The voting system is, kinda stupid. To easily abused with alt accounts.
it should be removed and a new system added.

Spesificly a button similer to the [hide] button that hides the comment from view on an account by account basis (when hidden by a non-admin/mod User the image will still display the (comment under threshold text under the image, but instead of threshold it says "# comments hidden." Clicking this un-hides them untill the page is refreshed.)

Staff have a additional button that allows the comment to be universally hidden without the text like with the User based
(course we have one of those anyway).

other idea incase above one is shot down

If this is discarded then maybe add a +vote counter too, that makes more sense right? It would read as +#, -# if the - hits the threshold it still hides, but if the plus is higher then the negitive it unhides, the addition of the plus counter shows how many like the comment or whatever

Plus maybe change it so we can un-vote by clicking the vote again. I've accidentally hit ↑ vote when reporting creepy or abusive comments, then its like I set off a landslide and everyone else up votes it...

The purpose of comment voting is so people won't have to view bad comments that have been placed under threshold. Removing that would expose people to comments that they don't want to see.

A re-voting feature wouldn't be the end of the world, but people would have no idea whether they've already voted on a comment or not, other than their memory. This would lead to a lot of accidental undoing of previous votes which they might not notice if they aren't paying attention.

Maybe tie vote to IP address, not user name?
Wouldn't be impossible to abuse, but it would be harder.

ippiki_ookami said:
The purpose of comment voting is so people won't have to view bad comments that have been placed under threshold. Removing that would expose people to comments that they don't want to see.

A re-voting feature wouldn't be the end of the world, but people would have no idea whether they've already voted on a comment or not, other than their memory. This would lead to a lot of accidental undoing of previous votes which they might not notice if they aren't paying attention.

what I mean by revote is know how the arrows disappear once you've voted? Well keep that. But clicking on the number displayed would make a message pop up that said like "Do you want to undo your vote?" Clicking yes would cause the vote to be removed and the arrows to show back up.

How about instead of removing the voting for comments, we add them to forum posts, so that we could set a threshold for forum posts as well.

As for the threshold, people still have to see the comment to downvote unless its past their personal preset threshold.
I'm just recommending this because (as ive mentioned in that ticket you responded to) ive had multiple cases where comments like just an example me saying this is cool, or something benine gets voted down three times (never happened like that till the default thresh was changed) to -3. If they're at -2 and its my account I garentee it was at -3 before I upvoted it. Ive seen it happen to others too, usually the more outspoken of e621's members. And its almost all ways a -3.

Moon_Moon said:
How about instead of removing the voting for comments, we add them to forum posts, so that we could set a threshold for forum posts as well.

No no no no awhell No!

That's one ww3 problem I hope never happens, I'll stop using the forums if that occurs

Plus ive noticed the same happens with images. -3 minutes after uploaded, no more votes for hours then maybe a few more or a few less.

Oh please no, it would be as bad as a 5 star system.
Also maybe your case of -votes is some kind of votebot account or something. Or someone has started a personal vendetta agaisnt you :S

NoctemWerewolf said:
Oh please no, it would be as bad as a 5 star system.
Also maybe your case of -votes is some kind of votebot account or something. Or someone has started a personal vendetta agaisnt you :S

I doubt anyone with the means of creating a votebot would stop at 3 votes.

Esme_Belles said:
Plus ive noticed the same happens with images. -3 minutes after uploaded, no more votes for hours then maybe a few more or a few less.

We're not that small a site; most images have dozens of views within the first few minutes of being posted, the odds of a few people voting the same way are pretty high. Not to mention people who vote cheat don't do it immediately after something is posted. They're just a person, so they have to encounter the image first. So unless they're constantly F5ing the post page for something to mass-downvote, (keep in mind this means clicking on image, downvoting, logging out, logging into different account, finding the image again, downvoting, logging out, rinse and repeat) it usually happens later on when they've discovered it and decided to commit their time to it.

Who really cares about what score you get on comments.

Seriously.

People take things way too seriously.

