UKH

I've been thinking for some time that the like/dislike feature adds nothing positive to ukclimbing and actively harms it as a space for open-minded discussion.

The like/dislike feature on many other sites functions as a quality control measure to blot out or reduce visibility of massively offensive/clickspam/etc posts but on a diligently moderated forum like UKC, nothing in this realm makes it past the mods for long (or certainly not that I've seen).

The most basic effect of like/dislike is to turn every thread and post into a popularity contest, which I find really rather disappointing. This is particularly objectionable in divisive or political topics where the prevailing way of thinking of the majority results in people with minority opinions garnering an avalanche of dislikes for their honest contributions to the debate or simply the fact that they didn't compose their points with a wordsmiths prowess. Most people, when subjected to a "we don't want you here" message are likely to leave and seek another place where they either feel less judged or more approved of. In fact, I suspect that those most likely to remain in the face of this message are the dedicated trolls. I can't see how this exodus could possibly be healthy for debate/discussion.

This isn't to say that peoples contributions are not judged in writing by others replies but a written response offers information, communication, justification, perhaps even moderation or partial agreement a like/dislike is a digital 1 or 0, it is such a poor quality replacement for words.

In an age of filter bubbles and increasing polarisation I would personally feel much happier if I could read a thread and take every persons contribution at face value and consider it for what it is without the value judgement of everyone else on the forum sitting there in little numbers on the post.

It must have taken effort to add it to the site, I can certainly remember a time when it didn't exist. So why was it added? What are the benefits?

Overall, they increase engagement and site traffic. This is a commercial site which thrives on the amount of participation, the digital footfall. UKC would be doing itself and any investors (not sure what the business model is so take that with a standard disclaimer) a disservice by actively removing a feature that increases footfall. 

Apart from the fairies on here, no one gives a flying f*ck about how many likes or dislikes they get.

Ah, I did wonder if it could be for data harvesting reasons, I hadn't considered that advertising revenue would be contingent on shear numbers of interactions with the site.

You could always go to 'user options' in your profile, and turn them off.

They can be a useful shortcut to see which opinion most people agree with; that needn't just he politics, it can be 'proper climbing stuff', too...

The 'Like' button is fine as it provides an easy way to endorse a post and is only ever used in a positive manner.
The 'Dislike' button however is used for a myriad of reasons above and beyond simply not agreeing with a post and therefore can only ever be detrimental to discussion on UKC.
In essence, keep the Like, ditch the Dislike.

Aiming for the most-disliked post in the thread competition?

I learn a new thing every day, and it's only 26 minutes since the day began, thanks very much, never even knew that was there!

My dream is 200 dislikes, then I can retire a happy man.
But it;'d be  quite funny if if this thread gets no Ls or Ds whatsoever

Actually I didn't mean to imply any data harvesting, simply number of visitors to site. I would not like to comment on data harvesting, that is a bit beyond me and in any case, it would be a bit "off" to start casting aspersions on here (whereas I hope that simply talking about UKC being a business that needs to keep its footfall high, is fair enough). 

Except where it is used to express agreement with a negative post...

Fairies?
What? As in poofters?

I did do a search for threads about the like/dislike system on UKC and the only recent thing I found was last year and it was really not the same subject at all, it was about a specific instance of complaining about people disliking a specific post, not a discussion of the system. I wouldn't have created the thread if I'd known it was a regular topic. Can you supply links for some of the recent threads on this topic?

You're weird and just seem to spout meaningless analogies to support your arguments.

Ey up dude, just forget about it, it's a non subject, no one cares.
Rack up a few dislikes, sod it, go down the pub

No, pansies

Are we actually allowed to say such things?

Hmmm, OK, maybe some young nasturtium flowers and some small leaves cast upon a nice barley roast surrounded by a bed of sliced potatoes fried in beef dripping, I can't keep this up.

Just assimilating ...

Assimilate away!

How come? People are capable of putting their thoughts into words still.

You've lost me already. I know people are capable of putting their thoughts into words. That's exactly why I think that to remove the "dislike" option, UKC would have to remove the "like" option as well, in order to steer people into actually putting their thoughts into words. 

