In the five or so years I've been coming here, I've noticed a lot of changes. One thing in particular has been a topic unto itself: voting. But, it was the inclusion of voting up or voting down comments that made me scratch my head in dumbfoundedness. Sure, some comments will be funny or helpful or cool and get voted up. And then... there are comments that break rules, violate morals, creep people out, and they get downvoted.

This is a good system... except when it is abused. Except when someone is having a bad day, or they're a troll, or they've got a personal vendetta out for that user or group of users.

I'm not the only one to be downvoted for no good reason, I can say this without a doubt. And I'm not ashamed to admit I've commented something stupid and gotten downvoted for it. But it's the good comments or neutral comments that get made that get downvoted that concerns me.

Normally, a downvoted comment can't be seen unless a user goes into their account and sets the downvote visibility to something negative (I personally have mine set to -9000 so I can see all comments per se). That means, any good comments that were wrongfully downvoted cannot be seen and/or enjoyed.

Now, the team here at e6 is pretty damn good at cracking down on trolls, bigots, and other enemies of our fair site. However, downvoting a good comment is something a troll or disgruntled user can do to make someone else's day worse without even typing a single word... and all with complete anonymity.

That said, I have an idea for the coders of e621: how about a tie in with the voting system (for both the pictures and the comments) where users can be notified of a upvote or a downvote via dmail?
This could eliminate the anonymity of malicious users who would seek ruin someone's day. Or even help let an artist/uploader know how their picture is doing.

I think the staff already ban people for gaming the voting system(whether it be up or down, on posts or comments).
I occasionally look at the red bar smackings log to see how many times people will ban evade, I've seen some times people getting whacked for gaming votes. Not sure if this is with alts, or just voting down on everything with the intention of down voting, or something else.
(the link for watching red bars: https://e621.net/user_record )
Although I do not appose the idea of making voters non-anonymous, it may make for angry dmail messages or aggression towards users.

For comments, it's probably:

• Creepy
• Humor in the wrong area
• ♻ repost, reuse, recycle memes or references
• Rudeness
• Disagreements

As for downvotes on images, its either usually because of:

• To put it bluntly, it looks like shit sharted on interweave shit underwear.
• Someone didn't tag an extreme fetish properly and now people who have their blacklists set up properly(or not) do not want to see it are down voting it.

^{edit because I didn't remember the dtext syntax, plus a fun link}

AshuraK said:
That said, I have an idea for the coders of e621: how about a tie in with the voting system (for both the pictures and the comments) where users can be notified of a upvote or a downvote via dmail?
This could eliminate the anonymity of malicious users who would seek ruin someone's day. Or even help let an artist/uploader know how their picture is doing.

Part of the reason that voting is generally anonymous is that otherwise, having a clear target, people can and do go on revenge-voting sprees. So TBH, I definitely do not want the above implemented; I believe it would definitely make the situation worse.

If you remove the 'who did it' information.. then maybe. A mod could probably tell you what volume of dmails that would generate.

I think part of the issue is that since votes aren't stored in the database* (only that you voted) votes can't be changed. Misclicks may give the impression that someone dislikes (or even likes) a comment when it isn't really notable one way or the other.

parasprite said:
I think part of the issue is that since votes aren't stored in the database* (only that you voted) votes can't be changed. Misclicks may give the impression that someone dislikes (or even likes) a comment when it isn't really notable one way or the other.

*yes that's on our todo list

Would it be possible to broaden the gap between the upvote and downvote arrows, or enlarge or shift their positions elsewhere? It is a very real possibility where someone may downvote by accident.

It's probably not a real problem for most, but one that tends to happen to those who access e621 via smartphone.

GameManiac said:
Would it be possible to broaden the gap between the upvote and downvote arrows, or enlarge or shift their positions elsewhere? It is a very real possibility where someone may downvote by accident.

It's probably not a real problem for most, but one that tends to happen to those who access e621 via smartphone.

I usually zoom in, myself, when it comes to voting on pics or comments as to avoid mis-voting on my Droid.

But that's a good idea you have there too!

