Hidden due to down votes is maybe the stupidest feature I have ever seen on a website

I think that if downvotes are going to carry enough weight to alter a topic title being hidden then we should be able to see who is downvoting. 

Hiding downvotes and showing upvotes gives power to the mindless coward. Either hide both, show both or get rid of voting altogether. 

Then why have of the upvote/downvote garbage?  Nobody seems to want it. 

Who is it meant to protect, the poster or the people reading the post?….or the forum admins?  What is the purpose of that feature?  

the whole "downvote" feature was stupid when introduced and now this new feature of hiding posts is a double down on silly. What value does "voting" on a post possibly bring to the conversation?

Upvote/downvote is fine, but having one hidden and the other not, isn't. 

The reasoning is that if you can see who downvotes you, it'll create animosity between members. That's nonsense of course, but that's what they are going with, and don't expect any answers beyond that. It's clear it's meant to create an echo chamber. 

If I go into a forum of flat earthers and say the world is indeed not flat, a d the overwhelming amount of evidence supports that, I would be downvoted because dissenting views are not well tolerated. But at least, unlike here, the flat earthers would put their name behind their vote. 

Agreed. I get their sentiment but it’s weird to show one and not the other. Especially when one of them controls whether your message viewed or not. I’m proud of every downvote/upvote I’ve made and stand behind them.

Maybe we should all start replying to every dumb comment with “I downvoted this.” Then it could feel like the first 3 pages of every bench racing thread each weekend with “holeshot!” “Podium” “top ten” “hit the gate” trash comments. 

"That's nonsense of course, but that'  what they are going with."

Not really. ML has received emails from outraged members demanding who downvoted their posts. 

I've deleted comments from members telling others to go kill themselves because they got downvotes.

You don't think that behaviour would escalate if they were made public? 

It would create more problems for the forum and result in more people being banned and coming back under new usernames to continue arguing. 

So why not hide both like Reddit? I find it comical when certain people post things and it gets immediate upvotes regardless of the validity of their statement. Do people think DV is going to invite them over for dinner because they upvoted his comment?

No, I dont think it would get worse, I think it would be better because it would create transparency. Seems people are upset that they can't see who is doing the downvoting.  

But if that's the case that people are getting that upset over downvotes, then why have them at all?  

Actually- it’s growing on me. It’s like an extra kick in the balls to a bad commenter..

It’s saying your post was so bad, it was not only downvoted by many people, but it was such a bad comment it needed to be hidden. 

I propose- if a commenter gets 3 hidden comments they be banned ala GuyB style..they have to confess their mistakes, concede they are an idiot and beg to be “un-banned”.

Also I am curious - at what ratio of up / down votes is a post hidden? 

Then people will just downvote users to get them banned. 

It's clear that people are downvoting other users simply because they don't like the user. I'm sure some down votes are legitimate because there are some really dumb comments on here. But I've seen people say things that are one hundred percent true, and they get downvoted. 

As far as I can recall, i've never downvoted anyone, and I won't do it if it's anonymous. I've given other users thumbs up, but not the thumbs down. 

Just a thought, but if you're one that bothers taking a look at who likes your posts, and you notice the same people liking them over a period of time, you could message them and strike up a friendship. That's a positive. 

Other than that, I'm not sure. 

Some people don't post much and some just lurk. Having the feature allows them to participate in conversations in a smaller capacity. 

Some people already message other members in private to tell to fuck off. 

I don't think making them public would help the cause. 

Edit: Typo

so roughly 90% of the vote is to ax this feature....do the powers that be at Vital respond to things such as this? Or does this thread move to the dumbgeon to die a quick death?

Crazy the we have to have “features” on a forum, where mostly adults post,  to manage their feelings of things said on the internet from someone they don’t know…

*Haiden due to downvotes

Hidden due to down votes  ( Show Content )

Down votes aren't the problem, the insecure posters that get upset about down votes are the problem.

I do agree the "hidden due to down votes" thing seems pointless and wonky. 

If the goal of the upvote/downvote is to allow lurkers to participate, then Vital is doing it very wrong by keeping the upvotes visible which does the exact opposite - it discourages participation.  Yes, you heard that right, keeping the upvotes visible not only discourages participation, but it also gives inaccurate readings, and it discourages positivity.  Meanwhile, the hidden downvotes encourages participation and encourages negativity.  Can anyone explain why??  It's pretty obvious, and it's something I've never understood why Vital can't figure this out.

