After two months of experimentation, I can give my humble opinion on the
voting system for this forum.
I like that a user can now agree in a click rather than in a useless post
(just stating that she agrees). The coloring system is nice. It make apparent
what the majority agrees/disagrees with (knowing both the number of up-votes
and the number of down-votes would be even better).
I *strongly* dislike the hiding system. It somehow deters users from replying
with a constructive argumentation because that argumentation can eventually
be hidden (being under a message that many users dislike). That is why I have
never down-voted anything (I sometimes up-vote).
In fact, I recently up-voted a post I disagree with because I spend an hour
or so replying to it in a constructive way and then discovered that almost
nobody would read my text: while I was writing it, three users down-voted the
post I was replying to. It turns out that even -2 still is enough for the
post (and everything below) to be hidden. I am talking about that post:
https://trisquel.info/fr/forum/what-free-software-entusiastas-think-about-piracy-digital-media#comment-63471
I may be exaggerating when I write that "almost nobody" reads what is below a
down-voted post. After all, my post (in the thread I mentioned) received +2.
But I am pretty sure users do not feel like replying to those hidden posts.
That is, after all, the whole point of the hiding system.
In fact, the whole thread tends to stop when any message, in direct response
to the original post, is hidden. Indeed, the text box to answer the original
post becomes hidden as well and using it means your post will be directly
hidden (no matter how relevant). That is why, here, I create a new thread
rather than replying to
https://trisquel.info/fr/forum/so-now-we-ban-unpopular-posts !
I suggest you to use the voting system on this very post:
Please, up-vote this post if you would prefer if the forum would never hide
anything;
Please, down-vote this post if you prefer the hiding system in place.
