Note, downvotes itself are fine, but this topic is to encourage to be more considerate with content creators.
I'm not forcing you nor I am backseat moderating.

Downvoting for disliking compromises potencial pageviews, score and favs; discourages positive reception and encourages negative fame.
This specially likely to occur with recent uploads, non trending content and/or undiscovered authors(artists)

Undiscovered artists are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon, so is advisable to blacklist undesired content rather that downvoting
There is even a rule here in site which said that if you don't like it, blacklist it.
https://e621.net/wiki/show/e621:rules#blacklist

I am digital pr0n artist, this has happened to me with some posts, when the first thing a fresh post to happen is to score <0, it get reduced speed in gaining pageviews, favs/score and greatly increase chance to get more downvotes

posts which does start clean get better results, and when have a solid start is quite less likely to get downvotes.

In my specific case; if you don't like what I do, blacklist the following:

• znhc

znhc not_furryznhc anthro

If you're going to downvote my content, comment what should I get improved instead.

same goes to commonly unpopular kinks, instead of downvoting, blacklist:

• BDMS

scatwatersportsfart

Also if you are unsure to how blacklist, check this page
Blacklist

I thought the downvoting system was intended to either mark posts irrelevant to the site or posts which does not follow posting guidelines.

But hey, I'm a new user, I guess something of this post might be completely wrong.

ZnHc said:
I thought the downvoting system was intended to either mark posts irrelevant to the site or posts which does not follow posting guidelines.

Firstly, forum #212899

Secondly, that's wrong. Downvotes are meant to signify disapproval, not relevance.

Thirdly, what if they downvote that type of content for reasons that are not related to the content type?

tl;dr: don't use the dislike button to express negativity because someone drawing pronz on the internet might not have enough emotional stability to deal with knowing someone in the world disliked something they did

also people are less likely to view things that seem to be publicly disliked which isn't at all the reason a rating system exists on sites such as this

kekm8

I don't mind the downvotes itself, it's fine, people opinions are ok, the problem is that negative score in posts does not favor authors to get known. that is different.

notawerewolf said:
people are less likely to view things that seem to be publicly disliked which isn't at all the reason a rating system exists on sites such as this

This guy nailed it, that is the problem with this kind of systems, it's the psychological phenomena of the approval bias.

BlueDingo said:
Firstly, forum #212899

Secondly, that's wrong. Downvotes are meant to signify disapproval, not relevance.

Thirdly, what if they downvote that type of content for reasons that are not related to the content type?

Thanks for clarification,
but what do you mean with the third point?
Do you mean for example they do it for mood state?
For biased interests?
Discouraging?

Your point is vague, I don't understand what do you mean

Public service announcements should be left to the administration. (Edit: Thanks for editing that out.)

Feel free to use votes in whatever way you want to use them, as long as you don't abuse them. (Such as by downvoting all uploads by a specific user, etc.)

If you ask myself:

If I found something I don't like, I ignore it.
If I found something that disturbs me, I blacklist it.
Only flame-inducing content I could downvote, and is unlikely, I would ignore it instead.

ZnHc said:
but what do you mean with the third point?
Do you mean for example they do it for mood state?
For biased interests?
Discouraging?

What I mean is, what if their reason for downvoting a scat image has nothing to with the fact that it has scat in it? It could have bad proportions, coloured badly, very sketchy line work or a whole range of other reasons.

For example, I downvoted post #44642 because it's sketchy as hell. I don't like hyper and have it blacklisted because it's way too disproportionate for my liking yet my reason for downvoting that one has nothing to do with me disliking hyper. Now you could just say "If you don't like sketches, blacklist sketch." except I don't have a problem with sketches in general and if I did blacklist it, I would miss images like post #341563. For those who want a visual:

post #44642 <- Messy sketch vs. Clean sketch -> post #341563

Genjar said:
Feel free to use votes in whatever way you want to use them, as long as you don't abuse them. (Such as by downvoting all uploads by a specific user, etc.)

I feel as if he only made this because someone downvoted something of his.

BlueDingo said:
What IO mean is, what if their reason for downvoting a scat image has nothing to with the fact that it has scat in it? It could have bad proportions, coloured badly, very sketchy line work or a whole range of other reasons.

