So, people have asked me about downvotes... · 3:50pm Mar 25th, 2014
...and whether X or Y did it.
And let me tell you, it's really not something you need or want to know.
For the mod part, because obviously it would start a fight in most cases, regardless of how responsible you are with it, on a personal level, for every one of you that would shrug it off, there are always 20 more people that will react badly and it will just escalate.
In that sense it's why mass-downvoting and mass-upvoting are issues that I feel should be addressed somehow. The second one will not piss the authors off, but of course it's as unfair as the first one.
On a personal level... well, I know exactly who downvoted my stories. And comments. Most of the time my reaction is: "Oh, they're cronies of that moron, XYZ. Geh, that's annoying. There's a reason everybody hates him." And then I go about doing just about everything else that, for the most part, they can't even do.
Other times, however, they're more along the lines of: "Wait. What? And he/she didn't even leave a comment! Why?!" followed by silently raging and brooding while looking at cool the local coffee shop. (Or if I don't have the change to spare, pretending to look cool, while brooding with my own, home-brewed coffee.) Sometimes I'll be passive-aggressive about it, sometimes coffee works its magic and I get over it quicker.
But I guess my point of the second one is, is it really worth knowing, when you know you'll be disappointed?
I have the disadvantage that I write stories as well as moderate the site. So to me, people's opinions of what I write are important, and I understand how frustrating it is when people downvote something you worked on. Who doesn't want the little green thumbs to increase, while there's no change in the reds?
Or as a particularly hypocritical user here once said (and it's mostly true):
Sadly, such is the reality of FimFic. People downvote based on tags, pairings, or just plain not being one of the cool kids.
Of course, he wouldn't know, but being one of the 'cool' kids comes with a lot of petty downvotes and baggage. Just ask any of the "Top Twenty" or even "Top Anything" here how many downvotes they think they got just because they have more than X+ followers or because they wrote that one fic so many people hate so everything they write has to be downvoted. (Hint: it really does happen.)
Hell, I know I have followers whose only objective seems to be to downvote everything I write. (Hello to the letters K and S!) Sometimes I even want to challenge people that have done so (not personally or on the story, since that would be sorta... I dunno) to tell me here on a blog why they did it.
Returning to my point, when it's someone you know, it sucks. When it's someone you don't, it sucks anyway. There's really no advantage to knowing, people. It just leads to disappointment.
Remember: a LOT of downvotes here have nothing to do with the quality of your work. Like Misguided-dude above said, it's done for any inane reasons. Hell, he does it all the time. Comments are much more reliable for information on whether you're doing a good job or not.
So, don't try and find out by asking us mods. Some of us have to deal with the same crap, and none of us are at the liberty to tell you who it was anyway.
Meh.
Have some Elsa.
And....LET IT GOOO~~
Amen
I would so abuse that power, because I can't stand people who downvote for a bullshit reason.
Votes should be able to get set back to neutral though, instead of like or dislike, for if you dislike something in the heat of the moment, want to change it but still don't like the fic.
... Wow, I thought you were talking about Pokémon X and Y at first.
1954152 that is, indeed, the best thing to do.
1954162
Do you want to write a fanfic?
It doesn't have to be a fanfic....
I can testify to that. I even had someone who left comments on other stories just to bring up and try to start an argument over Past Sins.
1954167
I think the only reason folks might dislike Nyx isn't cause of Past Sins but because of the whole slew of stories since that've totally bastardized the poor character. Somehow some see it [Past Sins] as the 'root' of the problem in some weird justification. People make weird choices.
Same goes for anything, really. Once it's big enough and there's enough of it, it becomes rather annoying. I'm looking at you, 'Winningverse.' The first story or two are well enough, then the quality drops to crap as others hop on board because it's the 'cool' thing to write. People see the source as something 'bad' because dozens of others can't write for crap.
I find an weird divide between how quickly people will vote up or down on things. I can't count the number of terrible self-insert clopfics that have something like 85-90 percent upvotes, while a lot of clever and original stories sit much lower. Not sure if people are just really reluctant to downvote (haters and trolls aside) or if people just have really low standards.