I understand the argument to keep downvotes hidden, so if this is going to remain unchanged then Vital needs to make the upvotes hidden if they truly want to allow participation from all allow for un-biased viewpoints on every post.

As for the hidden posts due to downvotes, the Vital members are right - it's the stupidest f*king thing I've ever seen on a website.  It's doing nothing for our sports reputation by having super childish crap like this on a popular moto forum.

Vital really needs to get rid of this.  It really is one of the lamest things currently on the world wide web.  Vital gets the stupid award and as you can see 90% of your members agree. Vital wants us to take surveys because they care about the user feedback right?  So there you have it in this poll, and this isn't the first time it's been discussed.  The tribe has spoken and everyone thinks it's super lame, therefore if Vital cares about user feedback they must dump it immediately.

Yeah it’s dumb 

My SUBJECTIVE opinion: Downvoting is the dumbest thing ever. What happened to ignoring something you don't like? overlooking, turning a blind eye?

I feel sorry for the current generation that feels entitled to cast a negative vote for anything everything they disagree with.

Down voting is throwing gasoline on the fire of narcissism and ignorance

This feature works poorly or not at all.  I've only ever considered blocking one person on here (Herr Lich), and in doing so, it only works in the same way you down vote a thread.  The post entry  is still there, and it hides the words.  Also, if that person replies to one of your posts, its not blocked at all.

Further, if you have high security settings like me, the system logs you off every time you exit the page, so consequently, I browse most of the time offline, and only log in if I want to make a comment.  In that case, the person you are attempting to block is obviously not blocked.

I don’t mind the up and down votes. Upvotes is nice feature when I agree and there’s no point saying anything because it’s been said and I have nothing to add. In the odd case I’ll quote a post that I think is especially on point and say something like “this”. But that’s saved for the very best. 

Downvotes is nice for several reasons. One is that spending time actually writing out a response to something I disagree with can be time consuming and often not worth it. Some things I don’t care about enough to bother - which raises the question: then why bother downvoting?. Putting this in writing and thinking about it makes me think that maybe I shouldn’t bother with a downvote if I don’t care enough to respond. Some things I think are so stupid that it’s not worth the effort because the content of the post is so awful that the person who posted it is likely  completely hopeless and it would be pointless or counterproductive to engage with them. Those posts usually have dozens of downvotes anyways. If you’ve got 100 downvotes and no upvotes your post is probably stupid. In this way, it’s a gauge of prevailing sentiment, if one cares about such things. And that’s the question: should we care about such thing? Caring too much in the way described by Maverick  is pretty clearly pathological. I’d hope that that’s the rare exception  

A really interesting post often has a lot of both up and down votes. If everyone agrees with you what you said may be clearly correct, or it may just be banal (though I’d think the most banal posts would have no votes either way). 

The above being said, it seems that sometimes the proportion of up vs down votes says little about the quality of the post and more about how certain people feel about the poster. I’ve seen two posts saying essentially the same things and one has upvotes and the other downvotes - and for certain members, it’s very predictable and comes across as childish. 

I would have no problem having my downvotes visible.

Not just downvote hidden topics , they shadow ban post they do not like and send them to dumbgeon 
Who gets to decide and what makes a post get sent to dumbgeon ?
 

I’ll add that the hiding feature is worse than pointless - it actually draws more attention to downvoted posts and threads. Banning based on downvotes is also a terrible idea since some members seem to get downvoted regardless of what they say. 

Makes no sense. Seems like if the administration won't make the downvotes transparent, and it's causing a lot of negative reactions, the best course of action would be to remove the option. 

I think it should apply to replies, but not entire topics.

The only use of either button, as I see it, is for when you have an opinion on a post but don't have the time or inclination to respond with your own post. Personally, I don't know why people are so bothered by it. Perhaps most people can't take people disagreeing with them or not liking what they have to say? They want the whole world to be one huge friendly echo chamber. You can see right here why politics has become so utterly divisive. 

Yes, if posters are getting too upset with downvotes they need to either take a break or get some outside help. I think it would also do everyone good to remember that text based communication misses a lot of the subtlety of face to face communication. I'm sure most of the arguments on here would be very well natured in person. I certainly know I'm making all of my posts from a good natured place. Something that would be much clearer if I were hanging with you fucks in person.