Thank you again for clarifying, what you're saying is entirely valid and fine.

Albeit in my opinion, in some cases, artist or authors might not get what has to change in certain situations just with a downvote, again, nothing against downvotes themselves.

it's like when you gave me feedback in a previous post made by myself, you also downvote it, that's just fine, but you justified why and how with commenting to improve and that is excellent.

^^^
There are existing threads about this [1] . Your policy is reasonably well represented in the last thread we had, but of course there are others, like 'downvote -> I don't want this to be on the site at all', which become particularly relevant in relation to generally-disliked content. AFAIK scat, fart, and watersports are all generally-disliked content.

[1] eg this , which started off about comments but people talk about their policy for posts as well, and this .

Overall I still agree with past me:

generally, I don't think votes work that well. They can be and are used to eliminate stupid things (-most- negative-valued comments are whiny, crazy, or outright irrelevant IME), but also to eliminate merely unpopular things

So eh.. we shouldn't take it too seriously, and we can only police systemic abuse of the vote system, as in Genjar's example. There is probably a way to positively encourage people to vote thoughtfully, but I'm not sure what it is.

savageorange said:
So eh.. we shouldn't take it too seriously, and we can only police systemic abuse of the vote system, as in Genjar's example. There is probably a way to positively encourage people to vote thoughtfully, but I'm not sure what it is.

You grab them by the collar, slam them against a wall and scream that shit it right into their faces until they start pissing blood.

You can't do much when people choose popularity over independence. They roam with the flock instead of forging their own path, restate the opinions of others instead of creating their own, base their interests on what everyone else likes instead of asking themselves what they personally like and having the balls to stand by that choice in spite of their peers.

Teach them how to be an individual who thinks for themselves.

No, people are allowed to dislike things.

BlueDingo said:
Teach them how to be an individual who thinks for themselves.

That is great, and certainly hard enough to accomplish. But I don't think that the person who downvotes, say, all cub posts they see, is necessarily being non-individual. Everyone has tastes.

IMO the point of a positive voting strategy is to go
beyond personal preferences and vote in a way that is good for the community as a whole. (for example, downvoting flamebait like curtsibling's stuff seems like a gimme here: there is a difference between parody (self aware absurdity) and trolling (actively maximizing insultingness))

Genjar said:
Public service announcements should be left to the administration. (Edit: Thanks for editing that out.)

Feel free to use votes in whatever way you want to use them, as long as you don't abuse them. (Such as by downvoting all uploads by a specific user, etc.)

I mean, I've seen some fan character posts get a few downvotes when posted that eventually crawl back up to neutral. I kind of figured its a couple of people with a grudge, but we can't see who downvoted a post so there really isn't any way to link that so as usual it just goes by unreported.

By no means suggesting we should be able to see that, just thought I'd point it out.

Perhaps something like reddit where there's a buffer time before rating is displayed might be of use...

savageorange said:
That is great, and certainly hard enough to accomplish. But I don't think that the person who downvotes, say, all cub posts they see, is necessarily being non-individual. Everyone has tastes.

True, but there's no guarantee either way without asking them.

IMO the point of a positive voting strategy is to go beyond personal preferences and vote in a way that is good for the community as a whole. (for example, downvoting flamebait like curtsibling's stuff seems like a gimme here: there is a difference between parody (self aware absurdity) and trolling (actively maximizing insultingness))

As long as you can trust people to tell the difference. Black humour is often hard to spot as it is meant to offensive to some degree.

Some black humour: If you're american and thin-skinned, read with caution.
Q:What did the north tower say to the south tower?
A: Can't talk now, I have a plane to catch.

That blacklist rule is there so people would stop complaining all the time about things they do not like, not to be literally taken. Imagine if people would actually blacklist any details they do not like. I'm ready to bet a forum would be created about how this blacklist rule makes "Undiscovered artists particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon".

A long time ago I even made a post about that forum #165686 because the rule makes it sound like people have to shut up and pretend that stuff doesn't exist, which doesn't sound right at all with me. Then I got confirmation that this rule is to stop harassment and the likes, not to essentially blindfold people to anything they happen to not like.

