I notice alot of comments are down voted, doesnt matter if they are good comments and dumb ones, even youtube has alot of nonsense comments of the same crap as if people are just zombies and say the same thing. but here and FA or anywhere online, free speech is very hated by salty people who cant leave things alone. comments that are a persons liking or disliking or just pointing something out will get a number of down votes. why though? why cant anyone comment what they wana say without getting downvoted? and does down votes mean anything? will it remain that way? better or worse? back on youtube, if a comment got downvoted enough, it will be hidden, but it hasant been like that in years. so what will down votes mean in the future?

Silverwolf064 said:
I notice alot of comments are down voted, doesnt matter if they are good comments and dumb ones, even youtube has alot of nonsense comments of the same crap as if people are just zombies and say the same thing. but here and FA or anywhere online, free speech is very hated by salty people who cant leave things alone. comments that are a persons liking or disliking or just pointing something out will get a number of down votes. why though? why cant anyone comment what they wana say without getting downvoted? and does down votes mean anything? will it remain that way? better or worse? back on youtube, if a comment got downvoted enough, it will be hidden, but it hasant been like that in years. so what will down votes mean in the future?

I've given up speaking my mind quite some time ago as this place becomes more and more of a hugbox.

Put down an obvious trolly sh!tpost with a few harsh criticisms, Get a negative record. Simply post a URL link to the poster's deletion records, Get a flag for 'backseat moderating" even though not a single word was posted, Just a url.

Also any vote lower than -2 DOES get hidden.

I was expecting to look at your comment history and see a lot of red, and I was surprised that everything is perfectly neutral.

I'm going to assume you're mostly talking about the "I wish it were a girl" and "why does it have to be cub" styled comments on an Anubis and the Buried Bone post.
Which are both mostly just downvoted because the exclusive-sexualities traditionally don't like it when you say you wish it was the other sexuality, and people who like cub don't like it when you say anything bad about cub.
You'll notice similar things if you look into any tag that is typically avoided by people who aren't into it, though one of the easiest to notice is on any tag related to being overweight.

Silverwolf064 said:
free speech is very hated by salty people who cant leave things alone.

"Free speech" refers to your right to state or publish your opinion without fear of governmental censorship. It doesn't mean e6 can't censor your opinion, it doesn't mean you're entitled to whatever you like, and it especially does not mean people have to agree with or even tolerate your words. On e6, and pornography in general, role-playing or other comments to the extent of "i like this," are generally frowned upon as nonconstructive, spammy, and sometimes a little creepy. Stuff like "OwO Me next!" is relatively harmless and all in good fun, but "Fuck so hot i wish that were me" or "Oh baby, she can Twilight my Sparkle any day ;;)" can often disrupt a person's "flow" with the reminder that someone else is ALSO masturbating to the same image, and that that person doesn't have an especially strong filter. Granted, users have quite a tendency to down-vote anything they don't agree with, and commenting on photos only to say that you didn't like the gender-pairing or the kink can be taken by some as either a personal attack on their preferences, or "ungratefulness" on the commenter's part. It can be a little bizarre sometimes, and I mourn the loss of all the taboo fetish images downvoted to oblivion because people don't know how to blacklist, but clicking "Show comments below threshold" isn't hard, and it does give a reasonable method of avoiding comments that might be distasteful or unpleasant.

I guess the short answer is that we're not Youtube. A downvote means "I don't wanna see this", or "This isn't great", and adjusts a comment's score in a linear fashion, much more like Reddit or Digg. Compared to Youtube's black-box algorithms, where loads of math are done to figure out exactly what ordering of spammy and juvenile comments will keep people watching, I'm not especially displeased about this.

Votes mean even less than favs. Well, everyone has their own standard for how to vote or fav, there's no etiquette in that regard AFAIK.
Since there's no assurance that the people involved are voting on the same basis, inferring things from a comment's score is more or less nonsensical in nature.

A recent example, post #1540893 : NMNY's comments clarifying how female and ambiguous_gender are tagged. When this was originally linked in a recent forum thread, NMNY's comments were at 0 score. I wrote a reply to the thread and reloaded the post -- they were then at -2 score. Today, I loaded the post again and they're back at zero.

Conversely, comments that talk ignorantly about TWYS -- "should be tagged male because the artist says the character is male"; "this was intentionally mistagged" -- including a comment from the artist themselves, initially had a positive score and currently retain that positive score.

By my estimation, both of the above situations are wrong: neutrally-worded clarifications of the rules should be upvoted, and resentfully-worded obfuscation of the rules should be downvoted.

Given the scores of those comments, it should be reasonably clear that that principle isn't being wholly followed; nor is the inverse ("upvote obfuscation, downvote clarification") being wholly followed. Perhaps some other principle is being followed, but from previous discussions of voting, I'm pretty confident that it's, at best, a chaotic assortment of often arbitrary principles.

MagnusEffect said:

I'm going to assume you're mostly talking about the "I wish it were a girl" and "why does it have to be cub" styled comments on an Anubis and the Buried Bone post.
Which are both mostly just downvoted because the exclusive-sexualities traditionally don't like it when you say you wish it was the other sexuality, and people who like cub don't like it when you say anything bad about cub.
You'll notice similar things if you look into any tag that is typically avoided by people who aren't into it, though one of the easiest to notice is on any tag related to being overweight.

Can't both of these accurately be put in the 'people downvote whining' basket? They are like a lite version of the sort of "Why do people draw X?!?! " comment that often receives a 'learn to blacklist, noob' type response.

savageorange said:

Can't both of these accurately be put in the 'people downvote whining' basket? They are like a lite version of the sort of "Why do people draw X?!?! " comment that often receives a 'learn to blacklist, noob' type response.

Yes, but my point is they're usually caused by people who don't like the subject matter somehow ending up on such posts anyway, where there's no likeminded vote-weight to even out the inevitable backlash.
And these are my examples because right before this thread went up the OP dropped a comment complaining about such comments getting downvoted.

FoxFourOhFour said:
Also any vote lower than -2 DOES get hidden.

In your settings, there's a section called "comments" .. including your 'comment threshold'.... you can set it to whatever you like. set it to -200 and you'll probably never see any hidden comments. Set it to 10 and you'll only see commenting gold.

You control what you see.

Mine is set to -5. I see most comments. and the comments that I don't see tend to be flaming assholes. When I click to view their comment, all I feel is regret, generally. and anger.

FoxFourOhFour said:
I've given up speaking my mind quite some time ago as this place becomes more and more of a hugbox.

Put down an obvious trolly sh!tpost with a few harsh criticisms, Get a negative record. Simply post a URL link to the poster's deletion records, Get a flag for 'backseat moderating" even though not a single word was posted, Just a url.

Your entire Spiel in the comments is being passive aggressive to the uploader in the hopes they start to insult you so you can report them and watch them get records. What did you expect to happen?

anonymousanalogue said:
"Free speech" refers to your right to state or publish your opinion without fear of governmental censorship.

You're thinking of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution
"Freedom of Speech" is a much broader concept.

If I invite you to my Thanksgiving dinner, and then say "My house! My rules! You're aren't allowed to say anything negative about Trump/Clinton or I'll throw you out!" (because freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences, right?) then this is neither illegal nor unconstitutional, but it's still a restriction of your freedom of speech.

NotMeNotYou said:
Your entire Spiel in the comments is being passive aggressive to the uploader in the hopes they start to insult you so you can report them and watch them get records. What did you expect to happen?

Nice assumption but completely wrong.

i get headache every time someone claims that their right to free speech is violated when someone on a furry porn site down votes their comment