So many of these threads complain about the dislikes. I am equally (if not MORE) dismayed at seeing blatant "playing to the crowd" posts generating many tens of likes. A "like" is no more or less meaningful than a "dislike". 

Thinking about it, having the like buttons without the dislike buttons might make things less 'happy clappy' because uncharitable thoughts would actually have to be written, rather than people clicking on a dislike button and thinking 'there that shows them' (or whatever).  

I wouldn't know where to begin in telling the difference between posts which are genuine and posts which are after 'likes'....

Edit:Why am I up at gone 1 am posting about dislike buttons? Billions of years of evolution behind me and I'm doing this with it.

You did start a completely irrelevant discussion with WCS the other day, though!
Which has probably kicked started another completely irrelevant discussion about the OP topic.

Who cares? A bunch of random people posting opinions about shit that everyone will have forgotten about tomorrow, who gives a f*ck?!

99% of my posts are bollocks just so I don't have to bore actual people to death and I can get it of my chest.

No one gives a shit!

I started nothing.

That's clearly untrue, given that the like/dislike buttons are discussed on here regularly. You're posting on a thread about them!

Do you think these two facts might be connected? Speaking as a moderator I can assure you that like/dislike feature has made moderation a lot easier.

Also, you can turn off their visibility in User Options.

Alan

We have no third party investors. The business is owned and run by myself and the team.

Alan

No advertising revenue is directly linked to sheer numbers. The content makes the site popular, we then sell that popularity to advertisers. A significant increase in traffic is initially a cost for us in extra bandwidth which we then need to turn into revenue by selling the numbers to the advertisers. 

I can't imagine how Like/Dislike fits into data harvesting and numbers. It just makes the forums easier to moderate hence saves us a bit of time.

Alan

Reasons for a "like" include acknowledgement of useful/interesting/educational information. The alternative of a reply representing agreement with the previous post might often be repetitious and not advance the thread.

A reply instead of a "dislike" is more likely to encourage useful discussion (obviously "likes" to that reply might in their turn avoid repetition, and replace the "dislikes" to the previous post).

I suppose I often use "likes" in the same way as the star system for products reviews (or climbs). For instance if someone recommends a belay technique I'd perhaps be more likely to consider it if there are lots of "likes", but I'd prefer a reason rather than any unexplained "dislike". Unfortunately "likes/dislikes" become less frequent if a thread is very long and people are too bored to keep up with it, so it is not exactly comparable to earlier posts in this respect.

What I said wasn't meant to be some sort of attack against you, I was genuinely interested in whether there are threads about this I missed that I could go and read. Maybe I didn't phrase my reply in the best way.

Try this one https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/t.php?t=626552&v=1#x8152020

If this is the only reason the buttons exist, why not have the like/dislike totals invisible for everyone except moderators? Or, better yet, have the system lots of other sites have where people can report a thread or post for inappropriate content in about 2 clicks - this would give the moderation team _exactly_ the information they are looking for rather than flagging up loads and loads of posts which get a lot of dislikes but for entirely un-moderation related reasons.

Yes, thanks, someone told me about that earlier in the thread and I've gone and done it.

Thanks, I'll have a read of that.

It's 4 years old now though so I guess now is still a good time to have the discussion again.

No fault of the mods but the feature is misused. Recently I have noticed posts which report data being disliked.

Here is a number

5

Can I get a like/dislike? 

It's information and basically any information can be monetised. Off the top of my head I would guess something like looking at the correlation between a product (key word) being mentioned and the number of likes a post gets could be used to suggest which products are popular with the consumer and which are not, it's only a guess though.

There are bound to be loads of possibilities I can barely conceive of, it's not an area I know a lot about.

I've always regarded it as childish and retrogressive because it appeals to the box-ticking mentality of the present age, where qualities are reduced to quantities, subtle arguments and distinctions are reduced to crude polarisations, and everything has to be 'ranked' in terms of lists and '10 best this/that'. Somehow it goes beyond 'harmless fun', but is part of subtle malaise, a basic laziness of thought that prefers soundbites to careful consideration, speaking before thinking, and a general dislike of reading. We see the same malaise in the world of politics now.