People have the right to like and dislike things for whatever reason. I happen to dislike some sort of stuff, but I also happen to not blacklist anything on the premise that nothing should be auto-censored and because from time to time you find a picture you're thankful you didn't have blacklisted anything.

I still find it, quite hilarious, that you ask people to not downvote and blacklist because it hurts artists' reputation, but you're here asking people to blacklist anything they happen to not like. I'm sure that solution will pretty much hides a lot of those "non trending content and/or undiscovered authors(artists)" you're trying to protect in the first place.

That and actually, a submission with a negative score causes some sort of Streisand effect : That makes people curious about why the submission is not liked and will take a look at it, and isn't what you want, people to be looking more at your stuff ?

Neitsuke said:

That and actually, a submission with a negative score causes some sort of Streisand effect : That makes people curious about why the submission is not liked and will take a look at it, and isn't what you want, people to be looking more at your stuff ?

Personally, that depends on exactly how downvoted.-10 to -1, I might look. Below -10 I generally am willing to assume the post is disturbing or notably bad quality.

savageorange said:
Personally, that depends on exactly how downvoted.-10 to -1, I might look. Below -10 I generally am willing to assume the post is disturbing or notably bad quality.

Then again, if it drops below -100, curiosity kicks in and you start to wonder just how bad it is. This could explain why a certain cheesegrater image keeps coming back despite being downvoted over 1000 times. Well, that and it's troll value.

ZnHc said:
Note, downvotes itself are fine, but this topic is to encourage to be more considerate with content creators.
I'm not forcing you nor I am backseat moderating.

Downvoting for disliking compromises potencial pageviews, score and favs; discourages positive reception and encourages negative fame.
This specially likely to occur with recent uploads, non trending content and/or undiscovered authors(artists)

Undiscovered artists are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon, so is advisable to blacklist undesired content rather that downvoting
There is even a rule here in site which said that if you don't like it, blacklist it.
https://e621.net/wiki/show/e621:rules#blacklist

I am digital pr0n artist, this has happened to me with some posts, when the first thing a fresh post to happen is to score <0, it get reduced speed in gaining pageviews, favs/score and greatly increase chance to get more downvotes

posts which does start clean get better results, and when have a solid start is quite less likely to get downvotes.

I thought the downvoting system was intended to either mark posts irrelevant to the site or posts which does not follow posting guidelines.

But hey, I'm a new user, I guess something of this post might be completely wrong.

I don't like it when people downvote my uploads either, but I'd rather have that than be actively harassed for them, which is something I have experienced quite a few times here on e6.

If I see a post I like, it doesn't matter how many downvotes it has, I'm still going to look at it. What matters to me is if I like it, not if a few other people don't.

I'm going to be honest, votes rarely have any effect on what I click to look at. If the thumbnail looks nice, I'll click on it.

Actually, on that note, one of the few times I will click on something because of its score is when the art looks fine from the thumbnail but it has a negative score - I'm suddenly curious why it got downvoted, so I'm actually more likely to click on it in that case.

I rarely vote on posts myself, but when I do, it is sometimes due to art quality, and sometimes due to content - specifically if the content is something which cannot currently adequately be blacklisted, but that I nonetheless dislike.

Regarding giving constructive criticism - that's something which I generally like to do, but not something I do frequently here for two main reasons. First, e621 is an archive - the artist might not even be reading the comments on their art here, so I could be talking to the void. And second, I have no idea if the artist in question has any interest in listening to constructive criticism.

Honestly I'm not sure how much you care about improving even. Because you only bring it up in the context of someone disliking your work. I've found that the people who do that are more interested, usually, in having other people "justify" their negative opinions than in improving themselves. If you wanted to improve, it seems to me you wouldn't wait for downvotes, and you wouldn't want to only hear from such people - you'd be asking everyone what your flaws and strengths are. You'd try to get even those that like your work to be vocal about what's wrong with it.

I don't know. Just my experience with these things.

I get the impression that people downvote only for the sake of downvoting, personal vendettas, because they refuse to use the blacklist, or just for the hell of it, because "they can". But rarely do the ones that downvote seemingly want to offer proper critique, as in, providing constructive criticism enough to wan to help them improve.

