UKH

I'm sure it's been suggested before, but why can't we see a list of those who've pressed like or dislike, a bit like facebook does? Is that such a bad idea?  What does anonymity bring to the party?

If I disliked a post enough enough to dislike it I would be  perfectly happy to but my name to it.

F*ck me. Here we go again.

I think we all know where the likes/dislikes will trend on this thread. Most of us are inherently childish. I am. 

Sorry about that - I haven't followed the controversy in the past. (Same way I haven't followed the TPS threads). Just musing, that's all. 

I think thats a great idea, when I am being mischievous I count the Dislikes as a fighter ace would plane symbols on the side of his cockpit, and knowing who I have pissed off would be sweet.

I am giving you a like

It prevents the usual suspects from endlessly derailing threads by repeatedly whining "I demand to know why you disliked my post".

Well, why did you?

Because it's there.

Once, I was that disgruntled by a 'dislike' that I changed my username in protest! A well aimed 'dislike' is the psychological equivalent of a boot to the goolies! Which is why I never engage in such negative behaviour and I too believe they should be deanonymised.

Deanonymysing dislikes and so making them accountable would certainly make people think twice about giving a dislike and so would remove the purely malicious ones. I think that has got to be a good thing. What's not to like about less unpleasantness?

Well, in a discussion you would want to know that, wouldn't you?  That's why Facebook did a range of emotions rather than a thumbs down.

Offwidth will be along shortly to tell us that there's a reason FB doesn't have a "dislike" button...

Edit: oops I see he's been beaten to it

Where you ever gruntled, and changed it back?

Christ, yeah, let's make UKC more like facebook.

You put a superfluous 'H' into 'WERE'

There are certainly things it has done right, and (a) reactions being named, and (b) a slightly wider range of reactions are things it has.

I completely accept that's your opinion.

I agree, but the people who run this site seem to want to keep them as they are, and indeed keep going back to a survey once that asked if both buttons should be kept. 

It's strange and telling though that in an RIP thread they are automatically deactivated. They obviously do accept that they cause bad feelings and can be ambiguous.

I disabled likes/dislikes and I am much happier.

That is a remarkably good point. 

I have too.

I kind of think that if someone disagrees with a point I make but can't be bothered to reply explaining why they disagree with it so a discussion can ensue (which is the whole point of a discussion forum), they probably only deserve to be ignored anyway.

One solution could be to allow the user to choose whether or not they want their reaction to be identifiable on clicking. This way, we have at least the option to be accountable for our opinions and those who chose not to proffer their user-id will be more 'discountable'.

Edit: How do you disable them anyway. I think I'm opting out.

Personally, I think that anonymity with Likes/Dislikes is probably more valuable to the general quality of discussion.

If Dislikers were identifiable, then every thread would dengenerate (even faster) into blame, counter-blame, sulking and demands for apologies.

Anonymous disliking, I hope, gives the author cause for self-reflection and to question the quality of what they wrote.

I see Likes and Dislikes as more of a see-saw i.e. what was written has general approval/disapproval.  If you wrote it, take it personally and take responsibility for the quality of what you write.

Your assessment assumes that the that the more people think one thing, the more they are likely to be correct. History is littered with examples where populations have been very wrong indeed.

The likelihood is that people like the like button more than they like the dislike button, though it is conceivable that others might dislike the like button more than they like the dislikes. However, unlikely as it might seem, the likes are disliked incrementally more every time a new like/dislike thread is, like, disliked. Or maybe liked.

I hope that, like, makes sense.

Up ^ there under 'User Options'. 
Click the 'forums' tab and there's a box to tick that turns them off.

Thanks. Done.

Reasonable point although history is perhaps even more littered with examples of the seeking of consensus being a force for good.

I notice YouTube has anonymous dislikes.

have a like

curiously I see it as the opposite.

People hit like or dislike automatically without reflection and then forget it.

Cheers, can't see it though

All you can say about that is what you yourself do. You have no idea about what others are doing.

I don't think we should de-anonymise dislikes but we should have scripts to detect dislike stalkers than just dislike everything someone posts, and people using sock puppet accounts to like everything they post, and maybe a weekly top ten list of use of the like/dislike buttons so folk who are skewing it by handing out thousands of dislikes get shown to everyone (although not the specific posts they are liking/disliking).

I think we've got a small number of people who hand out dislikes, possibly using a script, without reading the actual post.

Do you think voting in elections should be "de-anonymised" ?