Patchi said:
Who really cares about what score you get on comments.

Seriously.

People take things way too seriously.

Yeah, I've never seen a problem with how voting on comments is done. This isn't Reddit or something where you're trying to get the most upvotes. Upvotes are just done for good comments and/or feedback, and downvotes are for poor comments that provide nothing. Simple.

I would like to thank everyone for their feedback. I understand that this is a very important topic to some, and I have taken this back to the Committee for discussion.

We will keep you updated with any changes.

Pls don't remove comment scores, its the best way to make lolsy comments stand out. Without this function I would have just glanced over epic comments like the "asscum for breakfast" one.

AnOddScot said:
Yeah, I've never seen a problem with how voting on comments is done. This isn't Reddit or something where you're trying to get the most upvotes. Upvotes are just done for good comments and/or feedback, and downvotes are for poor comments that provide nothing. Simple.

Yeah, but that doesn't always mean it goes as fairly as you put it. You can get downvoted multiple times for doing fuck all wrong, because people disagree with something you said or simply feel like it. Like this: https://e621.net/post/show/514367

Seriously, what are Closet Furry and I doing wrong there? Can't tell. I even took down one of my own uploads to replace it with a larger version, that's proper caring for the site. Not saying it should be applauded but come on. =/

Those posts were at -2 earlier today, I bumped them all up to -1 because it just irked me or something, and now it's back to -2 again. So either there are a lot of raging FA fanboys here, or we're just dealing with some random douche with alt accounts who just likes to make people feel bad.

That said, I don't think the voting system should go, just wish it were possible to retract your vote like you can with voting on uploads. Have had a few times where I misclicked.

Jugofthat said:
Yeah, but that doesn't always mean it goes as fairly as you put it. You can get downvoted multiple times for doing fuck all wrong. Like this: https://e621.net/post/show/514367

Seriously, what are Closet Furry and I misdoing there?

Those posts were at -2 earlier today, I bumped them all up to -1 because it just irked me or something, and now it's back to -2 again. So either there are a lot of raging FA fanboys here, or we're just dealing with some random douche with alt accounts who just likes to make people feel bad.

That said, I don't think the voting system should go, just wish it were possible to retract your vote like you can with voting on uploads. Have had a few times where I misclicked.

Well, people are allowed to vote for any reason they want.
As long as they aren't abusing the system by multi-voting with multiple accounts, it's fair game.

Halite said:
Well, people are allowed to vote for any reason they want.
As long as they aren't abusing the system by multi-voting with multiple accounts, it's fair game.

Of course, I'm just demonstrating it doesn't always work the way it does in theory, by which I meant that part about good/informative/funny posts getting upvoted and bad/annoying/creepy ones voted down.

What's good or bad can be subjective, but only to a degree. We weren't making bad comments there, I dare say.

I feel like any change to the voting system (especially one as complicated as adding a re-vote or tracing feature) would only create more problems. I don't care what my comment scores are, and if someone is butthurt enough to use alts to vote down comments, they're probably not worth addressing anyways.

Just leave it as it is. The scores on comments are like the smallest feature of the site.

Jugofthat said:
Of course, I'm just demonstrating it doesn't always work the way it does in theory, by which I meant that part about good/informative/funny posts getting upvoted and bad/annoying/creepy ones voted down.

What's good or bad can be subjective, but only to a degree. We weren't making bad comments there, I dare say.

Things never work like they should at times, but yeah, that's suspicious.

SirAntagonist said:
if someone is butthurt enough to use alts to vote down comments, they're probably not worth addressing anyways..

Truth.

Well one reason I don't care much fir the system the way it is now is that if I go through the trouble of pointing out something, (and it isn't wrong, if its wrong then sure downvote away) and some lil asshat comes along and obliterates it, then the work I put in trying to defuse potential issues (usually with spesific tags) or providing useful information about tagging codes or how to use them is ignored/missed because people think that if its been reduced to or past their threshhold its bad information, wrong, or that I (or whoever said it) is being a total jerk.