Thanks for the corrections/clarifications. A clarification from me - I did not mean to imply a direct link between advertising revenue and exact numbers; I meant pretty much the same as what you outline "The content makes the site popular, we then sell that popularity to advertisers".

Where the Likes and Dislikes fit into this, was - as acknowledged as a vaguely informed guess - that they generally increase participation. 

I think there's value in retaining both, there have been a few threads recently where from the replies you'd have thought that the majority of UKC was against the OP but the ratio of likes/dislikes paints the opposite picture  

Many, if not most, modern off-the-shelf forum packages seem to provide a number of different buttons which make it possible for 'box tickers' to at least express their reaction to the post in question with a little more nuance.  One forum I frequent has "Like", "Friendly/Supportive", "Funny", "Craftsmanship/Clever", "Informative/Useful", "Thanks" and "Agree".  I suspect that the choice of buttons is configurable by the forum owners.  What's noticeable is that "Like" is one of the last-used of buttons provided: peopel do actually seem to prefer to be a bit more explicit in their feedback, with "Thanks", "Funny" and "Informative/Useful" seeming to be most used.  Note also the absence of a "Dislike" button - if someone disagrees with or objects to a post sufficiently to express an opinion then they're obliged to articulate it rather than simply clicking a negative response box as a sort of 'drive-by downvote'.  As you say, an actual reply explaining the reason for disagreeing with a post is more likely to stimulate useful discussion.

Per Henwardian's post at 10:50, all the other forums I use also have a "report this post" button on every post which provides a quick way for users to get the moderators involved should they feel it necessary.  I can't recall ever seeing complaints from the mods on those forums about the feature being misused.  And it doesn't seem to put people off engaging in robust debate on occasion.  (Unless a documented forum rule regarding etiquette or permitted subject matter has been broken, or a post is verging on creating a potential legal liability for the forum owners, I wouldn't expect the mods to do much beyond sending a "careful now" note to the person complained about anyway.)

Maybe Amazon would be interested in data like that where they are selling billions of units and a tiny percent increase actually means a lot of money.

I'm 99% sure none of our advertisers would find that data valuable and 100% sure we would never spend the development time to come up with a way to analyse the data in the first place.

We prefer so spend development time making things people will actually use and find interesting 

So does UKC.
Unless it is only on 'Full Fat' versions and not on mobile devices, etc. 

True.  I didn't mean to imply that it didn't, I was just picking up on the point in Henwardian's post.  (Though I'll admit - full disclosure and all that - that I clearly wasn't taking in what was on the screen in front of me!)

The post Report button is the same on any device.

There is no clear research position that I'm aware of that dislikes increase site footfall. If the research showed that, I doubt Facebook would have dumped the idea.  If UKC dumped dislikes the forums would become more friendly and traffic might even improve as a result. The site content and quality has grown massively in the last decade but forum posting numbers are languishing where they were back then, despite so much more content on the site to talk about.

Have to type "agree" having just disposed of the button.

Forum POSTING numbers may be languishing but this does not mean people aren't on the site looking at forums...and adverts...

Lots of "lurkers" and I dare say that looking at the amounts of likes and dislikes on some posts, keeps those lurkers a bit more engaged. 

How can it make moderation easier when there is no evidence of correlation with the quality of a posts and their dislike count. Sorry to be all scientific but I think you are probably just suffering from confirmation bias. Big social media players, like Facebook did the research, after raisng the idea and being warned off by experts, and they decided the commercial impact and would be negative and the button effects would contradict their positive mission.

As I had l some spare time one Xmas I analysed all the multiple forum dislikes except for the pub (anyone can just do this, anytime) and the most common factor I saw for mass dislikes then amounted to bullying (of Sav... whom I've met now and and can confirm his posts were genuine) and for large numbers of dislikes it was mostly 'tit for tat' political points.  I saw too many multiple dislikes for clear useful technical information (presented with no emotion or argument).  I saw some needlessly nasty posts that were ignored by button pressers.  I saw no correlation of dislikes with quality.  I did, in contrast, see a clear correlation of liked posts with quality. 

