Downvotes?

[Sam]

It's a little bit controversial but we allow downvotes on our question & answer community. Members can get upset by this (when their questions/ answers are downvoted on) but I am a big believer in reasonably fair community moderation i.e. it shouldn't be up to myself or a staff member to decide whether a question or answer is good (as we are inherently biased).

What do you think of this approach? Do you employ something similar on your forum (e.g. allowing dislikes?)?

 

[Tommy M.]

It's a little bit controversial but we allow downvotes on our question & answer community. Members can get upset by this (when their questions/ answers are downvoted on) but I am a big believer in reasonably fair community moderation i.e. it shouldn't be up to myself or a staff member to decide whether a question or answer is good (as we are inherently biased).

What do you think of this approach? Do you employ something similar on your forum (e.g. allowing dislikes?)?

I am using Thumbs Up/Down on my forum and it worked as well and effectively encourage other members post useful info to the forum.

For example, you can see this post
http://www.webmastersun.com/threads/123 ... ss-In-2016
that having down/up votes

I think it should have on forums

 

[MasterA]

There are a lot of question and answer websites that have the downvote feature. I personally don't have the downvote feature but I think it is worth trying. If stuff does go badly and members do get upset, then you can always remove the feature.

 

[Fuser]

I think you should keep the downvote feature on your site. It allows the members themselves to filter the good/bad answers to a question. However, if the feature is being abused, warn your members that abuse of the downvote feature may result in some form of punishment (if you can see who downvoted what).

 

[Nebulous]

I'm on xenforo and I saw that they did have "Dislike" button add-on with only a couple downloads and zero reviews since it was released in May of last year. It seems the majorly of forum owners don't want this type of thing on their forum for obvious reasons (it promotes hostility and whatnot).

What I did find interesting about the add-on is this:

Post(s) that will be disliked for x amount of times can be set to go to the moderation queue automatically.

...this would be great for a community with a single admin who doesn't visit much (those exist out there). The members could take control of weeding out troll posts and spam posts on those staff abandoned forums.

 

[newBB]

I don't have any dislike or thumbs down option in my forum. My forum is pretty new and I can't afford to upset the users, haha.

 

[Deleted member 5665]

Downvotes can have its pros, but it also has its cons. Regretfully there will always be that one person who will abuse such features, but it can be abused both ways, not just one way. Upvotes are just as equally possible to abuse just as much as Downvotes. So realistically there is no reason to have either. A simple "like" system in my opinion would be better, but that depends on each individual point of view on the subject.

 

[geeksremote24-7]

I also go with down vote feature on website. It is important to filter bad and good threads on your forums.