Glad this came up (again!) because something I was going to post last time but, well couldn’t be arsed but here goes..

for an often ‘self referred’  subversive/counter culture/left field group (climbers) why does anyone give an actual f&&k if someone has liked or disliked their comment and to go as far as call it out ‘who disliked my comment and why’ responses is beyond belief! 

Is this what people are actually thinking about when running it out!? Ohh I wonder what that dislike was really about! 

A cosy and self-affirming characterization, Tobes - but a total myth. Maybe it was the case, once ...

You're both conflating climbers with visitors to a climbing website and therein lies the rub...

No of course not. It is what we think when somebody dislikes a post on UKC and it is not at all clear why.

No, I am certainly not. My comment has nothing to do with visitors to this, or any other, website.

Aye I know - folk at Camp 4 and the Pines would be shaking their heads at all this ; ) 

Maybe but like the ‘likes and dislikes’ I really don’t care - (but just enough to bother contributing to this thread, just) 

Switch them off. I did and I’m far happier for it.

Those are the people who most need to turn them off, but it seems they just can't.

I think the mods should help out and do it for them.  They'd be much happier not seeing them, and the rest of us would also be happier not seeing the moaning about them.

I like the dislike button
I dislike the like button

Given how many dislikes you’ve just got for that post can’t say I blame you ;

Haha you’re evil  

In which case it is a shame you are not able to turn off likes and keep dislikes.

It's easy enough to filter them with my brain. I pay little attention to the number of likes on any post, and look only at the number of dislikes

You can be my eyes Blue!

I'm in a state of sensory deprivation since switching them off!

Oh no, can you imagine the endless complaining that the mods had taken away the buttons they didn't like anyway? 

It does no such thing. You still regularly see people asking why their reply/post was disliked, it's just that the question isn't addressed to a specific person or people.

I've made my view on the buttons clear in the past so I'm not going to bother re-treading old arguments, suffice to say: I have them turned off and I think they are a bad idea.

As a great example of why the dislike button is an issue, someone has disliked the upbeat, heartwarming “getting jabbed” post.  There are some sad people out there. 

Is this a thing? I mean I have heard people suggest it might be a thing before but you'd have to be incredibly bitter, petty and pathetic to do this. Maybe someone from UKC can answer this: Is it a thing that some people do? Is it even a common thing?

Surely this can't be a thing? I mean likes don't actually achieve anything mechanical on the forums, the only real point is validation of your POV and you can't actually get that feeling of validation by self-validating in this way, can you? Are there a bunch of neurotic tweens on the forum that I just wasn't aware of?

You know I think you can go one better than this if you want to unleash the Drama Lama stampede; how about having the "number of dislikes" stat broken down into a "top 10" of the people that person disliked if you click on the disliker in your top list of them. You could even have a script that picks random times to generate a "top dislikers" statistic post

Again incredibly petty. It does seem like that should be pretty easy to stop though, surely the actions of a script are quite different to the actions of a human so people could get warned or banned for that rubbish.

Yes it does, because those poster's butt-hurt whines are just belming into the void rather than aimed at individuals. 

Then there's no problem, hide them away. 

I was going to show a great deal of self restraint and scroll past it but then noticed the dislike count was on 68 and couldnt help myself.

It was a spare one I'd been tripping over for days, you can have it if you like or you can pass it on to anyone else wo might need it

Switch them back on then! ha ha

OR if you like I'll follow you around posting the numbers of each, for every post to write.

I think there's a very small number of people who do it.   I expect dislikes when I say something controversial but recently I'll get a dislike for just about anything I say even just a link.   I suspect there's someone who really hates my politics (which is fair enough) and just hands out a dislike every time they see my name - or has a script to do it.

Sock puppets and fake likes are definitely a thing on social media.  Various people have suggested there's someone on here acting like a typical social media bot/troll on issues like vaccine denial.  I couldn't see the point of professional trolls doing it on such a niche website but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. 

So my view is we shouldn't be de-anonymising likes/dislike but there should be scripts looking at the information behind the scenes to detect outliers which may indicate abuse or misuse

Whatever people use the like/dislike buttons to signify, you can be sure it isn't related to liking or disliking.

As a feeling, liking something is pretty much involuntary. I like Marmite, the colour orange, and walking in the rain, but these predilections aren't in any way a conscious expression of my will or intelligence, any more than my dog's liking for having his tummy scratched is evidence of his sound judgment.

The clever thing about these like/dislike buttons in social media is that they're sufficiently broad and vague in meaning so as to mean almost anything to anyone. They leverage the involuntary nature of liking and harness it to a whole variety of conscious meanings.