I also never saw any largely disliked nasty post disappear due to moderation and the chances of that, given I am on the site a lot and regularly notice posts that are moderated, seems slim: I think people clearly care about your forums and report such posts, so I suspect the dislikes simply don't get a chance to grow.

I posted all my dislike data here and the thread was moved and died in the pub. When I posted the data a second time (as I still have it)  that post also disappeared. Please do the forums a favour.. get someone to analyse the data and if what I say turns out to be true, keep the likes and dump the dislikes. You will still have the possibility of independant indications of bad posts in moderation terms as someone will always reply quickly to a bad post and lots of people can like that.

That may have been the very thread that inspired my data collection .... hardly recent though, the basic search has a 6 month memory and quite a few older discussions did end up being moved to the pub. 

I know the site traffic is significantly up. The databases are much more populated the news articles and features etc are more frequent and often excellent. So why are the forums so comparatively languid? 

I didn't say it was recent. And your data collection might be valid (although i doubt it, you hardly have a lack of bias), but the conclusions you draw are not. Still, it doesn't matter now because people can remove the buttons.

Oh god, me too!! Hahaha, if you had asked me 5 minutes ago if UKC had a "report" button, I would have said "no, I don't think so"... But it's right there on every single post, It's amazing what the brain can completely blank out automatically because it isn't relevant to the task at hand (ala the people passing the basketball clip!).

However, now that I know it's there already, I can see even less reason for like/dislike.

Good

My main conclusions could not have been affected much by bias because of the data: all the most disliked posts were either against Sav (whose posting style is influenced by a disability) or on tit for tat posts with as many likes as dislikes. I actually expected some posts where large dislike numbers worked as advertised but little correlation overall, so whenI found none I was was surprised and put this down to maybe some Xmas effect.

Individuals being able to turn the buttons off doesn't prevent damage. Some users hiding doesn't stop the outcomes indicated by the independant research that Facebook subsequently used to make their U turn on the dislike button.

My analysis was a snapshot but I've looked a few times since (albeit less comprehesively: just on off belay) and things seemed the same. The only clear correlation I did find with dislkies are with those posts questioning or  complaining about them.

How can you draw any conclusions when you seem to be saying you did your "analysis" at an atypical time?

What damage? To people? To the website?

Perhaps that's because, on the whole, people would rather keep them.

I don't actually know for sure it's atypical and the extent in any case would be very small. I do know that I've seen a few bad posts heavily disliked for no obvious problematic reasons but for all I know that may have been atypical  ( but still in a small way).  On the main trends the data seemed very typical there are simply very few posts like this, compared to most of the other largely disliked posts and no sign of an obvious overall correlation with quality that I've seen ever. People here say that posts are disliked a lot because they are bad, but I looked and see very few, and no overall significance.

The research told Facebook a dislke button would be bad for their business and their customers. People choose to all sorts of stuff thats bad for them, and the population, especially in a mobbe.

The extent of what? What main trends? How are you judging quality? Do you think you might be a little biased and being rather subjective? Why not link a few posts with lots of dislikes and we can try and see what you're getting at.

Got to keep an eye out for mobbes.

Once again, this thread surfaces, here's some good advice which I like to pass on every time it pops it's head up.

IGNORE them, it's not hard to do, simply ignore them, if they bother you so much ignore the pesky little bastards, they're not midges, they don't mean a thing in real life, so ignore them.

Have a nice day.

I happen to like them likes and dislikes, it's a quick way for me to agree or disagree with a particular post.

If people want to use them for something else, tit for tat bollocks, then that's up to them. What difference does it make?

Who's the judge here, on what's good or bad?

Can't we all make our own minds up about that, and don't we have the right to indicate such?

Even easier if you go to your User Options (top right) and hide them from your view.

Alan

Because you are remembering a time ten years ago, before the majority of people had fully migrated to other social media platforms i.e. Facebook. A lot of the chatty stuff that used to take place on here, now takes place on peoples' other more personal social media. But it doesn't mean that they aren't on here reading stuff. 
 

