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Request for a downvote button
The upvote button is a great feature to put interesting and quality posts to the top when sorting by hot. What constitutes quality is subjective, therefore having the ability to downvote content that is disinteresting or low quality helps to counter-balance articles that get overinflated with likes.
Another solution would be to have a new/hot hybid sort method where the last three newest low vote/no vote threads take the first three slots, followed by the top upvoted threads. By doing this, other threads have a fair chance of getting views/likes to prevent the dilemma of upvoted posts getting exposure, thus increasing the likelihood of yet more upvotes, thus increasing exposure loop.
2023-07-25 ¡ 10 months ago ¡ đ naf
FWIW I've yet to see a downvote button implemented tastefully anywhere. I'd at least hope that if this were added to Bubble, downvote counts would be hidden from everyone including the author. Besides, this place is slow enough where the hot sorting algorithm doesn't seem especially useful to me.
Maybe instead of a downvote there could be an algorithm that would decay post hotness over time in some fancy way? I don't know how it works currently though.
lol I'm not exactly overwhelmed with posts here. You can comfortably read everything new in a lunch break
I have been thinking about new sorting modes, however as noted, they need to be warranted by the amount of posts/comments coming in. Currently I don't see much need to make changes.
The Hotness sorting works on:
time elapsed since the latest comment in the thread
number of unique commenters
number of likes
The elapsed time is the strongest factor, but as time progresses, the commenter/like count gets relatively more important. The idea is to keep active discussions at the top, while placing well-liked posts higher in the long run.
When it comes to dislikes, I can see them being sort-of useful from a moderation point of view (for hiding irrelevant/spam/troll posts/comments based on feedback from peers) but I don't think people in general use it objectively or thoughtfully enough.
One variant that might be worth implementing one day is a "Not interested" reaction that is private to one's own account. This could be applied to posts, users, and subspaces alike. It would alter sorting of posts for you only, since what is interesting is usually very subjective.
The biggest problem I see with a downvote button is that there are several reasons to downvote something, and what should be done in each scenario is different. A post that is relevant and calmly states a controversial opinion shouldn't be treated the same as a post that is relevant but highly combative, or a post that irrelevant entirely. A single dislike button treats all of these posts the same--and, as @skyjake said, since what people dislike is often highly subjective, it leads to subjective preferences being given the power to silence others. I'd think very carefully before implementing such a feature.
I am not a fan of the down vote idea, since it invites a sense of negativity. If your post isn't interesting nobody will like or comment on it, which is a decent enough indicator of what people think about it interest wise. I do like the idea of sorting post by total popularity, how active it is, and newest post.
I like @moddedBear's idea of popularity decay to resolve the issue of threads trending forever with other threads never getting the opportunity to get boosted because people filtering by "hot" might not ever see them (for now it's slow, but traffic could pick up later). @skyjake's "not interested" mechanic is a great idea as well.
The arguement that downvotes are bad because they can be abused can conversely apply to the upvote which can also be abused for the same reasons. The anti-negativity cult fails to see that shilling is often times worse to a community by creating an echo-chamber that dismisses other viewpoints (see: reddit). 4chan's sage feature did a lot to combat bump abuse of shit posts.
Anti negativity cult? What? People are just saying that a generic down vote button doesn't really work in this environment
I feel like this would make sense if Bubble had thousands of users. At that scale, a reputation system starts to become necessary in order to recognize trolls and chuds. As it stands currently, the userbase is small enough that the handful of weirdos can be easily muted.
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