I almost never downvote posts or comments for this exact reason.

Votes are a way to express opinion. Not everyone will agree with you, that's just life. Unless you're breaking site rules, you shouldn't even really care because they don't do anything, at least on comments.

Yes, sometimes I reread a comment two or three times trying to figure out why it was downvoted. There's really nothing you can do about it. It's really difficult sometimes to figure why certain things are downvoted. I think some users just have strange opinions about things.

The only time this becomes a problem is if someone's socket-puppeting/brigading to hide comments. Otherwise, like Drew Carey said, 'The points don't matter!'.

ninitito said:
Never see people complain about upvotes, only about downvotes. I feel like that's interesting in some way but I'm too dumb to grasp in what way.

downvotes are complained about because they give the Bad Chemicals™. Subjecting people to the Bad Chemicals™ for no apparent reason can seem strangely rude. I see where it's coming from, why would you spread hate (or ig the Bad Chemicals™) for no reason? All it does is make people feel vaguely bad. But, it's not really enough of a problem to warrant actual fixing. It's only Bad Chemicals™, they go away eventually

I would downvote your forum post if it was possible.

lance_armstrong said:
I would downvote your forum post if it was possible.

I don't know, Lilyofluck was kind of funny. ;)

This is very much a ~hot take~ but personally I don't think we should have post downvotes at all, since so much of the art here is posted without the artist's knowledge/consent. It feels very mean that we have this feature to allow people to easily shit on an artist's work en masse when the artist had no idea their work was even here. I've seen artists who've gone DNP specifically because of this.
(not referring to comment downvotes, just posts)

cloudpie said:
I've seen artists who've gone DNP specifically because of this.

Which sucks because e6 is the only way I can even find new artists because good luck discovering people on FA/Twitter. If an artist draws paw are and is DNP on here, I'll never find them.

cloudpie said:
This is very much a ~hot take~ but personally I don't think we should have post downvotes at all

I'm with you on that. I can see keeping the system as a way for people to easily block posts by blacklisting posts you've downvoted, but it seems very dubious to me to have a score that's simply upvotes - downvotes since people can vote for any, all, no reason. Not all upvotes and downvotes are equal so they're not always a 1-to-1 correlation. It also seems questionable since we encourage people to blacklist what they don't like, and people get in trouble for mass downvoting things they can blacklist.

watsit said:
I can see keeping the system as a way for people to easily block posts by blacklisting posts you've downvoted

Oh true. Just making score not publicly visible might be an easy solution. That way order:score and such could still be kept. (whether it should be kept is another question)

watsit said:
Not all upvotes and downvotes are equal so they're not always a 1-to-1 correlation. It also seems questionable since we encourage people to blacklist what they don't like, and people get in trouble for mass downvoting things they can blacklist.

I always thought this was weird too though to be honest.

cloudpie said:
Oh true. Just making score not publicly visible might be an easy solution. That way order:score and such could still be kept. (whether it should be kept is another question)

I'd actually want the score to be visible so it's easy to see how good something is.

bdanimare said:
I'd actually want the score to be visible so it's easy to see how good something is.

If score was made invisible or removed, we'd still have the favorites count. That'd still serve this function (pieces that more people like will have higher numbers) but artists won't have to deal with their work getting downvoted into oblivion when they didn't even post it.

Similar to what Watsit was saying, another option is to have personal upvotes/downvotes kept but no score attached to posts (again not talking about favecount, but about score). That way people can blacklist their downvotes like Watsit said. Not sure what upvotes would be useful for, in that situation, but maybe there's something

cloudpie said:
If score was made invisible or removed, we'd still have the favorites count. That'd still serve this function (pieces that more people like will have higher numbers) but artists won't have to deal with their work getting downvoted into oblivion when they didn't even post it.

Similar to what Watsit was saying, another option is to have personal upvotes/downvotes kept but no score attached to posts (again not talking about favecount, but about score). That way people can blacklist their downvotes like Watsit said. Not sure what upvotes would be useful for, in that situation, but maybe there's something

I think it's better to look at faves anyway since they have no downvote option and tend to be a higher number than upvotes anyway. Though, if you order:score it's basically correlated anyway.

cloudpie said:
Oh true. Just making score not publicly visible might be an easy solution. That way order:score and such could still be kept. (whether it should be kept is another question)

I always thought this was weird too though to be honest.

Don't go Youtube - you can never take it back.

cloudpie said:
If score was made invisible or removed, we'd still have the favorites count. That'd still serve this function (pieces that more people like will have higher numbers) but artists won't have to deal with their work getting downvoted into oblivion when they didn't even post it.

counterpoint, albinefox and the like. being able to downvote stuff that's just mean-spirited garbage and/or ragebait is still a fairly practical function, and being able to see the mostly negative reaction to a post could be useful to users.

sipothac said:
counterpoint, albinefox and the like. being able to downvote stuff that's just mean-spirited garbage and/or ragebait is still a fairly practical function, and being able to see the mostly negative reaction to a post could be useful to users.