Could I just make a special request here:

If all the people who routinely dislike my posts could please turn off likes/dislikes in UKC settings, and all those who frequently like my posts please leave them on.

That would make me and my bubble feel much happier.

Thanks.

Why not flip this and look yourself... it would be really easy to prove me wrong.  That way you remove my bias. Try and find these posts that may be largely justifiably disliked ... I am convinced they are a small minority and there are a lot of dislikes used on  UKC.

The mobbe effect online is pretty well known. Stuff snowballs all the time based on sudden infamy (often not fact checked and justified) and fast system responses.

That doesn't make sense as other sites' traffic waxes and wanes all the time irrespective of the major changes elsewhere. UKC site traffic is up and forum views are up, so posting shouldnt be so languid without other internal factors. I'd add that I'm not the only major poster who has stayed despite concerns over dislikes and other negative factors.

I post infrequently on here and when I do it is mainly fluff or me responding to a request for information. In recent times, when I once ventured an opinion on a contentious topic and then persisted with it, I got over 200 dislikes. The 'I am deeply offended by your post'-type comments from individuals willing to post I can take or leave, even chuckle at if, once I've reread what I said, I find I still stand by it, but the collective, numerical weight of UKC opinion made me just back off. 

Prove what wrong? How can i possibly disprove statements like "If UKC dumped dislikes the forums would become more friendly"? It's an assertion based on nothing. Same as your assertion that dislikes are bullying. 

No, it isn't pretty well known at all.

F*cking hell. I think you've made your point, lad: you don't like the buttons. Ok - we get it.

Maybe now just drop it? Or start your own forums?

You can show us all some posts you think are fairly disliked in large numbers (that are not discussing dislikes)... its quite simple.

"No, it isn't pretty well known at all." Interesting view.

I see them as having a role, but I prefer the FB approach to it, which has given a choice of negative emotions rather than just a thumbs down - sad and angry seem the most useful ones.

A good point, ,well presented. Have a like

Unlike you I'm not claiming to know why people press the button and i don't know who presses it. You're making the claims, you back it up. 

Try reading what you posted.

I want to give you a like and a dislike for this, the like because I agree and an ironic dislike just for the sake of it.

And now because I can't do that, you've made me type a response, We need a "hang your head in shame" button!!

I did back it up, having faced the same arguments before. I checked evey post with multiple dislikes on all forums (except the pub) for about 2 weeks and logged and posted the results on UKC of all the large disliked posts with my comments and there wasn't anything approaching a single justifiable example with a large number of dislikes. I guess if you know your opinion trumps such ad hoc efforts,  it must have been the christmas spirit

On how I think it's well known that the internet can massively amplify unfair negativity in short time periods, maybe you can explain more clearly first as I still don't understand your point. My concern is how unfair negative posts can too easily go viral.

Until this discussion, I did not know that there was a way to hide the like/dislike buttons.

It's such a relief to have them vanish from my sight.

It may not affect many on this site but the concept of the like/dislike buttons can crawl under your skin and affect your mood in a negative way.

I don't believe you. Saying "there wasn't anything approaching a single justifiable example with a large number of dislikes" is meaningless because you're biased. And because you don't know who pressed the button and you don't know why, you can't say it's unjustifiable. So, yes, probably too much christmas spirit.

Can you point to a couple of ukc posts that have gone viral?

You've got a very poor memory, you were given a way to hide the buttons years ago.

Look, I'm going to go hyperbolic here, not because I consider these things to be on the same level as like/dislike on UKC but because (hopefully) by doing so it more clearly illustrates the deep flaws in this line of argument. So here it is:

Is online bullying a thing? Can social media drive people to self harm and suicide? Are racist taunts a thing? Is hate speech a thing? Your line of argument suggests that none of these things should be thought worthy of consideration or credited with being a real thing simply because "why don't people just ignore them?".

Thanks for posting. It's encouraging for me to find that my worries about dislikes leading to a feeling of being ostracised leading to a reduction in posting and interacting with the forums is a real thing for at least some people and not me just being irrationally paranoid! I wonder how many more people there are out there who might be in the same boat as mbh.

another thread getting longed out and made boring by arguing..... 