I'm very glad I made this topic, the feedback was insightful and I've learnt a lot of perspectives, I hope I could bring this into a more compressive, insightful future topic, thx everyone!

BlueDingo said:
Then again, if it drops below -100, curiosity kicks in and you start to wonder just how bad it is. This could explain why a certain cheesegrater image keeps coming back despite being downvoted over 1000 times. Well, that and it's troll value.

well, it's now 60 away from the -1000 mark. i wonder how many more fools it'll take to reach that number.

fools? er... victims! lol

treos said:
fools? er... victims! lol

Participants.

I am of the belief that no site with respect for art should have any downvote system at all.

Which is probably why every single last dedicated art site (DeviantArt, FurAffinity, Inkbunny, etc.) has favorites and no form of downvote.

BlueDingo said:
Then again, if it drops below -100, curiosity kicks in and you start to wonder just how bad it is. This could explain why a certain cheesegrater image keeps coming back despite being downvoted over 1000 times. Well, that and it's troll value.

Don't tell people how they think, plz.

FibS said:
Don't tell people how they think, plz.

He's not. He's talking about his own way of thinking.

Why oh why can't I blacklist the forums..

ZnHc said:
I'm very glad I made this topic, the feedback was insightful and I've learnt a lot of perspectives, I hope I could bring this into a more compressive, insightful future topic, thx everyone!

Don't be a cunt.

FoxFourOhFour said:
Why oh why can't I blacklist the forums..

well, if you blacklist someones username and tick the box next to "Apply blacklisted users to forum posts, comments, Dmails, and blips" you can block everything excet the 1st post of any topic they make.

Cactus said:
Don't be a cunt.

I wasn't aware that politely thanking people for participating in a civil manner on an Internet forum was "being a cunt."

InannaEloah said:
I wasn't aware that politely thanking people for participating in a civil manner on an Internet forum was "being a cunt."

Not too good at spotting trolls, are ye? He did that for a reaction and you gave him one.

hsauq said:
I'm kinda annoyed that I can't do that without also blacklisting everything that they upload nor giving every user the same treatment, but I think only one hostile user has annoyed me enough to blacklist them and they didn't upload anything to begin with.

I think "user:username -rating:e -rating:q -rating:s" works.

FibS said:
I am of the belief that no site with respect for art should have any downvote system at all.

Which is probably why every single last dedicated art site (DeviantArt, FurAffinity, Inkbunny, etc.) has favorites and no form of downvote.

Agreed. Even more so because this is a site with an extensive tagging system and a blacklist, so you can avoid things you don't enjoy.

I can see how comments are able to be downvoted, but it stumps me when it's on art *shrugs*.

wolftacos said:
Agreed. Even more so because this is a site with an extensive tagging system and a blacklist, so you can avoid things you don't enjoy.

There's no tag for poor quality.

post #679254

BlueDingo said:
There's no tag for poor quality.

post #679254

If it's the messy quality that you don't enjoy, "sketch" is already tagged.

wolftacos said:
If it's the messy quality that you don't enjoy, "sketch" is already tagged.

I already explained why I don't blacklist 'sketch'.

And what about things like messy coloring and anatomy errors? There's no tags for those either.

BlueDingo said:
I already explained why I don't blacklist 'sketch'.

Doesn't matter to me. If you see something you don't want even though it was tagged correctly just because you're not blacklisting it, it's not the artist's fault.

wolftacos said:
Doesn't matter to me. If you see something you don't want even though it was tagged correctly just because you're not blacklisting it, it's not the artist's fault.

No one's saying it is.

There's no tag for lighting errors, either.

post #38901 <- The desk's shadow is going the wrong way.

hsauq said:
You're right, thanks. I had a brain fart and forgot that the blacklist worked client side, not server side. I retract my prior complaint.
That's because quality in that sense isn't objective, which is what we're supposed to be tagging by (which is why the existence of a handful certain tags confuses me). However, the things you use to come to a conclusion about quality are.

That said, I can see how voteddown:whatever would be a far more convenient for blacklisting than attempting to think up and get new tags approved or creating a new set.

