces folks to be considerate, or at least consider being considerate, and that deserves further consideration.
The power lies in the fact that a story COULD have been down voted, but a person chose to give it a seal of approval. You need the choice, otherwise you'll have a bunch of Sanjaya stories up there. Any schmuck with a phone can vote for an American Idol -- it takes sand to vote against.
I say keep downvoting. As said above, it provides counter-balance. It would also be nice if stories posted months ago - like the best tattoo's from Lolla '08, didn't keep popping up. But that's just me; other people may disagree.
The algorithm does funny things like that sometimes. It's funny, you create a forumula and set it into the wild. The next thing you know, Lollapalooza tattoo stories or.....the Freddy Krueger story start crawling up the front page...
Very well said, sollyieb.
After all, the Citizen is all about choice, isn't it? The power to say "Yeah, this is awesome/important/helpful" and deserves an upvote is just as important as the power to say "This is lame/not as important" and gets a downvote. That doesn't mean that submission is "bad," per se, but simply not as popular.
Voting up/down the submissions in addition to the conversations is what drives the site, so let's keep that going.
With that said, I upvote this post.
Downvoting restores my faith in free markets.
I've become better acquainted with two of my downvoters. Both have helped me to become better attuned to our www.windycitizen.com audience.
Thank you for the pleasure of your acquaintance. Also, please leave a comment.
One person, one vote. Choose wisely!
Marshall's kin by marriage.
Down with the down vote, I say. Down votes hurt people's feelings. I like to think of the Windy Citizen as having a certain heavenly, ethereal quality where angels and Care Bears eat Hot Doug's on a summer afternoon in the clouds, and no one goes around putting sandbags into other people's hot air balloons. My point, if it's not clear, is that downvotes emit negative energy, the Windy Citizen represents God, and Brad Flora is the Funshine Bear.
Worst comment ever.
Wow!
I'm pretty sure he's joking, Tamale.
My "Wow!" was meant for Evan Miller. I hit the wrong 'reply to this comment' link.
Downvoting is good and should be a useful tool for getting rid of junk. It's true it doesn't seem to work, sometimes, but maybe there's a way to fine-tune that algorithm, or add some code that makes a story "go away" after a certain number of down votes.
Be nice to Brad. He's invested his time & money to create this forum. Let's go out & get financial supporters to make this a viable enterprise!
Thanks, Brad. Thanks for drinking a gallon of vinegar and pissing it all over my Windy Pride Parade.
I'm very much in favor of keeping the ability to downvote. Maybe I'm a negative sort of guy (or maybe the submissions just don't tend to reflect my tastes), but I find myself downvoting more often than upvoting. For me, choosing to withhold a vote altogether *is* a third sort of "vote" -- one of "meh" -- and the option I exercise most frequently of all; I wouldn't want that conflated with my "dislike" option.