That's a nice way of putting it. I feel quite a bit happier with them turned off too but I still dislike (boom boom) the idea that they are there, just under the surface and while I do not see them, the judgments of the masses about my posts are still there for everyone else, consciously or unconsciously biasing how those posts are reacted to or valued.

Yes, and then Firefox changed the code with an update stopping all the good work.

Even if the buttons were removed completely everybody would still be judging you

Indeed, I don't bother with the buttons but still have an opinion on certain posts/ers.

Are you Danish or German? Or is mobbe some woke-speak version of the English word 'mob'?

First time on UKC's forums? :-D

I think the 'like' button introduces the popularity contest element which is just a bit shit and tacky. But the 'dislike' button is annoying for another reason: when I spend a bit of time carefully writing a post that justifies my position, that's my 'System 2' speaking. It's effortful, it takes time, and I know what I'm saying and why I'm saying it. When someone responds by clicking a button, that's their 'System 1' gut reaction (if they click it within a few seconds of reading the post) and it's not a valid response to my System 2 work. As such, it's a pointless and negative interaction. If you want to criticise someone's thought-out position, pull your finger out of your arse and write something in English about why you think they're mistaken/badly motivated/whatever your disagreement is. At least if it had your name on it, you'd have to show publicly that you haven't got the wherewithal to justify what you think, but you want other people to know anyway.

I like things. Sometimes I dislike things. 

It's just a different way of us feeding the algorithm.

Atleast it keeps some climbing bums in a job and give me somewhere to wind people up / feel part of a bizzare community with some level of shared language and experience. 

Despite the disagreements (in fact, because of the disagreements) I think many of us here share some values. Certainly we all value wild spaces. 

Thumbs up and thumbs down haven't made a difference to UKC for me. 

I see this has been moved to pub discussion. If I was cynical I would be asking if that was so it will vanish without a trace in a few days time because the opinions expressed are not shared by the admin/moderation team.

Overall I'm quite surprised that really nobody seems to actively want the like/dislike buttons except, I think, from Alan James. Everyone else falls into about 4 groups - "don't care", "delete dislike, keep like", "remove both" or "make it a variety of reactions like facebook et al". Doesn't this suggest it's time to change the system? Maybe consult the users as to what they think would be best for the forum as a whole?

I read a couple of other threads on this topic (well, ok, I read large sections of them but not all because they are very long):

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

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/likes_and_dislikes-649646

And it rather struck me that the like/dislike feature doesn't ever seem to have had any fans. If the feedback from the whole forum user base is the same and always split between neutral and negative every time the topic comes up, why on earth hasn't it been changed?

Finally, important lessons learned:

1) Turning off the like/dislikes - did I miss the signposts? Because I can't find anywhere on the site, other than in this thread where it is noted that this option even exists, even in the help section and questions sections. How are people expected to discover this option? (apologies if I'm being thick and it is explained somewhere and I've just missed it)

2) Turning off like/dislikes in your thread by putting "RIP" in the title. This is very useful to know and similarly it seems not to be explained anywhere on the site, only buried in an ancient thread you could easily miss. I'm sure some of those who habitually harvest a pile of dislikes every time they post will be quite happy that they can now start threads without like/dislike buttons.

I'd quite like to keep the buttons, and I'm not Alan James. Go on, turn them off, pretend nobody reacts to your posts.

And  hiding the buttons is in the user options, hardly hidden.

Ok, in order:

Noted, you and Alan James like the buttons

Already done the moment someone explained how.

Not very likely, but with any luck it will become easier to ignore, the longer they stay hidden for.

Fair point, maybe my feeling that it should be mentioned elsewhere to give it a bit more visibility is skewed by the strength of my feeling on the issue, now that I'm firmly astride a hobby horse!

I think you misunderstand. What I mean is that people will have exactly the same reaction to your posts whether or not they have a button to press, or whether or not you can see the buttons. 

To put my much earlier comment another way, to keep the Like and ditch the Dislike would simply make "not clicking Like" the new Dislike...

