Just about every time there is a meta discussion there are people suggesting that upvotes/downvotes are just agree/disagree buttons, or that we should just get rid of them altogether.
It is less common to see a defense of voting, but I think it is desperately needed.
My main thesis is that votes are accurate at conveying information, but that many people do not like the information they convey. I believe most people treat the vote buttons as basically a like/dislike button. Users do not always enjoy learning that their posts are "disliked" or the posts of their own that they like the most aren't always "liked" as much by others. Hiding votes does not remove the underlying sentiment though, it just makes it harder to pick up on, or delays discovery for the writer.
Looking through my own "top" and "bottom" comments I am not surprised or offended by their placement. My "bottom" comments are often my controversial mod decisions, or times when I have decided to defend viewpoints that are unpopular here on TheMotte (like race blindness, or open borders). The most hated "controversial" comments also seem to be ones where I am closing off avenues of discussion rather than opening them up. My top comments are usually me sharing information/perspective on a culture war topic that others might not have. And a few times of me writing good pieces about culture war stuff. I often find it helpful to look at other user's top/bottom comments when I have to do mod related research. Top comments often provide many reasons for exoneration, and bottom comments can highlight patterns of bad behavior. An important thing to note here is that votes are great for comparing comments within a single user's history, but not between users.
The agree/disagree critique
One common critique that I linked to above is that people just use the buttons as shorthand for agree/disagree and that this signalling of agreement or disagreement would lead to favored views being rewarded too much, and unfavored views being chased off.
However, this is a problem with and without voting buttons. At best your are simply delaying this discovery for a few moments before they get flooded with comments that very clearly indicate people disagree with them. I did not need to wait 24 hours to find out that people disagreed with me on race blindness or open borders. It was very quickly obvious from the responses (and I was aware before hand that these views would be controversial).
I also think votes, and especially visible vote scores can be a bit of a pressure valve. There are sometimes people that just feel the need to express in some way "I don't like your post/views". One way for them to do this is to downvote. Another way for them to do this is to leave a short comment to the same effect. Sometimes the comment might even look like they are interested in a discussion. When I am in the position of getting dogpiled for a controversial view I would universally prefer the downvote to a go-no-where comment that basically says "i don't like your post/views". This is also one of the times when I most wish I could see other people's vote scores. I'd prefer responding to what other people consider the "best" version of the counterarguments.
Finally, what is so bad about signalling agreement or disagreement? People have views and opinions, we don't need to fool ourselves on this. I don't think we are tricking anyone by hiding the votes that these disagreements don't exist.
Ending notes:
- I am writing this as a user stating my preferences. There has not been internal mod discussion about changes to voting. Status quo is likely to remain in place.
- It is probably a little rude to go through other people's history for examples an counterexamples to voting. I'm fine with anyone doing that with my profile, but its probably best to not drag other users into this discussion unless someone gives explicit permission.
- The rdrama codebase that the site is based on had more features and granularity around voting, we mostly do not have those features turned on or fully working on this website.
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Notes -
Why would I or anyone else who doesn't like the upvote/downvote system care about indulging this feeling? If you feel like you disagree with someone but can't explain why, move on. Don't engage. Instead, go do something else. No one is going to hold your participation or lack thereof against you. Not any of us, anyways.
God knows most people would benefit from engaging with the culture war less.
Why don't you like the upvote/downvote systems?
I certainly like the idea of telling users to just be better. I do this all the time as a moderator. But being a moderator also gives me a certain level of practicality about how people behave. This just doesn't feel like a marginal line I'm willing to hold people accountable over. Even if I had access to everyone's voting paterns, I'd be loathe to hold a single user accountable to any of their votes.
Most people could probably engage less, as I mentioned in Wednesday Wellness thread, I'll probably be at the pool more this summer and thus engaging less. But a need to engage less is not actually an argument against voting. The voting is low effort very quick participation, only a few extra seconds compared to just reading the posts. Commenting definitely increases the time commitment.
Just because you have ceased to cater to / platform / respond to someone, does not mean that person has ceased to exist.
I hate that people use them as a means of enforcing what opinions are considered good or bad. I have very rarely downvoted, only doing so if I think a user is not actually trying to contribute to the thread, even if their opinions are unacceptably vile. Letting people indulge their desire to indicate a position's popularity is bad, doubly so for a platform meant to move us past shady thinking.
It's an argument against fast forms of engagement, which you agree that voting is.
No doubt. The question is whether a a person should be catered or responded to.
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This just cedes the territory to people who are skilled at writing posts that are maximally annoying but time-consuming or frustrating to refute with as much evidence as they demand. (Or who ghost and return to demand the same evidence over and over, pretending the previous conversation never happened).
This is a common tactic, as you will have noticed on reddit and certain heavily downvoted users here.
Even taking your example, there is no clear indication that voting is a good solution. An unpopular argument is just as likely, if not moreso, to get downvoted than one that is maximally annoying.
But again, you don't have to engage. There is no limit on the bits available in the site. No one is getting their comments deleted if some people choose to post in bad faith the way you describe.
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