I sometimes wonder how comment downvoting would go if it wasn't anonymous. I know I'm pretty terrible about how freely I upvote and downvote (and how freely I upvote stories, though I'm trying to pull back on that a little), but having that out in the open would probably make me downvote a bit less.
On the other hand, when I'm specifically arguing with someone I try to avoid also downvoting them, so it would be kind of nice to have it known when votes didn't happen.
Anonymity + Regular Person = Total Asshole
This is the harsh rule of the internet.
Writing isn't about votes it's about the creation of art, great or mediocre. It's not about views. Few views is discouraging but if you're a writer you'll write anyhow, regardless.
That being said, yes. A lot of down votes are completely about pairing/title/tags. Same goes for tons of up votes. Far too many of both, but honestly it's human nature. You have to just accept it and move on.
...Kill Steal? Kill Secure!?
1954167 1954176 I hope you two understand the irony of what just happened here
It's a sad fact, indeed, as even lowly fledgling writers such as myself know the sting of the red thumb. I'm pleased that the up to down ratio on my stories is actually very much in favour of the green, but those bits of red still rankle somewhat.
But I just scowl and move on. I've been around on the internet long enough to know better than to get irate at something so petty. Like you say, Wanderer, I really don't want to know.
1954198 two different individuals
Thanks for addressing this as a mod. I don't really care too much if it's only one or two. I just think of them as drive-bys, and knowing who it was and why would do me no good at all. If I were better known and had acquired enough of a profile for people to take shots out of envy, maybe I would feel differently about it.
Votes getting set back to neutral would be nice, but I don't want to suggest anything that would make extra work for anyone, but I suspect I'd be more casual about downvoting and then I might forget to check back later and see whether the story improved.
Sometimes with the downvotes, I just have fun nicknaming them and thinking of who they are. For instance, there's Harry, who hunts me down and downvotes everything (except to watch over me...I think he's asleep) or just be funny.
I could personally care less who downvotes my stuff...just the fact that they took the time to look at my title is enough to make me happy. Heck, its a better system than FF.Net or Adultfanfiction
So you mods can actually see who downvotes and upvotes what?
Also
1954167
I feel ya. I may not be in the same situation as you, but I still feel a bit bad for you. Can't be fun to have people downvoting your stuff based on a petty dislike for one story you've written
I have no worries. I know exactly why each and every one if my story's downvotes exists ;)
As one who downvotes stories on occasion, if you got a downvote from me (not you, Wanderer, though I can if you want) you probably dun screwed up on some level. Like bad characterizations, bad logic, etc. I usually try to leave a comment.
Never downvoted stories myself and I don't think I'll ever will. I hate it when someone downvotes something without explaining why (also hate the fact that they'll get insulted for even giving a very valid reason why).
1954228 To be fair, I think writers of rape fics and foalcon stories know exactly why they got a storm of downvotes and it's usually not because of story quality.
I love people who have their head so far up their ass they can't understand why they would get a downvote. People have opinions. It sucks when people who have subjectively shitty opinions or opinions that are based in the wrong line of thinking, but you can't control other people. Still, I remember the days when users would make threads going "WAAAA MUH MAGNUM OPUS ABOUT FLUTTERSHY HAVING THIS TOTALLY RANDOM ADVENTURE WITH A TOASTER GOT DOWNVOTED! I JSUT DON'T KNOW WHY! READ IT AND UPVOTE, GAIZ!"
I mean, they probably still happen, but I haven't seen them for a while.
Even I know why most of my serious shit gets downvotes. People see my name and assume that I'm still the idiot I was 18 months ago, and downvote. My comedies get downvoted for, well, obvious reasons. Humor is subjective, and my humor is brash and heavily brony satirical. A lot of people don't like that, and I accept that. At the end of the day, it's just a pony story.
I have been told on three separate stories by three separate people that they are among the worst pieces of fiction they've ever read, and that's sort of where I draw the line. But douchebags who talk out of their ass in comments AKA me are a completely different thing entirely.
