No more downvotes?

Yes, we’ve recently pushed an update to the WoW forums that removes the ability to downvote posts made by other players.

We originally added this feature as a means for players to assist with forum moderation by upvoting helpful posts and downvoting inappropriate or toxic posts. In practice, however, we found that it was primarily being used for things like downvoting a post simply because they disagreed with it, which was not the intent, and too often led to different opinions getting unfairly buried. Moving to an upvotes-only environment will remove this unintended abuse, while still allowing players to give recognition to posts that have a positive impact on the World of Warcraft community.

As a reminder, you can still report inappropriate or abusive posts to the moderation team by selecting the “Report Post” option located in the dropdown menu on the right of the offending post.

07/11/2017 10:50 AMPosted by Avelissa

07/11/2017 10:46 AMPosted by Ornyx

being used for things like downvoting a post simply because they disagreed with it

Really? I don't like a post, I hit the button labeled DISLIKE...

WTF?

Remove like as well or you (blizzard as a whole) is just doing this to make it look like there are no issues.

Cover-ups never go well.

Covering up what exactly?... Posts that disagree with design, for example, can still be liked by players which can indicate to us its something to look into, etc.

The ability to troll threads with downvotes, or downvoting for the sake of disagreement was the prime reason for removal here, and it nay make some increase in workload on the moderation side, but nothing we can't handle.

Let's take off our tin foil hats here.

07/11/2017 10:56 AMPosted by Roxette

07/11/2017 10:54 AMPosted by Ornyx

...Covering up what exactly?... Posts that disagree with design, for example, can still be liked by players which can indicate to us its something to look into, etc.

The ability to troll threads with downvotes, or downvoting for the sake of disagreement was the prime reason for removal here, and it nay make some increase in workload on the moderation side, but nothing we can't handle.

Let's take off our tin foil hats here.

I don't think this will work like you think it will ...

A good example of the reason for this fall to specific examples, and there are many, but one we see often that ends up pushing people away from the forums is...

For example, if a Paladin posts in the Paladin class forum about something the 'general' Paladin community doesn't feel is important, they were just downvoted to oblivion, often with no context. We'd much rather people engage in meaningful conversation with each other to convey those kind of things, and, even if they don't, the poster of the thread doesn't feel worthless for posting a thread that ended up with -70 votes for no reason.

There's not really a bad outcome here, but we will keep an eye on the change going forward, and we encourage posters to report posts that are toxic or against our Forums Code of Conduct.

07/11/2017 10:58 AMPosted by Kegstand

07/11/2017 10:54 AMPosted by Ornyx

The ability to troll threads with downvotes, or downvoting for the sake of disagreement was the prime reason for removal here, and it nay make some increase in workload on the moderation side, but nothing we can't handle.

What about the trolls that downvotes helped to bury i.e one thread this morning that compared blizzard to germany with a side mention of concentration camps tossed in?

Having posts like that buried when mods are m.i.a or home sleeping/off work was a good thing.

We built a much larger, scaled moderation team since the downvote feature was implemented, and they are typically quick to react to these types of things to remove them entirely, and we will work with our moderation team to adjust to react to this as well.

Downvoting doesn't really serve a purpose with that kind of thread in the bigger picture, as people can still read it.

07/11/2017 11:01 AMPosted by Avelissa

07/11/2017 10:54 AMPosted by Ornyx

The ability to troll threads with downvotes, or downvoting for the sake of disagreement

Just to clarify:

Clicking the button that said "Dislike" on a post we didn't like was now, according to a blue, trolling?

07/11/2017 10:54 AMPosted by Ornyx

Covering up what exactly?

07/11/2017 10:54 AMPosted by Ornyx

Let's take off our tin foil hats here.

Covering up quite a bit actually. If there's a lot of disliked comments on a topic, good chance it's not popular (of the forum population) opinion. By only allowing the like button to continue you're pushing any opinions that are not +1 out of the game. If someone can add a +1, someone else should be able to add a -1, or you're promoting a false utopia of upvotes...

Many of the downvoted threads did not warrant a full reply. The dislike button was enough to say "I don't like this".

*puts on tin foil hat*

It wasn't the *original* intention. I wasn't here when it was implemented, and maybe there was a poor word choice on the button, but we're a bit past that now.

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And now if there's not a lot likes, then it's still not popular?

I think your concern is how do we know x is popular versus y and z (wheras x may be a disagreement about game design and y may be a thread about Illidan lore). Things will be compared on the bigger picture now instead of thread by thread, which is how we've been doing it for a long, long time to be honest.

07/11/2017 11:05 AMPosted by Pathofpeace

All of the emotionally reactive types will have no idea what to do with themselves now.

*I need to like this post to counteract the negative someone gave it, although I don't really care. Oh I can't... what?! omg!

*I need to dislike this post to counteract the support it's getting, because I'm annoyed with that person getting positive attention when it should be ME getting it! Oh wait, I can't dislike now... omg wtf do I do?!!

*Since there's only a 'like' option now, I have to... like... actually think about if I like a post before I like it. omg I'm so confused! I can't take this!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