I don't understand the point in downvoting

1. If people don't like the content, it should be in their blacklist
2. People have to click on the image they dislike to downvote it
3. Isn't it somewhat insulting if an artist comes across their own work being on e621 and seeing it mostly downvoted?

I honestly think we should do away with downvotes altogether and just have an upvote/like button, a favorite button and an "I Came" button.

1) What if the content is either not blacklistable, or if it is not a matter of content but rather of quality?

For instance, I frequently downvote things, particularly animations, which are of poor quality.

2) That's not true. You can enter "vote down" mode on the side bar thing, which allows you to vote negatively on an image without having to click on and view the image closer.

Furthermore, sometimes the poor quality elements of an image are not immediately visible via thumbnail, so it is reasonable to click on an image and then downvote it when you find you don't like it.

3) Perhaps some artists are insulted by it, but perhaps other artists use the information to gauge the reception to their image - if it is downvoted it indicates there are errors they can improve, and over time if they tend to get more upvotes than downvotes, that's a good thing.

4) An "I Came" button would be weird and creepy. I write stories, and I like when people enjoy them, and I understand that that means that they are probably masturbating to those stories, and that doesn't bother me, but I also don't want to hear about it.

5) If you remove the ability to downvote, people might tend towards posting their dislike or disagreement about an image. Which would, I think, by your standards, be worse. If you take away someone's voice in one area, they will look for others.

6) For the record, I do think it is unfortunate when people downvote due to content rather than quality. I've got a friend who's put stuff up that's been downvoted for that reason. But he's actually not bothered by it. I think it's not unreasonable to expect people to have thick enough skin to get over seeing a negative number.

Untamed said:I honestly think we should do away with downvotes altogether and just have an upvote/like button, a favorite button and an "I Came" button.

Like this place needs yet more rounded corners and boxes full of hugs.

What would dissuade people from downvoting the image would be downvoting a user. A lot of times quality, Laziness or outright shitposting is why things get downvoted 'for no reason' and given the option to up or downvote a user would circumvent that. Of course it would raise a whole other series of issues but in all honesty this site caters to adults. Adults should be able to take criticism whether its a full blown rant or an arrow pointing up or down.

"I don't understand X"

"I think we should do away with X"

Chesterton's fence said:
Reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood.

To be fair, I don't think anyone understands the way downvotes, upvotes, or favs work in practice. Although I think when you pay attention to them you can notice they converge towards some general aim, however fuzzy that aim is (eg. "good quality should have high score / many favs")

There's still the question of why downvotes were implemented;
it may not have been simply because it's a logical counterpart to upvoting. For example, the intent may have been to allow a person to simply downvote a post they don't like rather than cluttering up its comments with a complaint - ie. reduce the effect of their annoyance.

FoxFourOhFour said:
Like this place needs yet more rounded corners and boxes full of hugs.

I mean.. I like hugs and I like not gouging myself if I step in something... slippery whilst going around corners. I don't really see what the problem with some kindness is.

FoxFourOhFour said:
Of course it would raise a whole other series of issues but in all honesty this site caters to adults. Adults should be able to take criticism whether its a full blown rant or an arrow pointing up or down.

Yeah, sadly, that isn't the case.

Actually from where I'm sitting, most adults are not capable of acting like what I would consider an adult to be.

SnowWolf said:
Yeah, sadly, that isn't the case.

Actually from where I'm sitting, most adults are not capable of acting like what I would consider an adult to be.

And that's the point I was trying to make.

Really? This topic again? Don't we have like 3000 threads on this already?