For the record, I have not clicked "dislike" at all during 2019, and I have not clicked "dislike" on any of The Lemming's posts since the start of 2018.

I have never clicked a dislike since being on UKC ( I think) and have often suggested the scrapping of the system.

Earlier today when realising it could be done I turned off the like/ dislike viewing option and felt a lot better for it.

It is therefore with the greatest imaginable shame that I have to admit to having turned it back on for a couple of minutes just to see how a few of my recent posts were faring.......

Off again now, though.

I’ll speak up for dislikes, as some of my comments have attracted what I sometimes think is a disproportionate number of them. This then makes me read my own words to see if there was some ambiguity in the writing which makes a comment come off far worse than intended. A high number of dislikes in examples like this, is actually more useful feedback than a person writing their argument, because in the latter case you tend to focus on the argument and lose sight of the fact that your own words may have been misinterpreted due to a lack of nuance or whatever. 

You’re being far too gentlemanly...

Lemming kicked off the gratuitous ‘dislike’ culture and took a bit of well deserved punishment for it. 
And.... leaving aside the schoolboy fun of disliking Lemming..... you’re a very well balanced poster, don’t question yourself. Dislikes mean nothing. They’re nothing more than random thoughtless clicks.
 

My twice-annual posts asking about tips regarding sightseeing in Italian cities on work trips, always generate a high number of dislikes. This is useful feedback. It teaches me that a lot of people don’t like to read about work trip jollies. And that’s fair enough. 

The Lemming is a special case.

The actual main reason that I stopped hitting “dislike” on any of his posts, was that he announced some sad personal news at the start of 2018 and I decided to cut him some slack. 

There were other less gentlemanly reasons though. He used to keep going on about “dislike stalkers” and I think he assumed I was some sort of main culprit (not the case) so by markedly never hitting dislike, I was soon able to declare “I haven’t hit dislike for x number of months”.

Plus he never replies to any of my comments, so I had free rein to write what I want instead of clicking “dislike”, but with the same “no comeback” effect of an anonymous dislike. 

Yes, he rather attracted dislike stalkers. Nothing more certain to attract attention than to yelp publicly about dislikes. 

 

So you, and probably others, don’t dislike if you know a user is going through a tough time? And we can’t dislike a RIP post. So we must all realise that dislikes can negatively affect someone’s mental health? Think that is the argument right there for removing the dislike button, same reason Facebook never implemented it.

Can we have a vote on removing the dislike button please admin?

By the way, this all seems rather disingenuous coming from somebody whose profile says 'Favourite Climbing-Related Discussion Topic: Anything that gets people taking up arms and villifying each other!'

Start a thread (another one, we definitely haven't had that vote before), like for keep the buttons, dislike for get rid. Of course the problem with that is that the people who don't like the buttons will have hidden them.

So more than twice as many people wanted to get rid of the like/dislike buttons than wanted to expand it..

It's the will of the people

Hahahaha. God that was a long time ago, I hope in the intervening 10 years or so I have rather changed my attitude from being the abject troll I sometimes used to be. I don't think I've looked at my bio for a very long time, maybe it's time to change a few things.

That figure of only 8.5% of UKC survey respondents wanting to get rid of the like/dislike feature seems pretty conclusive. However there doesn't appear to have been a specific option to vote for removal of the dislike feature. 

I have turned off the like and dislike buttons and feels a lot better. If people have a comment on my post then they can do it in person. If they just hit like or dislike then I don't notice.

Sshhh! Don't tell him!   

I really see that differently - there are many reasons people click dislike (some of them discussed in this thread) and though some are genuine, some are also very arbitrary, a written response is almost guaranteed to highlight exactly what someone else thinks you have done wrong with your original post, so you know what someone takes issue with, a bunch of dislikes just leaves you guessing.

Just turned mine off now too.

It's a much happier place without them!

Is there a signature option? So we can highlight that likers/dislikers are wasting their time?

Since turning off those buttons, my perception of the site has changed for the better. The buttons may be a small thing, lurking at the bottom of every single reply, it's just that they don't provide any positive contribution to the discussion.

