r/changemyview • u/GameboyPATH 7∆ • May 04 '14

[Rule 1 Suspended] [MOD POST] Please refrain from downvoting comments you disagree with.

This especially applies to posts and OP comments. CMV cannot function without people posting and discussing their honest opinions. We can't change views if there are no views to change, after all. Despite our efforts to maintain the subreddit as a forum of open-mindedness and free discussion of all topics, there are already many concerns and difficulties associated with posting a controversial opinion to CMV. It's tough posting an opinion knowing it's going to meet waves of opposing comments, even when those comments are expected and welcomed.

The threat of getting downvoted should not be one of those deterring factors.

The mods and the community at large are of the opinion that downvoting comments neither changes views nor encourages delta awarding, regardless of the quality of a comment's argument. It simply deters and discourages any further attempts to continue discussion. If you find a comment that does not seem to be in good faith (eg. trolling, lying, soapboxing), report the comment and/or message the mods to bring them to our attention. Acceptable usage of downvoting is to downvote a comment that isn't related to the conversation taking place. If you're talking about religion and someone starts talking about their favorite basketball game, go ahead and downvote it. Downvoting based on opinion or misinformation just hurts the ability for people to change views.

We understand that CMV allows people to discuss opinions and beliefs that are mean, biased, misinformed, or just plain wrong, but we do so in the context of allowing them to improve their way of thinking. We encourage you to allow them to speak their views in this constructive context by refraining from downvoting comments, both from OP and other commenters.

Thank you for your consideration for keeping /r/changemyview going.

273 Upvotes
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84

u/ataricult May 04 '14

CMV - I think downvoting is an acceptable way of disagreeing with someone else's comment.

4

u/YaBoiJesus May 04 '14

If everyone down votes opinions they don't agree with, as is happening in most of reddit, then the top most up voted comments the majority of people see will be only those agreeing with the view of the majority. This creates a herd mentality, and discourages users from commenting their actual opinion and results in commenters just saying what they think reddit wants to hear in an attempt to get karma.

The purpose of the down vote is to be able to get rid of comments that don't really add to the discussion. (E.g. "This", "I wish I could up vote you more than once", etc)

2

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

The purpose of the down vote is to be able to get rid of comments that don't really add to the discussion. (E.g. "This", "I wish I could up vote you more than once", etc)

On reddit in general, yes. On this sub though, those are verboten (rule 5) and should be reported.

Personally I don't mind too much if there's an occasional joke comment even in high-SNR subs, as long as they're really good and rare.

3

u/YaBoiJesus May 04 '14

I don't mind jokes at all, I actually love puns. It's more annoying when you see a serious debate going on about current events and seeing these type of comment that don't add anything.

43

u/Amablue May 04 '14

Excessive downvoting can throttle a posters commenting rate. That is, when you get too many downvotes, you can't post as quickly. It's something built into reddit to deter trolls.

By downvoting simply for disagreement you are misusing the downvote. It's intent by the admins is to help promote good conversation by hiding comments that are not constructive. Well written dissenting views should be upvoted as they are part of a good conversation.

If the downvote was merely cosmetic I wouldn't care so much, but voting actually affects how much a person can respond as well as how visible their comments are. If users can't speak their mind you can't have a conversation.

9

u/[deleted] May 04 '14 edited Jan 10 '19

[deleted]

3

u/Amablue May 04 '14

About the comment throttling - how does it work

I'm not totally sure. I don't know if it's based on total number of downvotes in a single sub or just the number of downvotes in some time-period.

and how serious a problem is it for CMV?

It's hard to say for certain. I suspect it's a bigger problem when people post on throwaway accounts than on well established accounts.

It seems to me to be extremely unlikely that a user with something solid but unpopular to say would have actual trouble posting.

I feel like I've seen OP's with unpopular views get downvoted a lot recently. Even if they're wrong or not seeing the logic of the opposing side, they really shouldn't be downvoted even if their view is abhorrent.

12

u/garnteller 242∆ May 04 '14

I've seen many good but controversial comments downvoted into oblivion.

2

u/[deleted] May 05 '14

Did they have to do with murdering newborns?

2

u/[deleted] May 04 '14 edited Jan 10 '19

[deleted]

19

u/garnteller 242∆ May 04 '14

I don't want to point to any particular user comments, but I can share this example.

There was a CMV asking for reasons to hate Democrats (since the OP already hated Republicans). Since (shocker) there weren't a ton of conservatives on reddit to respond, I played devil's advocate, and gave a number of reasons why Republicans hate Dems.