I'll just chip in here and say that I've accidentally voted on comments before.

@Chaser
While getting rid of anonymous voting could bring out vengeful users, it would also weed out the users that need to be pruned from e621. I've seen many users come and go since I made an account, and some users just don't get with their first, second, or third warning. But with my idea, users can help out staff too by reporting users that are harassing them, theoretically cutting down on malicious users that come here just to cause trouble. And with a non-anonymous voting system, users can use those dmails, as well as the staff checking the database of votes to see if the users are truly voting out of spite, or voting truthfully. I kind of got this idea from the reporting system from League of Legends, but IT WORKS! Bad users are reported and banned, as are people who report others for pedantic reasons.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that: E621 is an adult-only site; let's keep it mature by adding more measures to deal with trolls and disgruntled users who don't know how to act their age.

AshuraK said:
@Chaser
While getting rid of anonymous voting could bring out vengeful users, it would also weed out the users that need to be pruned from e621. I've seen many users come and go since I made an account, and some users just don't get with their first, second, or third warning. But with my idea, users can help out staff too by reporting users that are harassing them, theoretically cutting down on malicious users that come here just to cause trouble. And with a non-anonymous voting system, users can use those dmails, as well as the staff checking the database of votes to see if the users are truly voting out of spite, or voting truthfully. I kind of got this idea from the reporting system from League of Legends, but IT WORKS! Bad users are reported and banned, as are people who report others for pedantic reasons.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that: E621 is an adult-only site; let's keep it mature by adding more measures to deal with trolls and disgruntled users who don't know how to act their age.

I see this causing more problems than it would solve.

Why do you care if someone downvotes you? The effect that a troll or disgruntled user has on your posts is largely irrelevant. If yiur post is good, then it will get upvoted regardless. It is abuse to multi account to vote something several times, however it is NOT abuse to vote for no reason. Votes reflect opinions, not the content of the post. Do you get mad when someone downvotes you on reddit?

Pendraggon said:
Why do you care if someone downvotes you? The effect that a troll or disgruntled user has on your posts is largely irrelevant. If yiur post is good, then it will get upvoted regardless. It is abuse to multi account to vote something several times, however it is NOT abuse to vote for no reason. Votes reflect opinions, not the content of the post. Do you get mad when someone downvotes you on reddit?

At least we can vote our own comments up.

That's good when we get those random -1s that don't appear to make sense, until you see that multiple posts on the same image were hit with the same negative wave.

GameManiac said:
At least we can vote our own comments up.

That's good when we get those random -1s that don't appear to make sense, until you see that multiple posts on the same image were hit with the same negative wave.

Time to file a bug report.

GameManiac said:

It's probably not a real problem for most, but one that tends to happen to those who access e621 via smartphone.

^^^

I just hate it when you try to scroll up/down on your phone and instead it glitches out and votes on random commments.

TheGreatWolfgang said:
^^^

I just hate it when you try to scroll up/down on your phone and instead it glitches out and votes on random commments.

Sometimes I find myself tapping on the add or venturing a couple of pages into something else completely different before going back. That seldom happens but it is annoying.

Pendraggon said:
Why do you care if someone downvotes you? The effect that a troll or disgruntled user has on your posts is largely irrelevant. If yiur post is good, then it will get upvoted regardless. It is abuse to multi account to vote something several times, however it is NOT abuse to vote for no reason. Votes reflect opinions, not the content of the post. Do you get mad when someone downvotes you on reddit?

I don't use reddit for anything, so I can't get mad. But to answer your question (supposing I did have a reddit account), no, I wouldn't get mad.

Anyways, that's not the point I was trying to make. I was also referring to post votes, not just comment votes. The same aformentioned argument applies: (any user can correct me if I'm wrong about this)

I said this above:
Normally, a downvoted comment can't be seen unless a user goes into their account and sets the downvote visibility to something negative (I personally have mine set to -9000 so I can see all comments per se). That means, any good comments that were wrongfully downvoted cannot be seen and/or enjoyed.