I'd like to think, when someone likes a post I've made, that they've thought about it and concur, or have judged it useful or informative. If on the other hand I thought that their 'liking' was purely an instinctive reaction owing to them having found something sensually pleasing to them in my post... well. I'm not sure I'd like that.

I'm absolutely amazed that some people put so much significance on the likes and dislikes, as though it was the real world. 

It isn't like voting in elections, it's more like a debate.

No. It's a debate if you type a response. If you press a button it's like voting. 

It's not a vote; it's just a rubbish way of contributing to the debate.

You OK, hun? You do know you can turn them off? 

I'm fine thanks Are you?

Yes, of course. For all you know I might have done so. 

Yes, ta. 

Bet you haven't. 

Interestingly the recent Captain Tom thread had the buttons removed. 

There was a diverse set of opinions voiced in that thread. Ideal fodder for likes/dislikes. Was there a reason for it? 

Any threads with RIP automatically don't have like/dislike.

It would not be correct of ukc to answer these questions but they are of interest:

Which thread holds the record for the most likes/most dislikes? 

Which thread shows the largest imbalance of likes/dislikes each way? 

Ditto for individual comments

Who is the most liked/disliked poster? By both measures, count and imbalance. 

What is the record number of dislikes not leading to a ban? 

How many dislikes does it take to trigger moderator attention? 

League table anyone? 

I was hoping this was going to be a buttons/ zips/ velcro thread !

Thanks, makes sense

Maybe people should be allowed to "rename" the buttons. So they can set it to "like" and "really, really like".

Here's a possible contender for a couple of your answers.  Everything has changed since then, and nothing has changed.

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/open_request_to_site_ownersplea...

No amount will do that.  People get banned for breaking the rules/guidelines/whatever.
(Or sometimes automatically for mentioning certain naughty words.)
I don't think anyone has ever been banned for saying stuff that's merely unpopular.

As above, as far as I know.  If you think a post deserves moderator attention the 'dislike' is the wrong button, that's what '!Report' is for.

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/likesdislikes_league_table-6685...

I know someone who really, really dislikes buttons.  Koumpounophobia! (I looked it up.)  Though he says buttons inspire feelings of disgust and it's not at all about fear. 

Apparently those little round shirt buttons with four holes in them are the worst.

German sausages are the wurst

I developed a program to do much of this a few years ago (I was investigating use of a technology for data mining, and it seemed as good a test application as any) and ran it and reported the results.

Unfortunately, UKC have changed the format of the URI for forum threads to make it a bit harder to does this, possibly because they didn't like this sort of stuff (just speculating there).

I, for one, like [1] the Like/Dislike buttons - they allow a poster to do the equivalent of "reading the room" and telling what the overall reaction to a post is like.  Likers and Dislikers can then go on to post if they like, but the buttons allow some feedback without endagering a pile-on, or a confrontational "debate me!" response.

Which may not be perfect, but until we got social norms past those, the buttons seem to serve a useful purpose

[1] Pun not intended

I normally like to limber up my dislike finger whenever I see a like/dislike button thread.

Chuffin' Nora if it isn't bad enough with lockdown making every day the same here we go again on this. It really is Groundhog day.

Das ist mir Wurst.
(Meaning I neither like nor dislike this.)

Well neither do you. Has there been a study?

I had a look but couldn't find any so I guess it is largely a matter of opinion.

I see no dislikes

maybe your friend just needs an anime thief to show him that buttons are our friends 

He's got no problem at all with that kind of button, it's these ones he can't get on with. 

Says he doesn't like it being called a phobia because that suggests an irrational fear, but he finds them disgusting not frightening.  (And that isn't irrational at all apparently, because they genuinely are disgusting.)

Maybe there's an element of trypophobia involved.  (I found another one.)  I haven't seen him in years, but he always used to have the latest iphone. I wonder how he felt about the iphone 11..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49660765

Only 3 more to go...

I don't check up on the likes/dislikes on my own posts, it keeps me happy without having to work out how to diable them

I’m 100% convinced the person doing it does so on purpose coz they don’t like the buttons and know it will start another debate. Or it is pressed accidentally. 

Of all the things on the entire planet and my whole life that maybe of the slightest concern to me, fretting about likes/dislikes doesn't even register.

I agree. I rarely put a dislike and never put one I wouldn't be happy to own up to and justify if asked (time permitting). I may be "disliked" here for being too old-fashioned, "out of touch", etc, but I'd prefer to be contributing to a forum where everyone felt likewise - as I hope most serious contributors on here do.