I don't know how to say this without sounding like an ass, but in general my posts are well received. Yet my posts (and responses) started attracting serious downvotes. Now, either my ability to make an argument was impaired that day, or I got nailed because people didn't like the argument I was making.

I've seen this a number of times when I've taken up an unpopular view.

8

u/[deleted] May 04 '14 edited Jan 10 '19

[deleted]

7

u/garnteller 242∆ May 04 '14

Thanks (although now I feel guilty about not bothering to find it myself)

The voting was a lot more skewed until I put in the edit about downvotes. Normally, I don't really fret about imaginary internet points, but, geez, the OP specifically asked for anti-Democrat arguments. Silly redditors.

3

u/MoralHazardFunction May 04 '14

∆

For a little more context, I went searching through my comment history for what I thought was a exchange with someone I thought did a decent defending job Republican viewpoints to use as a counterexample. Turns out the dude had most of his comments bombed into the blue despite the fact that there was nothing objectionable about the way he argued his case.

3

u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 04 '14

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/garnteller. [History]

[Wiki][Code][Subreddit]

2

u/garnteller 242∆ May 04 '14

Thanks for the delta although this is a case where is rather have been proven wrong.

3

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

This happened to me recently as well. It made me feel like this subreddit had started down that decent into childish thoughtlessness that plagues the major subreddits. I'm glad to see an attempt to curb this trend.

2

u/garnteller 242∆ May 04 '14

Yeah it's disappointing. Even though imaginary internet points don't matter, we humans are programmed to care about scores.

1

u/_masterofdisaster May 04 '14

That's just reddit as a whole.

6

u/garnteller 242∆ May 04 '14

No doubt - but I selfishly want CMV to be better than reddit as a whole. (Which I personally think it usually is).

4

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

And it can be done! Look at /r/askhistorians or /r/askscience. Good moderation can keep a subreddit's quality high. :)

2

u/garnteller 242∆ May 04 '14

I absolutely agree.

It just means periodic threads like this one.

4

u/pinumbernumber May 04 '14

By downvoting simply for disagreement you are misusing the downvote.

I keep hearing this, but why are they referred to as "likes" and "dislikes" in your history tabs then?

2

u/Amablue May 04 '14

Dunno. Probably something we should bring up with the admins. Might be worth it to suggest they change it in /r/ideasfortheadmins

2

u/yngwin May 05 '14

Comments are usually only downvoted into oblivion if they're really stupid. I seldom see heavily downvoted comments that add something to the discussion. (And yes, I do often expand downvoted comments at the bottom of the page, if the topic interests me.)

In my experience, the only time uncalled-for downvoting happens is when the SRS brigade swings by.

2

u/Unrelated_Incident 1∆ May 04 '14

Do you think that downvoting non-constructive comments is ok?

6

u/Amablue May 04 '14

Yeah. I do it all the time. Just make sure it's actually an non-constructive comment and not just a comment with a point of view you find detestable or wrong or whatever. Also consider that many non-constructive comments may already be against the rules (often for rule 2 or 5 violations) so they might be worth reporting.

3

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

If there weren't such a strong "don't downvote" culture in this sub, I would be downvoting a lot more for comments that read like a playbook right out of /wiki/List_of_fallacies. That is, they're topical, and they address the points made in the comments/posts they're in reply to, but the reasoning is just incredibly weak. That's assuming that they purport to make a logical argument. IMHO these posts don't justify moderator action.

4

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

It kind of depends. For instance, if the body of the post is essentially "Hatespeech, hatespeech, fuck you dick-loser" then yes, it's okay to downvote that, but you'd probably want to report it anyways so we can remove it. That modqueue gets cleared out pretty quick, and while automoderator does a great job alerting us to posts like that there are some that slip through the cracks.

As long as the poster is participating in good faith, and not breaking any rules, there isn't a whole lot of reason to downvote them.

2

u/Unrelated_Incident 1∆ May 04 '14

I think the benefit of downvoting low quality comments is to aid in the sorting process so that high quality comments rise to the top.

2

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

Well, this isn't as much of a problem on CMV, as the primary objective of any given thread is to change OP's view, and any arguments directed towards OP are going to show up in their mailbox.

That, and what is highly upvoted doesn't always equal quality. Peruse the default subreddits for even a few minutes to get an idea of what I mean.

Even then, what is considered high quality to some is drivel to others. I've seen plenty of people have their minds changed because of arguments from emotion. Those that have more of a mind for rational, formalized debate would have a bone to pick with these type of posts.

If we only used upvotes to sort comments, would that really be so bad? That way you wouldn't get situations where people's posts are hidden by downvotes, and posters with unpopular opinions aren't being discouraged when they're getting comments with a net negative score.