Edit: I rairly make a comment that could be considered creepy. Last time I made a herm joke some jackass came after me btching about how I get away with posting creepy fantasys and how when he did so he got whacked with a record. His was over the top, mine was borderline at worst.-3-' and I ended up removing it an any responces I posted because people where vote nuking them.

SirAntagonist said:
I feel like any change to the voting system (especially one as complicated as adding a re-vote or tracing feature) would only create more problems. I don't care what my comment scores are, and if someone is butthurt enough to use alts to vote down comments, they're probably not worth addressing anyways.

DragonFox69 said:
Truth.

I could not agree more. Please don't make changes to the commenting system, admins.

I haven't seen many comment downvotes that didn't seem deserved in some way. So... I don't think there's any need to change it.

I know its been 17 days however I wish to point out a rare, but very valid situation of abuse ive run into a handful of times on here.

Someone getting mad and taking it out on an entier comment list for an image(s). Ive run across posts with every single comment downvoted, be it funny, bad, or plain.
I just came across another case of this. Spent all my votes for the hour trying to revert the damage.
Ive hnseen at the very least 8 diffrent instances of this type of abuse.

I still think comment voting on a porn site is.... unsmart. People are simply to sensitive and if they have the power to make your words vannish they will do it.

Esme_Belles said:
Someone getting mad and taking it out on an entier comment list for an image(s). Ive run across posts with every single comment downvoted, be it funny, bad, or plain.

Well, regular users have very limited votes per hour, so that's not really a big issue. And if you think it is, maybe the amount of downvotes per hour allowed to regular users can be lowered even more, iunno.

Edit: What is the current votes a regular user is given every hours?

Peekaboo said:
Well, regular users have very limited votes per hour, so that's not really a big issue. And if you think it is, maybe the amount of downvotes per hour allowed to regular users can be lowered even more, iunno.

Edit: What is the current votes a regular user is given every hours?

10 per hour

Peekaboo said:
Well, regular users have very limited votes per hour, so that's not really a big issue. And if you think it is, maybe the amount of downvotes per hour allowed to regular users can be lowered even more, iunno.

Edit: What is the current votes a regular user is given every hours?

Even less votes, why bother then lol

Vote abuse is a punishable thing is it not? I mean if it is apparent someone is just being a twat, like the situation Esme mentioned

Maybe the hourly limit could be lowered a bit, or even halved. But as I said before, I don't see any need for it. It's rare to see down-votes that didn't seem deserved in some way.

As for removing the feature? I'm completely against that. It's useful for weeding out bad and uninteresting comments.

I think the member's comment-vote-limit should stay at 10. It is just enough that you can vote casually without often running into it, but you can't go on a comment voting binge session and get very far at all. Which is frustrating, but reasonable.

It's a very short leash, but making it any shorter would basically make it impossible for members to vote on comments. I was a member until recently and would run into the limit on a semi-regular basis. It just wasn't possible to get much voting done the way it was. But at least when you hit the limit, it happened when you knew that you had been just beginning to vote a bunch in earnest. So you could acknowledge that maybe you needed take off the "someone is wrong on the internet!" hat and go do something else. It was actually a good reminder to keep things in perspective and it kind of trained me not to take the comments so damn seriously. So I think the limit is already right about where it should be to keep mischief at bay but still allow casual and reasonable use of voting without excessive frustration (at there being a limit).

I also don't think any voting abuse has actually occured. I know it's unpleasent to get downvotes on your comment, but we all get them. And looking at the comments that were downvoted, I could see why. Even though the information was correct and helpful, the attitude was a little off-putting. Sometimes, even if what you say is true, some people will downvote it because they don't like being talked to in that way. If you'd conveyed the exact same information with a different attitude or phrasing, you might have gotten the upvotes you wanted. So I don't think it was a case of voting abuse happening here, but just people reacting to the tone you said it in.

Pickle its not really about my own comments anymore, I just think the system could be improved somehow. For starters I belive ive been told by admin that even they cant see who has down/upvoted.