That means less pictures are being seen if they get downvoted (unless it doesn't work that way, to which I say: whoops, my bad).

That means less pictures are being seen if they get downvoted (unless it doesn't work that way, to which I say: whoops, my bad).

The only time that pictures are not seen if they get downvoted is if someone is ordering pictures by score. That is, they are specifically searching using a term like score:>50. Otherwise, pictures are not hidden, regardless of how negative their rating.

Though the opposite is true when a user searches for something like score:<0 or something.

Had a peek in your comments to see what prompted this and found valid reasons as to why someone would down vote said comments. You came into a volatile comment section calling people trolls, ofcourse they're not going to like that.

Letting people know who's voting what is a terrible idea imo, all it would do is start arguments when someone feels slighted by a down vote. As it stands you are told all you need to know _# of people agree/disagree with you, if that number bugs you just watch what you comments and avoid shit storms.

People hate being told when they're wrong. Especially if it breaks site rules.

https://e621.net/comment/show/2337083

chdgs said:
People hate being told when they're wrong. Especially if it breaks site rules.

https://e621.net/comment/show/2337083

Nice +1 comment. Guess it was at -1 when posted and that was enough to hurt your feelings :o

Well if one of mine comment get's a downvote i say: "meh.that's happened." Than go on with my life. In english: I don't give a cr@p if one of my comments gets downvoted cause' it's not a big deal. It will never ruin my day.

If one of my comments gets downvoted, I start crying uncontrollably.
Then I call my best friend, even if it's in the middle of the night, and we talk for hours until I feel better.

Who ARE these evil people who DOWNVOTE my comments just to make me CRY?
e621 needs to be turned into a safe space for everyone!

lol internet points

AshuraK said:
@Chaser
While getting rid of anonymous voting could bring out vengeful users, it would also weed out the users that need to be pruned from e621. I've seen many users come and go since I made an account, and some users just don't get with their first, second, or third warning. But with my idea, users can help out staff too by reporting users that are harassing them, theoretically cutting down on malicious users that come here just to cause trouble. And with a non-anonymous voting system, users can use those dmails, as well as the staff checking the database of votes to see if the users are truly voting out of spite, or voting truthfully. I kind of got this idea from the reporting system from League of Legends, but IT WORKS! Bad users are reported and banned, as are people who report others for pedantic reasons.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that: E621 is an adult-only site; let's keep it mature by adding more measures to deal with trolls and disgruntled users who don't know how to act their age.

Why do I get the feeling that the people who "need" to be removed are the ones who do stuff like downvote your comments?

The problem is minor and the suggested way to solve it could lead to much more drama than currently happens.

The other week I had this problem, I commented on this post and originally got down voted for now good reason https://e621.net/post/show/798831

I have downvoted about 4 comments accidentally cause' if im accesing the site on my phone i can miss click because the,icon is too small.

Just ignore the down votes, if you know you did nothing wrong, who cares. Let them hate for no good reason. Don't even delete your comment, stand by your words. Some people will be irrational no matter what, you can't change them...but you can always change yourself and how you view things/take things seriously.

Xesnogard said:
I have downvoted about 4 comments accidentally cause' if im accesing the site on my phone i can miss click because the,icon is too small.

I've done this too. I have some fixes for the comment code ready, assuming that doesn't break anything I'll see what I can do to make those a bit more mobile-friendly.

(I'd make the site let you change the votes but that's a bit more involved and I'm not 100% sure how to do it yet.)

I sometimes just upvote comments that are downvoted for no clear reason (to me), even if I normally wouldn't upvote them.

Same goes the other way around.

CamKitty said:
Nice +1 comment. Guess it was at -1 when posted and that was enough to hurt your feelings :o

Not so much about my feelings than it about how users disregard and frown upon users who point out the site rules.

"omg stfu and enjoy teh free pr0n"

HotUnderTheCollar said:
I sometimes just upvote comments that are downvoted for no clear reason (to me), even if I normally wouldn't upvote them.

Same goes the other way around.

If they're funny, upvote them. If they disparage, downvote them.