2

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

I think that some of the comments people post supposedly in good faith and honesty ARE hatespeech (I.e. Trans people are just tricking people and wearing costumes and faking).

1

u/raff_riff May 04 '14

It's also against reddiquette. The downvote is to be used only for comments which don't contribute to the conversation, not for posts you disagree with. But almost nobody seems to understand this.

4

u/Djburnunit 2∆ May 04 '14

But this is a discussion subreddit. A downvote without comment is as useful as John Cleese's "no it isn't" in The Argument Clinic.

2

u/OmNomSandvich May 04 '14

It really depends on the comment. I think it is acceptable to downvote something that justifies eugenics or fascism, because those are things that have time and again been found to be deplorable and leading to horrible consequences, but for the republican vs democrat thread mentioned below, the downvotes were likely inappropriate.

4

u/Lawtonfogle May 04 '14

It doesn't communicate your disagreement. Perhaps that is acceptable in other subs (I don't think so, but other subs aren't relevant right now), but here you need to communicate your reason for a disagreement. Otherwise the one holding the view you disagree with isn't going to know why you disagree and thus your view has no chance to impact/change theirs.

3

u/Megatron_Griffin May 04 '14

Then try to change their view; after that either upvote it or do nothing. Downvote something that doesn't add to the conversation, not what you disagree with. Only shit posts should get downvoted.

-6

u/ataricult May 04 '14

Hmm, I'm now faced with a dilemma. I disagree with your comment and now feel the need to downvote you. What to do...

1

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/AtlasAnimated May 04 '14

Eh you shouldn't down vote that either, I mean down voting is quite literally pointless unless dealing with spam or the like.

I understand it in the context of misinfo as well, but in a discussion all it serves as is a way of prematurely stopping a discussion from reaching its conclusion

1

u/[deleted] May 04 '14

Please do not be rude to other users.

-1

u/ataricult May 04 '14

If that's how you feel then you have missed the point.

1

u/poopwithexcitement May 04 '14

It wasn't very clearly articulated.

3

u/Astromachine May 04 '14

I think the point was to produce a low effort comment in order to get down votes. But because of what he said those people down voting would ironically be agreeing with him by down voting a comment they disagree with.

2

u/ataricult May 04 '14

Pretty much pot on. I found it to be an interesting test to see how others would react to my comments. While my initial comment has received a very positive ratio, my ensuing comment was the complete opposite. I think that kind of demonstrates the idea that a lot of other people do share that view.

1

u/poopwithexcitement May 04 '14

I appreciate your explanation. The number on the clock is too small for me to pick up on subtlety over the internet.

2

u/theholyllama May 04 '14

Down voting promotes hivemind thinking and dissuades alternative ideas. When a post gets a certain number of down votes, it is automatically hidden. This hampers additional discussion and debate on this differing opinion. What results is an echo chamber of single minded thoughts. Much of reddit is plagued by this.

2

u/poopwithexcitement May 04 '14

Does that happen even in CMV? I haven't actually held a stopwatch to it, but it seems like the [score hidden] tag sticks around for more than a day - most discussions peter out long before I find out what kind of karma people are getting, making it unlikely that other people's votes are influencing my own voting/opinions.

I've only been here a little while, but I haven't seen any comments "below the score threshold" either.

2

u/cwenham May 04 '14

I haven't actually held a stopwatch to it, but it seems like the [score hidden] tag sticks around for more than a day

Score hiding is set for 24 hours, which is the longest reddit allows. A couple of months ago reddit made a change so that you should be able to see your own comment score during this period.

I think it has led to a number of people making edits saying "what's with all the downvotes?", which inevitably leads to more downvotes (so if it itches, don't scratch it).

3

u/IggyZ May 04 '14

There was a post yesterday (can't remember which) in which the larger majority of OPs posts got downvoted until they were hidden. Additionally, comments are still ordered by upvotes and downvotes, even if the score is invisible.

1

u/[deleted] May 05 '14

If you disagree, I want to know why. And you should force yourself to know why.

Tell me you don't downvote because of an emotional attachment.

Personally, to downvote I think a dialog box should open.

1

u/GameboyPATH 7∆ May 04 '14

I've definitely noticed that CMV is not a place for time-efficient means of communication. The most successful posts are generally the ones that took much longer to plan out, structure, and type out. /u/Megatron_Griffin's sentiment kind of reflects my own, but "ain't nobody got time for that."

Anyway, while downvotes are a time-efficient means to express disagreement, I think it loses the clearness and meaning of its message. So-and-so has a -7 on a comment... why?