As for the limit, sure it helps when the person doesn't come back to the post(s), but some have come back when the time limits up and finishes the vote spam. I once found an image where there where 28 comments only 5 of them where untouched...and it was the same User in each comment. He ended up loosing an argument about something, next thing that happened anyone other thannhim who commented got at the very least a single down vote. Everyone.
Tell me that isn't abuse?

Esme_Belles said:
Pickle its not really about my own comments anymore, I just think the system could be improved somehow. For starters I belive ive been told by admin that even they cant see who has down/upvoted.

As for the limit, sure it helps when the person doesn't come back to the post(s), but some have come back when the time limits up and finishes the vote spam. I once found an image where there where 28 comments only 5 of them where untouched...and it was the same User in each comment. He ended up loosing an argument about something, next thing that happened anyone other thannhim who commented got at the very least a single down vote. Everyone.
Tell me that isn't abuse?

That example you just mentioned probably was abuse. But that example is also probably very rare out of the thousands of comment votes happening every day on this site. Because humans are a resourceful, clever, persistent species, I don't think it's possible to completely prevent abuse of any system, no matter how well made it is. If an individual is determined enough, they will find a way.

If it were somehow easier for admins to see who was voting what in order to investigate and catch the few instances of vote abuse, then that might be an improvement. But other than that, I think the current vote system works amazingly well. Extremely good comments tend to get upvoted. Useless and extremely bad comments tend to get hidden over time. The rest can go either way, but it allows people to blow off some steam and for the community to give feedback of what types of sentiments and behaviors that are welcome or unwelcome. In that way it's a nice way to take the temperature of the community.

So it's useful. It works on the big stuff. And while it can be circumvented by a very determined troublemaker, the amount of those in the population are rare and impossible to completely prevent from happening. As for some of the other ideas in here:

I like the idea of being able to hide (from your own view) comments that you don't like. Not affecting anything for anyone else. But that way if someone really dislikes seeing a comment, instead of creating drama about it they could simply (with the click of a button) hide it for themselves and forget it's even there. I don't know how possible that is to implement as a site feature. But I think it could be a really nice feature (if possible).

I do NOT like the idea of comment scores. It would emphasize the popularity/competitive side of comment voting without actually adding any real value. In this case, staying simpler may in fact be best. Instead of three upvotes and two downvotes (which invites people to look for controversy and drama even if it's long since passed) it is simply just three upvotes visible. I think in the long term that's better than a full vote score. Especially since that was actually one of the things I hated about f@cebook. So I'd hate to see it here.

I really do like the idea of being able to change my vote on a comment. Sometimes I clicked the wrong arrow by accident and then wish I could take it back. Sometimes I didn't realise the context of the rest of the argument, but that can make a formerly "reasonable sounding" comment and throw it in a completely different light for me. So then I've wished I could change my mind about up/down voting it. Or maybe I see a comment I voted on a year ago, and now feel differently. Again, I wish I could change it. It really is not a big deal by any measure and I'll be fine without it as a feature. But sometimes it would be nice. /so just my two cents.

Pickle, you've brought up some good points in this thread, I'm with you fully now.

furrypickle said:
If it were somehow easier for admins to see who was voting what in order to investigate and catch the few instances of vote abuse, then that might be an improvement.

From what I've understood, they can already easily see it; and most cases of reported vote abuse haven't been actual abuse. Just various users voting normally. ...or at least that's the vibe I've been getting.

There's no such thing as universally funny. What someone might find funny, another might find annoying, irrelevant, or simply boring.

furrypickle said:
I really do like the idea of being able to change my vote on a comment. Sometimes I clicked the wrong arrow by accident and then wish I could take it back.

And yes, this would be great.
For instance, I remember voting down a couple of admins at one point. It didn't used to be possible to downvote them, so when I noticed one admin comment with -1, I just had to try it myself. Whoops.

Genjar: "I just had to try it myself. Whoops."
looool, naughty naughty!

