Nah it creates echo chambers and mob mentality. I’ve seen countless posts by reasonable authors who get downvoted to oblivion because the topic was unpopular.
For example…when people used to say scatter shot was op, or when people said that Sym needed changes. Those things later became removed or changed anyway, but the authors were downvoted to infinity. It’s not ok .
It’s not that the people who got disliked were delicate, it’s that people dislike everything because they’re delicate. I’ve seen lots of comments who are just giving straight up facts, including my own get multiple dislikes because people didn’t like that fact.
I even wrote a lengthy post that took, even me a fast reader, at least 30-40s to read, and it had 2 dislikes when I refreshed the page 10s after making the thread.
Honestly every place on the internet has elements of toxicity, not just gaming forums. Reddit for instance is just packed with some sadistic hateful people on almost every subreddit.
I would just down vote EVERY post I saw with the word “Mercy” in it just because I’m completely over it now. So I do see your point about not articulating a response though, I hope you also understand where I am coming from
The purpose of downvoting is not to express disagreement. Disagreement requires words.
Downvoting was solely as a means to sort posts. You’d downvote non-constructive threads not worth reading, and upvote good ones. You still have this sorting feature—but instead of downvoting, you simply choose not to upvote (“like”) posts you don’t think are interesting.
Unfortunately, downvoting was not used constructively. People did in fact use it as an easy disagree button, which created a platform where only mainstream opinions were allowed.
And it’s incredibly easy to think that because an opinion is popular, it’s right. But you would be blown away by how many popular opinions that are completely wrong (this goes for everywhere in life as well). For example, imagine how many of your parents that thought video games were unhealthy and made you violent.
If you want a platform where you only see things you agree with and like, you can go to Facebook. Disagreement is what creates discussion, and challenges your opinion intellectually.
On a side note, the forum was designed by Blizzard’s web design team, and they already said that all the other Blizzard gaming forums would eventually be updated to use the same forum structure as the Overwatch forum. Downvotes simply don’t belong on a constructive discussion forum. (Even the good discussion forums on Reddit also implemented a “not a dislike” tooltip on their downvote button as they can’t actually remove the button.)
It’s more a case that the new forum they implemented, called Discourse, doesn’t actually have such a function (to dislike). I don’t imagine they have the option of adding the function even if they wanted to, but I’ve never used Discourse so I’m not sure if that’s possible.
Companies rarely make the forum-software their forums are built on. There’s a billion companies out there who have done that for you, ready to go and be “skinned” in whatever your theme is.
Here is no different.
They simply migrated over to a different, and to be frank, WAY better forum software- known as discourse (which is easily one of the best out there), which they then skinned in overwatch.
Discourse doesn’t have a dislike button because they feel it’s a worthless thing to have. All said and done, this is a discussion forum- and they want people discussing things.
Downvote button do little to promote discussion, and at the end of the day just give an easy way to be negative.
So they don’t have one.
You dislike something? Use your grown up words and explain why or say so.
Too many posts on the old forums were buried and removed because someone simply said something unpopular (Which WASNT the point of the button in the first place- and exactly why they’re useless)
I do not miss the downvote button. Good riddance to a worthless feature.
I read a post yesterday that stated at the very beginning “I don’t care about your opinion” and then proceeded to argue their point about what ever trash they were on about. Is that a discussion topic?
I know it was designed by Discourse and they simply altered it.
Don’t ask me to look it up because I honestly don’t remember the thread title, but it was posted on another Blizzard forum that the web design team would eventually update all the other forums to use this forum structure as well.
In an effort to foster a more positive community and a constructive environment for discussion, the Dislike button was a mechanic we didn’t carry over from the old forums.