1954238 Oh, I wasn't thinking of Mature fics.
(Mostly due to having it turned off. They're... too extreme for me.
)
1954242 I think Fimfic gets too cynical for people like that to linger
1954153 Or you start out liking a fic, and then it goes to Hell with a decrease in quality, or so forth.
I can claim that for every downvote I've ever given, I have also left a comment on why I did. Thankfully, I've only ever done so two or three times. I just don't read stories that have content I don't like/don't feel like reading about.
So if that's the case...why do we have downvotes at all?
1954274 because sometimes you have legitimate reasons to upvote or downvote something.
The only thing that really stuck out at me there was that moderators can see who [blank]-voted their own stories/comments/sandwiches. In fact, if you weren't such Cool and Honorable Dudes I would probably have a real problem with that, instead of just thinking "hey, that could be a real problem if they weren't such Cool and Honorable Dudes."
If we were being as fair about it as possible, moderators would not be considered moderators in anything concerning own stuff and would have to get another mod to do that.
But luckily, being so Cool and Honorable, you Dudes can be trusted to remain impartial (in practice, if not in thought) even in personal matters.
... Right?
1954251 it's true
choo choo motherfucker
1954242 Nooo! Horse words are serious bizness!
You might be being a TAD too cynical. I like to think the majority would shrug it off, but the sheer number of users still makes the minority that wouldn't an issue. Maybe I'm crazy, but that's just how I feel.
Regardless, and I realize this is going to be an EXTREMELY controversial position, but I believe that, even if people upvote or downvote for stupid reasons, they are still expressing their opinion. The guy (or guys, or hell, I guess girls-- gender neutrality, ho!) who generically thumb down every HiE fic they can find, for example, would be perfectly happy if HiE fics never appeared on the front page. By thumbing them down, they are casting their vote into the same system everyone else uses, and their opinions (however silly or biased they may be) are taken into account fairly (or at least an attempt at fair processing is made-- I'm sure there's some biases in the system where things aren't weighted perfectly, but it's an honest attempt and is applied in the same way to everyone). The outcomes may not be fair to the authors, but readers are the bulk of the site, and the ideal site wants to show the most readers what they want to see. If the majority of readers want to never see FlutterMac ships or stories by PonyGuy987 (if that's someone's actual username, I apologize), then it certainly sucks for some writers, but the best thing the site can do is to just... not show those stories on the front page. It makes the most people happy.
In an ideal world, Fimfiction could do fabulous things like Google's analytics to try and look at stories you've faved/read latered/thumbed up/thumbed down and reference them against tags, groups, etc that are associated with those stories to try and show each user the stories they want to see. Neofascists can live their lives feeling so glad that the front page is populated by stories about Rarity engaging in ethnic cleansing, anthro lovers can see all the anthro stories they want, and PonyGuy987 (again, I hope that's not someone's actual name) haters can pretend he doesn't exist. But those sort of computations are super complicated, and setting that up would either require hosting fees to jump through the ROOF (which would be sad, because I personally have huge respect for people who risk personal losses to offer websites like this), or potentially yet another plague of 502fiction.
With the options available, I think the current system is the best we could really expect, even with all it's flaws.
Well, it takes about one second to click that
Plus, to actually write one you have to a) understand the topic you're going to argue about, b) have your own opinion about it, and c) care about the topic enough to start the dispute. Many downvoters fail in a), many more in b) and rarely anyone gets down to c). 
stupidhighly useful red thumb, and a few minutes at least to articulate and write down a valid argument.1954311 Or hopefully someday people can block tags they don't like so we authors don't have to deal with baseless, useless, and petty downvoting on account of it being "sumthin' i dunn wunna reed, dur". They don't need to read it as it is, or even downvote if that's the case because honestly, it doesn't change how many people will still write it.
i.imgur.com/Ray2rbF.gif
So, as we can see from here, downvotes are a product from Daffy Duck, the asshole of Loony Tunes. IT ALL MAKES SO MUCH SENSE NOW!
any plans for "unvoting" anytime soon?