There's also the fact that blacklists have a 3900 character limit. You can blacklist individual images by entering id:# but each one needs 5-11 characters of space (the carriage return counts too). Right now, I have 915 images downvoted. If I tried to add the IDs to my blacklist, only ~400 of them would fit.

On a related note, I found the post to be adorable and upvoted it. I'm so glad I'm artistically challenged enough to be capable of enjoying art that would be considered poor by you.

I know I sounded like a dick there, but I really don't feel like rephrasing that.

You don't sound like a dick to me. Everyone is free to like and dislike whatever they want and some are pickier than others.

BlueDingo said:
No one's saying it is.

There's no tag for lighting errors, either.

post #38901 <- The desk's shadow is going the wrong way.

Nah, you're just mistaking the brown section of the wall for floor. The desk is actually floating halfway up a bicolored wall, as is the viewer ;)

savageorange said:
Nah, you're just mistaking the brown section of the wall for floor. The desk is actually floating halfway up a bicolored wall, as is the viewer ;)

Nice try. Even if the desk was floating next to a bicoloured wall, part of the shadow would be on the grey section and it would be going off to the right like the other shadows.

BlueDingo said:
There's no tag for poor quality.

Poor quality is against my principles, but I don't downvoted it, that does not tell the author much, If it catches my interest, I could give feedback if possible.

And as a side note, if one of my works have an overall average poor quality, be sure to let me know by commenting.

BlueDingo said:
Not too good at spotting trolls, are ye? He did that for a reaction and you gave him one.

And you've given him a second one in calling me out for my first one. Good job.

ZnHc said:
Poor quality is against my principles, but I don't downvoted it, that does not tell the author much, If it catches my interest, I could give feedback if possible.

And as a side note, if one of my works have an overall average poor quality, be sure to let me know by commenting.

I do, quite often actually. If I like the picture itself I'll like it but if I think the quality is meh, I'll also downvote it. The thing you have to remember about these voting systems is that they're based on user opinion. Quality in art is subjective just like pretty much everything else in art. Denying people the right to vote their conscience because it offends you that they have that ability is irresponsible at best.

Like I told you before I've been actively harassed on my uploads by people who refuse to use the blacklist, and some of them have refused to do so specifically so they can troll people like me who draw things they disapprove of. If you're being harassed, contact the mods and admins, or blacklist those people. Don't try to remove the whole downvoting system though. If you want a site where everybody does what you want, build your own.

I will just give my view on this for anyone interested:

Personally I think that downvoting an image because you disliked what it contained (such as gore or feces) is just as relevant as downvoting the image because you think the artwork is poor.

However if you disagree with the content, but don't then blacklist that kind of content I think it is wrong for you to continually downvote that kind of content.

If you find the artwork poor then you should politely point out what about the image was wrong for you. There is no need to continually downvote every image, just offer some helpful criticism.

i honestly find the concept of upvoting and downvoting retarded. i think things would be better off without the system.

RusterFuck said:
i honestly find the concept of upvoting and downvoting retarded. i think things would be better off without the system.

Any system can seem retarded if you don't use it to your advantage. It works perfectly fine for me.

BlueDingo said:
Any system can seem retarded if you don't use it to your advantage. It works perfectly fine for me.

what advantage does voting do for you if your not a well-known artist frequently getting upvotes for art?

or is it related to things posts you upload(ie posts you upload with lots of upvotes get you brownie points or whateves)

RusterFuck said:
what advantage does voting do for you if your not a well-known artist frequently getting upvotes for art?

or is it related to things posts you upload(ie posts you upload with lots of upvotes get you brownie points or whateves)

As I've mentioned before, I don't use votes to change scores, I use upvotes and downvotes as hidden favourites and post blacklist respectively. I can blacklist as many individual posts as I want and no one can see what my favourites are because users can't see what another user votes on.

So basically, I'm using the features to my advantage and don't really care what the scores are. Any user can do this.

RusterFuck said:
what advantage does voting do for you if your not a well-known artist frequently getting upvotes for art?

or is it related to things posts you upload(ie posts you upload with lots of upvotes get you brownie points or whateves)

I don't use scores as a threshhold for whether or not to view things. If it shows up in my search, I'm going to take a look at it anyways.