There seems to be a bit of "weak leftists hate a forum where other views are tolerated" in this reaction thread. While those people exist, I do think that we need more "arguing in favor of a position" and less "hiding a weak argument by cynicism about other people Not Getting It." There were always conservatives posting (the accusation of pro-conservative bias goes back to the original SSC's comment threads), and that didn't prevent all non-conservatives from posting. "Having pushback" isn't discouraging; it's why I liked posting in /r/SSC originally. Having a weakly-argued rant get upvoted while a reply asking for evidence gets downvoted and ignored is discouraging.
And that's why I've been continuously asking for public upvote/downvote records. Voting plays a tremendous role in shaping a community, however much we want to LARP as logical supermen who certainly would never be swayed by social approval or disapproval. It's high time we acknowledged that and at least introduced the vague threat of being judged by the direction in which one nudges the forum in this fashion. As I see it, half an hour spent upvoting polemic hot takes one agrees with and downvoting challenges does more damage to the discourse than a single shitpost, and yet nobody has ever been banned or even called out for the former.
People still keep track (both of their own history, and what happened to other posters in older parts of the thread), I imagine. If the numbers are hidden for longer, that just makes it more insidious, since the up/down ratio still shapes the community by influencing the ordering in which replies are presented.Apparently I missed that we don't do sort by votes and probably also lost Reddit's graying of heavily downvoted responses.
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Notes -
There seems to be a bit of "weak leftists hate a forum where other views are tolerated" in this reaction thread. While those people exist, I do think that we need more "arguing in favor of a position" and less "hiding a weak argument by cynicism about other people Not Getting It." There were always conservatives posting (the accusation of pro-conservative bias goes back to the original SSC's comment threads), and that didn't prevent all non-conservatives from posting. "Having pushback" isn't discouraging; it's why I liked posting in /r/SSC originally. Having a weakly-argued rant get upvoted while a reply asking for evidence gets downvoted and ignored is discouraging.
And that's why I've been continuously asking for public upvote/downvote records. Voting plays a tremendous role in shaping a community, however much we want to LARP as logical supermen who certainly would never be swayed by social approval or disapproval. It's high time we acknowledged that and at least introduced the vague threat of being judged by the direction in which one nudges the forum in this fashion. As I see it, half an hour spent upvoting polemic hot takes one agrees with and downvoting challenges does more damage to the discourse than a single shitpost, and yet nobody has ever been banned or even called out for the former.
Why? We don't even see numbers until moat conversations are already over?
I wish we'd go back to instantly visible or not having them at all. Having them appear after one day combines the worst of both worlds.
Seconded. They really serve no purpose. They don't shrink, there's no purpose.
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People still keep track (both of their own history, and what happened to other posters in older parts of the thread), I imagine.
If the numbers are hidden for longer, that just makes it more insidious, since the up/down ratio still shapes the community by influencing the ordering in which replies are presented.Apparently I missed that we don't do sort by votes and probably also lost Reddit's graying of heavily downvoted responses.The default is "sort by new". I guess if you changed it back to the reddit "sort by top" that would be a concern.
Ah, I didn't realise. Sorry, I guess that's actually a non-concern then.
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