1954183 i reckon the reason clopfics get so many likes is because the only people who we them are people who want to read them, if mature stories appeared without an option to disable them I reckon clopfics would get more downvotes
1954274
Like Wanderer said. It's the exact same reason anything has any kind of rating system, be it Metacritic, IGN, GameSpot, major publishers, voting in government, etc. etc.
Likes to show you like something. Dislikes to show you dislike something. The two are used to gauge quality when they aren't abused (PFFFFLET'SNOTABUSEAVOTINGSYSTEMTHATMAKESPEOPLECRYSWEETDELICIOUSTEARSHOHOHOHOHOSOFUNNY), and from that, users take away lessons regarding their stories.
When dislikes are accompanied by comments, hey, great. If they aren't, it's down to the author to figure out why their story is getting a ton of downvotes. More often than not, thankfully, it's due to something obvious. Faulty plotline, bad grammar and spelling, incorrect use of language, OOC characters, other things too.
Downvotes are there to let us show our dislike for something in the media, and have it stick much better than a comment that a rowdy author can just up and delete. And let me ask you something, actually.
If we didn't have downvotes, where would we be regarding story quality? Comments are rare enough. Wouldn't you rather have votes that literally take two seconds to give? They may be abused to hell, but they are still a gauge. Even if you get a flood as one of the greats around here, it's a notice. A red flag, if you will, noting that something has gone wrong. It's the short-term pain response of the body that dislikes represent, that warns you that something is wrong and requires investigation.
1954329
Blocking tags wouldn't solve much-- I mean, people who just generically do not want to see Anthro or something would be happy, but the people who don't like, say, specific -verse stories, or certain ships (which I think are the bulk of the haters), would still be unable to tell. Unless you add a way to tie two (or more, I guess? Harems are a thing?) character tags together and indicate a ship... But that still leaves the -verse haters.
Blocking tags would be better than nothing, but it's not really a solution.
1954347
God I hope so. I don't generally upvote something unless I think it's REALLY good, and I don't like to downvote things unless it is just literally not of sufficient quality to be published-- just because it isn't to my tastes doesn't make it a BAD story. But there are at least... five or six stories I think, where I accidentally clicked downvote (yeah, I'm a derp), felt bad about leaving it with a downvote, and had to upvote it instead to feel better. It's not really a bad thing in the long run, but it does bug me.
The way I see things, people who care about their internet points, whether or not they're the ones delivering or receiving them, simply have the wrong idea that fanfiction is somehow a competition.
That being said, it is very annoying to see a story (or even comments) receive downvotes out of spite, even more so to see one receive upvotes for no apparent reason other than some sort of affection. With stories, FIMFiction's system is unfortunately—but necessarily—based around these votes. It allows for stories that don't deserve their recognition to rise to the top while the ones who are worthy of recognition go unrecognized (for whatever reasons), which I think is the real tragedy. If only people would read a story before they deliver their opinion, or at the very least express why they a voted on a story.
But hey, there's hope yet. Word-of-mouth is far better than these votes, and there's tons of recommendation services out there.
1954355
What specifically baffles me is that the lacking quality of them. I counted something like twelve grammar/spelling mistakes in a description of four sentences once, and yet it had lots of upvotes. You do have a good point, but I'd like to think that if people are looking for some fapping material they'd at least pick a story written by someone literate.
While you raise valid points why it shouldn't be shown who did. In the nature of discourse, if you are downvoted, odds are you know why, and knowing that, doesn't change much. In the same vein as a 'drive by downvoting' its something you can pass and go on, overall.
But if a reader and follower decides to downvote, or upvote, show they did, and it takes away a measure of the anonymity that exists for this. And you get folks that are going to either start crap they would have anyway, or be much more careful on the upvote and the downvote. Because they just can't flagrantly vote without others knowing the view.
I've upvoted and downvoted, but when it comes to a story, that i've done the latter, feedback why is something I try at least. And really, if the mods can see the various actions users take, why would it matter beyond the crap that exists anyway? Drama happens, and if it meant cleaning toxic users, wouldn't it be a good to do?