Genjar said:
And yes, this would be great.
For instance, I remember voting down a couple of admins at one point. It didn't used to be possible to downvote them, so when I noticed one admin comment with -1, I just had to try it myself. Whoops.

This would be really neat, it can't be done as our DB currently works, or it would be possible already.

Also, I like the system as it is currently, no matter who votes how on what, nobody has any detrimental effects except comments not showing for people who haven't lowered the threshold.
If we further castrate the system we would only hurt the normal commenter and only cause a minor inconvenience to the people who already (try to) abuse it anyway.

It's like the internet censorship in australia or the UK, it only affects your normal citizen, everybody else who really wants to see pornography knows how to get around the filter anyway.

Patchi said:
Who really cares about what score you get on comments.

Seriously.

People take things way too seriously.

I care. Deeply.

It reminds me just how many stupid people exist, one at a time.

Actini-89 said:
I care. Deeply.

It reminds me just how many stupid people exist, one at a time.

Lies! You don't care about us "puny mammals"

Xch3l said:
Lies! You don't care about us "puny mammals"

But i still have to see what you say.

As fuzzy as the text is in a hundred million eyes.

furrypickle said:
If it were somehow easier for admins to see who was voting what in order to investigate and catch the few instances of vote abuse, then that might be an improvement.

I agree with that.

furrypickle said:
Extremely good comments tend to get upvoted. Useless and extremely bad comments tend to get hidden over time. The rest can go either way, but it allows people to blow off some steam and for the community to give feedback of what types of sentiments and behaviors that are welcome or unwelcome. In that way it's a nice way to take the temperature of the community.

I like the idea of being able to hide (from your own view) comments that you don't like. Not affecting anything for anyone else. But that way if someone really dislikes seeing a comment, instead of creating drama about it they could simply (with the click of a button) hide it for themselves and forget it's even there. I don't know how possible that is to implement as a site feature. But I think it could be a really nice feature (if possible).

I agree with that too, but I would add that it would be appropriate to be able to downvote a bad comment as the first step; hide it from self when it said comment is really offensive; and the downvote still count. I would not like to see that downvote go to waste because it serves the purposes you listed above as "give feedback" and "take the temperature" of the community.
Not keeping a downvote negates the reason for having "score:=>2" search or whatever.

furrypickle said:
I do NOT like the idea of comment scores. It would emphasize the popularity/competitive side of comment voting without actually adding any real value. In this case, staying simpler may in fact be best. Instead of three upvotes and two downvotes (which invites people to look for controversy and drama even if it's long since passed) it is simply just three upvotes visible. I think in the long term that's better than a full vote score. Especially since that was actually one of the things I hated about f@cebook. So I'd hate to see it here.

I strongly disagree with only showing 3 upvotes, which is in contrast with everything that you had said in the same post about taking the "temperature of the community" and "venting."
If I understand the current voting system, A '+3-2= +1' . 3 up and two down result in the displayed score being up 1. That is fair, I.M.O.. Only showing one type of vote sends the message that the other side doesn't have value, which is wrong.

furrypickle said:
I do NOT like the idea of comment scores. It would emphasize the popularity/competitive side of comment voting without actually adding any real value. In this case, staying simpler may in fact be best. Instead of three upvotes and two downvotes (which invites people to look for controversy and drama even if it's long since passed) it is simply just three upvotes visible. I think in the long term that's better than a full vote score. Especially since that was actually one of the things I hated about f@cebook. So I'd hate to see it here.

The only difference here being that there is an ability to downvote, unlike facebook which only has a "like" function that helps accelerate that competitive popularity contest. When the public sees a large number of likes on a facebook post, they think higher of the post because there is no method of seeing the number of people who didn't like it, or ignored it, which is much, much larger than the group that liked it.

How about instead of taking away scores, we keep the number of positive scores and negative scores separate, like +(1) and -(1) for a score of zero.

