The issue about down votes on comments

Hi Sadie,

I disagree with you here. For this issue, we should probably investigate why people vote down comments. You mention it's because comments break the guidelines mostly. Try hovering over the down vote button. You should see the message "Vote down, this is not encouraging or helpful . . ." This was KA's message and their idea of why you would vote something down. Note that there are no mentions of the guidelines here. I've seen plenty of comments that categorize as "not encouraging and helpful" but do follow the guidelines. 

Additionally, sometimes flagging a post isn't going to get you far enough. A comment needs three or more flags to be hidden and investigated by a guardian. In discussion forums, only posts that severely violate the guidelines seem to get enough flags to be hidden. For the ones that aren't hidden, voting them down is a good option. 

In your post, you mentioned "the user who does the down voting is only doing so because of personal issues with the other user" I agree with you here but trolling isn't something you can simply remove. Consider flags, the functionality is badly abused by trolls (if you use a flag checker to take a look at some of the top list programs' flags, you'll see what I mean.) Should we remove the flagging functionality? I don't want to speak for other people, but I would guess the main response would be "no."

A few years ago, you could vote down a program. This feature was unpopular and removed. After the removal though, it seems people wanted the down vote button back. 

Hi Admiral Betasin,

Thanks for commenting.

To clarify something I didn't specify in my post, I agree that some down-vote options can be a good thing to have, we obviously do not want people just flagging at a whim, and I do find that the down-voting option is especially helpful to have on answers and questions. 

Most of the real issue I'm trying to address revolves around tips and thanks. Many of the comments that I find on programs or articles are voted down because of personal issues and disagreements. When the comment is down-voted for a good reason, it can almost always be flagged for that same reason(it kind of goes hand-in-hand with the guidelines for flagging) -- :

Abuse *disrespectful or offensive, A Question *should be in questions, Not Helpful *Low quality, off topic, soliciting, repeatedly making the same post. etc, About The Site *A question about Khan Academy, a post about badges, a technical problem with the site, a request for videos or features. (I'm sure you know the drill).

I want to point out the "not helpful" and "abuse" flag options. When a comment has the option of "Vote down, this is not encouraging or helpful . . ." if it truly is not helpful, or it crosses the line of being mean, we are not just allowed to flag it, we should flag it. So flagging and down-voting are not identical, but they are similar uses of protection for other KA users so they don't have to see the unhelpful, inappropriate, or offensive comments.

I don't see why we should have both the option to flag, and the option to down-vote on tips-and-thanks comments. In the many cases that I've witnessed, both the down-vote button and flag button are used in an unhelpful, mean-spirited way.

You are right, nobody can simply "remove" trolls. But we can remove some things that do more harm then good. And if that still causes those same people to abuse different things, maybe it's time for Khan Academy to have stricter rules and more specific guidelines.

I hardly want flagging itself removed, and I can't imagine that my post will cause khan academy to remove it. I'm just hoping to give others on KA food for thought. I sincerely hope that everyone here(especially Guardians) will try to be more aware of the malicious flagging and down-voting that goes on, and will try harder to prevent it.

-Sadie

Hi Sadie,

Thanks for your response.

Comments can be down voted if you disagree with the view (you wouldn't flag a comment if you disagree with it.) I feel if the down vote feature is removed on comments, people will uses flags instead (not everyone of course, but some.)

It seems the main issue here is whether down voting is similar enough from flagging to be unnecessary. This appears to be the place where our opinions differentiate. I don't wish to speak for you, but what I got out of your response is that down votes are not different enough from flags, and they cause a negative impact (please correct me if I'm wrong.)

@ jeff lowe,

Yeah, the subject of votes has always had a lot of controversy, even outside of Khan Academy...

MSN removed the ability to comment at all. Period. But Yahoo has not yet done so and still allows thumb's down. So the pro/con arguments on that topic are not yet settled.

Are we talking about this support community or just about the comments section for videos? I don't use the video comments because it's not available in the iPad app. (The support community, at least, is linked to by the app.)

In the support community, I have voted down posts only rarely. I only use it when the comment is offensive or vulgar. Earlier this week, there were two posts in which someone had used keyboard characters to make an offensive graphic. One was an original message, while the other was a reply. I am pretty sure I downvoted both posts.

I am tempted to downvote messages with too many "texting spellings", such as a constant use of "u" for "you"; "b/c", "bc", "cuz", "cos", or "cause" for "because"; "ps", "pls", or "pl" for "please"; "tx", "thx", or "ty" for "thanks"/"thank you"; etc., but I know that this would be nitpicking on my part and doesn't present an accurate picture.