I think quite a lot of the dislikes would disappear if they ceased to be anonymous.

Martin

Yeah, I know they are on social media. There is all sorts of stuff they are trying to achieve there from shifting the overton window to degrading trust in institutions to just moving a currency or share price.

One of the crucial differences is that on UKC the likes/dislikes don't affect the visibility of posts and it's only with regular replies that you keep a topic near the top where everyone sees it. And I think you would have to do this manually, I don't see a bunch of bot accounts keeping a thread going without people noticing and using the report feature to get the thread locked and possibly expunged.

On the other channel any negative karma is attributed to the user who added it with a reason.

https://ukbouldering.com/board/index.php?action=viewkarma

The key issue with a dislike button is it was looked at in detail when Facebook proposed adding such a button and the conclusion of the research was it damages the quality of the site, will be used by some for bullying and will reduce advertising revenue. There is no research anywhere that I'm aware of showing any benefits.

So on this site people say:

"This isnt Facebook"....no shit... its probably more open  to bullying and other problems as forums threads are open to all, where Facebook can be constrained to friends only.

"You can turn them off" .... yep you can also play ostrich with lots of other identified bad things in life.

"If they annoy you why not ignore them" ...aside from the ostrich point many people have said they are not particularly annoyed and do largely ignore them, but are concerned it damages the site and leads to some bullying. The early Sav posts clearly involve bullying to me not just in dislikes but in the nature of some nasty posts.

"Buttons might not mean dislike they might be agreeing with the OP something is bad" ...one reason a disagree button would be better than a dislike button.

"Most people in site polls either want them or don't care". . most people would bring back hanging or don't care, so always put evidenced based analysis before poll results.

Reading these recurring threads, it seems to me those arguing against the sort of points I make here are emotive, illogical, and in denial about the research. They cant even follow their own advice.... if they don't like what anti dislike posters say why not just ignore us and stop giving us the oxygen of publicity.

I agree entirely! It is the digital equivalent of having LOVE tattooed on one set of knuckles and HATE on the other.

It erodes the nuanced way in which we communicate and understand.

I'm 99% certain that would not be the case. I don't get the impression the anti-button people on here are idiots.

Lack of nuance concerrns me as well, as a quality issue.

Dislikes just add negativity with very poor information quality: it's almost impossible to pin down what a dislike means unless the button presser explains (in which case what's the point?).

Specifically, clear and simple good posts get disliked unambiguously (so its either negative idiocy or a mistaken button press) and simple and clear bad posts get unambiguously liked. It's understandable where things are a matter of opinion but it is sometimes just straight facts getting treated this way.

Dislikes do not clearly indicate bad posts. For the most heavily disliked posts some are often these button debates and some look very much like bullying (as they looked to be for much of what Sav posted early on) and some are just tit for tat political divisions. I surveyed all the posts with multiple button presses outside of the pub one xmas and there was no obvious correlation of dislikes with poor quality posts (there was a correlation for likes with good quality posts).

Diable them! Now we are talking, a third Devil button. Like it. 

Why not? What's wrong with you?

I'm with you, to be honest, since you can turn them off it becomes a philosophical thought experiment along the lines of, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?".

What a daft analogy. There is a sound and there are other people around to hear it. Unless you are suggesting that the button should be disabled in the sense that the mindless button pressers can go on doing so but it doesn't show up on anybody's screen.

blah blah blah, this is exactly why there's thumb down button. If you can't see it, it's not like there's plenty of people reporting to you how many of each you get.

The only time buttons get mentioned is when, delicate souls want to ban them.

So if the whole forest falls down, it's not going to effect the world out there in ways which effect a blind person?

You’re completely missing the point. It’s the people disliking a genuine question or a heartwarming post (such as the jabbed arm one) that are the delicate souls. How can they find posts like that offensive? Poor little snowflakes.

It is precisely the same analogy taken further to show just how daft it is. 

If the forest has 1000 trees and they fall one at a time, how many trees need to fall before the analogy becomes daft in your opinion?

I think you might be struggling a bit with the whole concept of a metaphor.  It's not really about trees.

Not really everyone has the right to like or dislike what they want, just because they don't agree with you, or the majority, doesn't make them wrong.

In the same way they can post what they like they can,  like or dislike whatever takes their fancy.

Nice one. Maybe this says a lot more about button haters than many post can.

Ok, if you are to what extent do dislikes have to influence the nature and tone of a discussion before they effect the discussion for somebody who has disabled the button?