I don't like the idea of everyone knowing the way you voted, because I feel that could start some major drama if people took the vote too seriously, and since they know the person who voted, they know who to retaliate against.

Moon_Moon said:
I don't like the idea of everyone knowing the way you voted, because I feel that could start some major drama if people took the vote too seriously, and since they know the person who voted, they know who to retaliate against.

I agree with this, I see a lot of people who view downvotes, negative comments, etc as some sort of personal attack rather than an expression of opinion. How any user votes should always be private.

Patchi said:
Who really cares about what score you get on comments.

Seriously.

People take things way too seriously.

me

DragonFox69 said:
I agree with this, I see a lot of people who view downvotes, negative comments, etc as some sort of personal attack rather than an expression of opinion. How any user votes should always be private.

Are you referring to the way that F@cebook publishes the 'like' you just made onto your profile for the public to see?

memeboy said:
me

Conversely to what I was saying about F@cebook and publicity...
:+like:

GazapoDeMuerte said:
I agree with that too, but I would add that it would be appropriate to be able to downvote a bad comment as the first step; hide it from self when it said comment is really offensive; and the downvote still count. I would not like to see that downvote go to waste because it serves the purposes you listed above as "give feedback" and "take the temperature" of the community.
Not keeping a downvote negates the reason for having "score:=>2" search or whatever.

I definitely agree with that. I wasn't thinking of either/or but "in addition to" but I don't think I said that so it wasn't very clear. Personally I'd want both: the ability to vote up or down and then also the ability to be able to hide a comment I just didn't want to see anymore (annoying, distracting, off-topic, points out something I want to be able to try and unsee, a conversation I'm done with reading, etc etc). And by that I mean hiding it for me personally, not affecting it's ability to show for other people (except via the contributing downvote). I think the two features would work well together in combination though, so I'd want both if at all possible.

GazapoDeMuerte said:
I strongly disagree with only showing 3 upvotes, which is in contrast with everything that you had said in the same post about taking the "temperature of the community" and "venting."
If I understand the current voting system, A '+3-2= +1' . 3 up and two down result in the displayed score being up 1. That is fair, I.M.O.. Only showing one type of vote sends the message that the other side doesn't have value, which is wrong.

*sheepish* That's actually what I meant to say, but definitely not what I did say. Now rereading it, I'm not sure how I didn't catch it. I guess I was distracted with the other points I was making and overlooked how it read different to what I meant it to say. But sincerely, thanks for catching it. I totally agree that the upvotes and the downvotes should be totaled up like they are now into a combined single score. And I wouldn't want to only show a comment's upvotes/ignoring the downvotes like I accidentally said in my post. That wouldn't be very representative and it would bug me if they did that. So yeah, I just goofed up saying what I meant in that paragraph. It needed a few more edits to be clearer.

@Moon Moon: I just realised that I totally botched that one paragraph you're referring to. *personal facepalm* The type of scoring I didn't like was the version of scoring being suggested in the first couple of posts on this forum thread. (But I wasn't specific, so it's just a guessing game whether I was talking about the current scoring system or the scoring system suggested earlier in the thread. My bad.) I like the way it's scored currently because it factors in both the upvotes and the downvotes into an overall single combined score. It simplifies the details it shows publicly but still manages to represent all of the votes both up and down.

I think if we listed the upvotes and downvotes separately side-by-side it would look like a sports scoreboard and that it encourages people to pick sides, to look for controversy to explain why so many people voted opposite to each other, lament and rant why even a single person would have ever voted that comment up/down when it's so "obvious" that the other vote direction is the only acceptable one for a comment like that, etc etc. And I think that would distract without really adding anything. So...Sorry about that. Half of that paragraph was still in my head and never made it on paper. Hopefully it's more clear now what I meant to say.

I also want to agree with the other point being brought up here: that the facebook policy of listing who's voted what on something would be an absolutely terrible idea for anywhere e621. I mean, no one needs to know that (except maybe admins). Who votes what should always be private. Facebook doesn't seem to understand that word, but most reasonable places should. =/