I've been a member of this community for almost twenty years, and downvotes have been around right from the start. I don't know where you got this idea that we .. appear to have succumbed to the popularity gods and implemented a similar system (of downvoting).

It's also intriguing that you continue with a false premise that .. there are only 2 kinds of readers: and then extrapolate from there. You confidently state that .. the group of #2 (downvoters, according to you) outweigh the group of #1 by at least 100:1; this conclusion appears to be false, as most nodes have a positive vote count. That would never happen if there were at least 100 downvotes for each upvote.

You proposal to eliminate the downvote is wrong -- it provides valuable feedback to the author and to the community that a post is a) wrong, b) poorly written, c) missing vital information, d) doesn't contain self-contained sample code that demonstrates the problem, e) appears to be homework, f) is a personal attack .. and they are likely more reasons to downvote a post.

I only downvote when it's really necessary .. when a post is really poorly constructed, or when a member continues to argue about something they've been shown to be wrong about. I'd much rather upvote, to congratulate someone on writing something useful or informative.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

Thanks PJ. We owe you so much. Groklaw -- RIP -- 2003 to 2013.

In reply to Re: Controversial!! - Get rid of the -- vote option. by talexb
in thread Controversial!! - Get rid of the -- vote option. by cnd

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.