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I'm impressed by the shifting voting trends when a new, dissenting (sub)opinion is attached to a comment. A string of upvotes now is halted/reversed. And the
by jeremyw 17y ago
I'm impressed by the shifting voting trends when a new, dissenting (sub)opinion is attached to a comment. A string of upvotes now is halted/reversed. And the polarity change can happen several times. An articulated position unleashes the silent thinker or is this a characteristic of mob rule? (When it happens to me, it's mob rule. :)
I'm also terribly sad when someone is downvoted in an opinion-thread (e.g. what is your favorite X). I wish one could mark a post as opinion or even upvote-only.
- Semiapies 17y agoSomeone can be off-topic or troll in opinion threads. "What's your favorite X?" is not the place for "Stop using different types of Xs and start using Ys, noobs.", for example.
- jeremyw 17y agoFor such special-purpose threads, I think it's worth seeing those comments fall through upvotes (or flagging) rather than penalize straight opinions. A similar chilling effect to a downvoted opinion could be had by exposing the downvoters. :) I'm curious if pg has data on this.
- chrischen 17y agoAs much as someone could type that, someone could also downvote because they were thinking that.
- Semiapies 17y agoIndeed. And yet, while trolls get downvoted to pale gray happens, entire threads getting their comments downvoted as far doesn't.
- chrischen 17y agoUnpopular opinions can be down voted. And this does happen. While often it doesn't matter that an unpopular opinion is down voted because it may in fact be wrong, there will be certain cases where an unpopular but universally right comment will be down voted. It will be grayed out. But with a system that promotes and allows silencing unpopular comments, such a rare event will almost always result in a down vote will not just marginalize it, but actually suppress it.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]