I agree. (And, separately, I upvoted because I thought this was a useful comment.)
However, I’d be interested in hearing weaker variants of norms like ‘downvoting requires comment’, as the status quo seems to me to involve a little too much downvoting alongside too little useful critical engagement with the content of downvoted posts or comments.
I agree the ideal would include downvoting and helpful feedback. My suspicion is any intervention to raise the threshold of downvoting higher (including milder norms) will primarily just reduce the amount of voting, rather than increase the amount of helpful feedback, and I think vote volume is more important than improved negative feedback.
I think this post was inspired by a couple of others that were downvoted heavily, mostly provided without comment. I was one of the downvoters, and the reasons for my downvoting were ably articulated by other critical comments on the thread—I upvoted those. Were there a norm where I had to write my own comment, I simply wouldn’t have bothered, and I imagine any norms which made downvoting any more onerous than clicking the thumbs down button would have also meant I wouldn’t have bothered. I think the information provided by readers that were mildly turned off but not motivated enough to explain why is useful information both to the authors, but more importantly to prospective readers themselves.
I’m not an expert on how online communities work, as well as what works and what doesn’t in terms of ‘peer review’ mechanisms like voting. Do many places put a differential threshold of critical versus positive votes like this?
I agree. (And, separately, I upvoted because I thought this was a useful comment.)
However, I’d be interested in hearing weaker variants of norms like ‘downvoting requires comment’, as the status quo seems to me to involve a little too much downvoting alongside too little useful critical engagement with the content of downvoted posts or comments.
I agree the ideal would include downvoting and helpful feedback. My suspicion is any intervention to raise the threshold of downvoting higher (including milder norms) will primarily just reduce the amount of voting, rather than increase the amount of helpful feedback, and I think vote volume is more important than improved negative feedback.
I think this post was inspired by a couple of others that were downvoted heavily, mostly provided without comment. I was one of the downvoters, and the reasons for my downvoting were ably articulated by other critical comments on the thread—I upvoted those. Were there a norm where I had to write my own comment, I simply wouldn’t have bothered, and I imagine any norms which made downvoting any more onerous than clicking the thumbs down button would have also meant I wouldn’t have bothered. I think the information provided by readers that were mildly turned off but not motivated enough to explain why is useful information both to the authors, but more importantly to prospective readers themselves.
I’m not an expert on how online communities work, as well as what works and what doesn’t in terms of ‘peer review’ mechanisms like voting. Do many places put a differential threshold of critical versus positive votes like this?