I'll keep my assumtption that the people who downvote just don't know how to have fun.
~Skeeter The Lurker
The largest problem is how many people wrongly equate up and down votes to quality, when it is not indicative of that at all. A down vote merely means that someone felt that they should express how they feel toward a fic in such a manner. It could be as simple as, "I don't like the genre, and I don't think people should write that genre." Or it could be a convoluted sense of, "I think X-author has too big of an ego. Maybe down-votes across all his stories will deflate it a bit." It could even be, "This piece didn't move me to my core. It wasn't bad, but I wanted to be moved. So here's a down-vote." The point is that there are so many different reasons for downvoting and upvoting stories, and who's to say that one person's really high standards is wrong, or that petty spite is a wrong reason to vote? If the votes were meant to be indicative of quality, then we would be required to comment with any vote we cast, negative or positive. But that is not the case.
What we can do is say that X people felt compelled to downvote or upvote this story for whatever personal reasons they had. All these fics are on a level-ish playing field when it comes to votes. (Level in that everyone on the site has an equal ability to up or downvote the fic). And the votes mean very little other than to give you a very vague and general sense of how much overall popularity it has and general appeal, as well as a very basic sense of the writing quality (which is usually just as easily discerned from the synopsis).
I think authors pay too much heed to those colourful voting numbers, and I'll admit that there are times when I also have paid those numbers a bit too much attention in the past. It's much better to look past those numbers and see the comments, and read the reviews. These are the things that give us meaningful feedback--not the colourful numbers.
1954400 So you say!
i.imgur.com/G3i70.gif
Hmm... Maybe replacing the upvote/downvote buttons with drop-downs might help. Like, you click on the downvote arrow and, before your vote is registered, you need to select something like:
At least then we could have some idea of why the vote happened.
This is an AB conversation so C your way out if it before D jumps over E and Fs you up.
I'm pretty sure I've never downvoted anything, on this site or otherwise. Not sure what that says about me.
I don't mind the down votes I have got cause I know my writing isn't that great. But I have been lucky enough that some of my down-voters not only gave me a reasons behind it, but also ways to improve.
Downvotes and upvotes are by the very fact of their presence, a disruption of the peace, an invitation to contention and ultimately an open invitation for their abuse. They reduce writing to a contest, and contests are zero-sum games, which really means a form of conflict - they enshrine that all are at some odds with each other.
And this is exactly counter to the very message and meaning of the Friendship Is Magic show and fandom. Nothing about upvotes and downvotes, about such virtual score-keeping, so ripe for abuse, is in any way friendly.
If the matter is so unhappy that it needs a blog post to try to make others, and yourself, feel better about it, then perhaps upvotes and downvotes are inherently a poor idea, and have no business here?
What choices a website allows robustly help define the culture of that website - or the play of a game, or the nature of a society - and in a fandom supposedly about the Magic of Friendship, which is cooperation and mutual support and mutual encouragement, I must once again question the rationality of including highly judgmental, innately contentious, easily and anonymously (to most) abused mechanisms. How does it help people to support the Ideal of Friendship to have, built into the machinery of the environment itself, the capacity to blindly and mindlessly put down some... or to elevate another above those around them?
Comments, communication, alone, should be the measure of writing. Comments are what we seek, in the end, are they not? The only thing that truly has any value, the feedback and excitement of our readers? Upvotes and downvotes are a tacked-on, utterly inappropriate invitation to unpleasantness. By simply existing at all, they imply that we are in a race, a contest, a war... rather than in a creative endeavor directed toward mutual encouragement of our unique talents.
Just because a bit of code is easy to write, does not make it a feature every website should possess. Code determines culture.
And you have just felt the need to essentially apologize for it.
Perhaps the real energy should be put into having upvotes and downvotes eliminated altogether? If it isn't making people happy, why have it part of the design of the website?
And, I assure you, you are not wrong in comprehending that nothing about upvotes and downvotes makes anyone... happy.