How would one tell the difference between something downvoted due to being mean-spirited or ragebait, vs something that happens to get a downvote train due to being an unpopular fetish? If similar pictures with the same fetish get wildly different scores, because one happened to be posted at a time when more people were looking or had a more common search tag included, vs the other not being as visible outside of those with an interest in it, I don't see it as useful.

lance_armstrong said:
I would downvote your forum post if it was possible.

You’re mean ;(

being honest, i sometimes see a reason (maybe they dont like cubs or gore), but sometimes people just go miles further from the line. Once i saw a post with 700+ downvotes. Das sad :(

watsit said:
How would one tell the difference between something downvoted due to being mean-spirited or ragebait, vs something that happens to get a downvote train due to being an unpopular fetish?

Why does it matter why the person is downvoting? Bad posts should be downvoted. A post containing an unpopular fetish shouldn't shield it from natural downvoting.

If something I don't like gets past my blacklist, I add the relevant tags, and downvote if I feel the post deserves it, and move on.

I find searching by score is more useful to avoid bad posts when deep in a search than searching by favcount. It's a great indicator of when you're going to start seeing mediocre, and eventually bad art.

I also don't think people should be upset if posts they like are getting naturally downvoted. I don't think people realize that the vote system is there to help the majority of users to determine what art is good at a glance. It's not perfect, but it does a great job doing that. Favorites alone can't accomplish this very well, as there are plenty of posts with high favcounts that are widely regarded as mediocre/terrible.

Being able to view a post's score is extremely useful, I use it all the time. Such useful functionality shouldn't be removed just because a small fraction of users disagree with the majority on the quality of art.

kyiiel said:
A post containing an unpopular fetish shouldn't shield it from natural downvoting.

I've seen people get negative records for downvoting art they could've blacklisted :P it's a bit confusing
(which I agree with! more productive and healthy to just block art you don't want to see)

kyiiel said:
Why does it matter why the person is downvoting? Bad posts should be downvoted. A post containing an unpopular fetish shouldn't shield it from natural downvoting.

Bad is subjective. What is the point of the score? In my mind, it's to help elevate posts that people like with its given subject matter so other people with similar interests are also more likely to see it, but the scoring system as it is doesn't really reflect that. You can have one person go "proportions are terrible, linework is inconsistent, no handle on colors, poor conveyance of actions... *downvote*", and another person can go "mmm, boobies *fap and upvote*". To the site's scoring, those reasons are completely equivalent and that post is no different to one that no one cared to vote on either way.

This isn't a site for kinkshaming. Just because a fetish is unpopular doesn't mean it should score worse than it otherwise would, people who like that fetish have just as much right to use the scoring system to find good posts as you do for the fetishes you like.

"Natural downvoting" makes no sense. Every vote is a proactive action by some user, which relies on that user seeing it then clicking upvote or downvote. Posts don't accrue downvotes by nature of existing, they get them from people that want to downvote it for any or no reason.

kyiiel said:
If something I don't like gets past my blacklist, I add the relevant tags, and downvote if I feel the post deserves it, and move on.

Downvoting based on content is against the rules:

The rules say:

3.1 Abuse of Site Tools

• [...]
• Do not indiscriminately downvote posts based on their content. Blacklist the offending subject matter instead.

In your given case, that downvote would solely be because the poster forgot specific tags, and nothing to do with the quality of the post itself.

kyiiel said:
I find searching by score is more useful to avoid bad posts when deep in a search than searching by favcount.

Don't you think people who are into less popular fetishes should have that same ability?

kyiiel said:
I don't think people realize that the vote system is there to help the majority of users to determine what art is good at a glance. It's not perfect, but it does a great job doing that. Favorites alone can't accomplish this very well, as there are plenty of posts with high favcounts that are widely regarded as mediocre/terrible.

Is it really mediocre/terrible if it has a high favcount? That seems to be a presumptive argument.

The blacklist is there if you don't like certain types of content. So for example, if you don't like a fart fetish you can blacklist it, then the score and favcount of such posts are completely inconsequential to you. The highest-scored and most-favorited post on the site could be a fart fetish piece and you'd still never see it. The post doesn't need to have its score lowered beyond what it would otherwise get just because it contains a less popular fetish.

lankylank said:
I almost never downvote posts or comments for this exact reason.

any sort of criticism on artwork is an easy way to get flooded with downvotes. which is a shame, because i've tried forever to get any sort of criticism of my art from my family and friends. they never have anything i can work with and improve, and they're either being polite or they're not trained to see the flaws.

3ducksinatrenchcoat said:
any sort of criticism on artwork is an easy way to get flooded with downvotes. which is a shame, because i've tried forever to get any sort of criticism of my art from my family and friends. they never have anything i can work with and improve, and they're either being polite or they're not trained to see the flaws.

In general it's best to only give criticism if the artist requests it. Random unasked-for criticism is honestly really rude and a lot of artists don't appreciate it. Doubly so on this site in particular, since the piece may have been uploaded without the artist's knowledge or consent.

Usually not applicable here on e6, but elsewhere, if you'd like to give critique and the artist didn't ask for it, you can first ask "are you looking for critique on this?" and let them answer yes or no.

I wouldn't recommend taking downvotes and upvotes on posts seriously. Most people aren't giving much if any thought to the reasons for what they do and don't like.