This is the kind of thread you would end up with if no one was allowed to go outside or do anything. 

Thank god, we're all not locked inside.

Maybe they're sensitive, maybe not. All we really know about the unjustifiable disliker is that they have a tendency to be a bit of a prick.

Since the real world is full of people exhibiting real world prickish behaviour I find I'm totally inured to their online antics. A random dislike in cyber land is totally without consequence and whatever tiny f*cks I have to spare for life's minor inconveniences are entirely soaked up by discarded crisp packets on the pavement, loud exhausts on one litre Vauxhall Corsas, and piss on the seats of public toilets. You get the idea, the list is virtually endless but a random dislike from an anonymous stranger is far too insignificant to register.

I'm really not sure there's a measurement you could make.  I've never noticed a subtle influence, it just seems to be a binary thing.  No effect, no effect, no effect, boom - somebody is demanding to know who disliked their post and why, at which point the signal to noise ratio takes a nose dive and there's about a 50/50 chance the original discussion is over whether it had run its course or not.

I agree and personally they don’t affect me but if they upset just one person’s mental health then they’re not worth having. Hence why Facebook don’t have them.

You don’t know how much they can affect someone’s mental health. Have you ever noticed when posters are open about their struggles there are never any likes or dislikes? 
 

People who are less open about their struggles may suffer. As I said earlier the RIP posts have the likes/dislikes removed, presumably so that nobody can be upset further.

If you're in such a fragile place that a random thumbs down can put you in a spin probably best you avoid social media. For most people thumbs up/ thumbs down just provides a vague guide as to the mood of the forum. 
 

Perhaps the 6% of forum users who don’t like the buttons would be better off recalibrating how they view a thumbs down rather than insisting the other 94% shouldn’t have them as an option.

They're just so corrosively ambiguous!

I would honestly rather these were used (below)

Ok, put them back on the RIP posts then. It’s the blatant double standards that I don’t like.

It isn't a mental health or wellbeing thing for me personally, but, if it is for others, then it does seem odd that the system makes allowances for the feelings of the bereaved but not for those struggling in other ways.

I have a pretty good idea how they affect mine, but more generally no, you're right.  Personally I find what is put into words has a much bigger impact than either button.

Not really, no, and I think I might have* so I wonder if that's the kind of observation likely to be subject to some confirmation bias.  Harking back to what I just said though, the other thing you see on those kinds of threads is people choosing their words carefully.  Or perhaps it's just more the posters who have nothing to say choosing to say nothing.  The signal to noise ratio is good in the text on those threads.

Or perhaps to prevent those threads from descending into a distasteful farce if someone takes issue with a dislike (or a like, for that matter, on the OP) and starts shouting about it.  I don't know which.  Probably both.

*(Up until I turned them off.  I no longer see them.  I turned off the likes though, and the dislikes as a side-effect, not the other way around.  I found I was starting to care whether I was getting 'likes' on my posts, and that seemed unhealthy.  I never gave two hoots about a dislike or two.  Or lots, beyond maybe just having a bit of a think about whether I was being a dick or not.)

Has anyone actually said getting a thumbs down has had a detrimental effect on them mentally? And at what scale are we talking?

1. I didn't like getting a dislike

2. How dare someone dislike my post

3. How dare someone disagree with me

4. That dislike has pushed me to the brink

If it's the first three, tough, get a life. If it's the last one, then engaging in robust debate with random strangers on the internet probably isn't what you should be spending your time on.

Why would it help for you to know that Mr Fam Sender disliked your post? It isn't even my real name anyway.

Only if you care about them AND have them switched on.

Hang on! You can turn them off? Why weren't we told?

Every time they are mentioned it comes up that you can turn them off!

It's on User->User Options->Forums->Hide 'Like' and 'Dislike' voting system in all Forum threads

No?!?! Really?

Handy.

Perhaps to be able to email you and ask why.
Why?  WHYYYYYYY!!?

What!! someone disliked my post! who was it?

It's been top secret for many, many years, I shouldn't have let this slip out, I will be severely punished, and I deserve it.

Please, please, disregard my post and continue as if the "buttons of Satan", can never be removed, this is how any post regarding them should be addressed and interpreted.

Your humble servant, Jimmy.

Really?!

You need to get out more, fella, or read a book or three.

It's ok, I don't blame you. I blame the people that have kept this fantastic capability hidden from the poor, downtrodden masses oppressed by a thumbs down button. 

I got my button pressed outside of a pub once.

I like Buttons.

But I liked Treets better.