The buttons are used for a miriad of reasons, but unless you have a crystal ball, you can't decipher those reasons from a number count. Any poor soul on the bloody end of a dislike count will come up with a conclusion that may be inaccurate yet have a real and physical effect on their mental health and wellbeing.

Ah, thanks for that. It gives a good bigger picture of what people want and is a good start. If everyone were asked for the most popular additions/changes to vote on that change as "want this change", "don't care/mind/neutral" and "don't want this change", I think it would be useful to find out not only which changes are most popular but also which changes are the least controversial.

Just out of interest, which things on the list got implemented? I just went looking for them and couldn't find any, but that doesn't say much because I apparently managed to look at the report buttons in front of my face for years(?) and not see them!

Well said. I'd give you a like but i've turned mine off too. Plus it means i have to interact directly with you. It's all good!

er ..... the first one with 39% of the vote.

We are doing a new survey imminently and I have added a more specific question this time.

Alan

The status quo vote normally always wins though*, the change something vote was split amongst several categories so was never likely to win.

I say normally, cos of an obvious recent exception!

Welcome to the real world, Gordon!  

I'm not convinced that these attitudes are new, it's just that it's been made easier for more, and less articulate, people to express an opinion. 

Whether it's a well-informed and considered opinion is a different matter but I'd argue that we're generally better off knowing what the usually silent majority thinks, whilst making allowances for the occasional contrarian who comes home pissed and decides to dislike every post on every thread.  

It was a 'checkbox' answer which meant that you could tick more than one of the options. I take your point about the status quo, but the totals for the other changes were really pretty small so I think we were reasonably justified in not spending resources on implementing any of them.

Alan

I've just turned them off too.  Didn't even know you could.  I'd be happy with keeping Like, but Dislike does seem to have a negative effect in a way it really shouldn't, which may be why FB was always strongly against implementing one as that.

Are we seriously having this discussion again!?!

My take on it.... Use them or don't use them, but whatever you do, don't worry about them.

I'm not sure if it's that simple, the dislikes are a way of people expressing disagreement, but without actually articulating why, there as articulate as people saying 'ner'. I'm interested to know exactly why things are disliked, because it can generate ideas and discussion and make one think. A fair while ago Gordon posted something about the level of discussion going down after the dislikes, I don't know how subjective a perspective it is - whether that actually happened, but I can see the logic.

Dislikes only show that 'somebody for an unknown reason doesn't agree', that's interesting to know.

See above, either they don't agree with the idea that it has affected the level of discussions, or they think I'm being a bit daft, but what can happen is that other people can see the dislikes, and think that it's for the same reason that they're disliking, and nobody is any the wiser, or doesn't think of something from a new perspective potentially, there may be less building on what's already been posted - because it isn't being.

Edit: There's bigger concerns in life of course, but it seems logical.

I know that I'm dyslexic, but I can't make head not tails of that last very long sentence.

A few people can click dislike for different reasons, and assume that the others agree with them, and because nothing is expressed in text, it can mean nobody thinks of whatever has been posted from a new perspective, because they think it's already  'gone unsaid in the form of dislikes'.  Meaning that as a means of communication, it's pretty poor.

That's better

As a means of communication the buttons are very poor. If a comment isn't worth replying to then it isn't worth clicking a button.

Saying all that, when I go to vote, I'm putting a click mark beside a team that I dislike the least.

Umm, not sure if this is tongue in cheek or not.

Assuming not, I think that viewing the "no changes" choice as an active feeling against the other options is a mistake, I would expect that the people in the "no changes" group had a wide range of feeling with "don't care/mind/uninterested" being one, "apathy, it's the first answer, click, continue" being another, "don't change the forums I love in any way" being another and many more.

I don't know if this survey was done as part of a competition with a prize of rope/rock boots/whatever but if it was, I would also worry about how many people entered the competition just to be in with a chance of winning and went through the survey picking essentially the "null" answer or first or easiest answer for every question (though to be fair, I don't know what order the options were put in in the original question).

I realised it must have allowed multiple answers to be selected when I looked at it first because of the percentage total.

If being tongue in cheek, ignore my comment and it will be interesting to see what the new survey throws up.

Edit: Also, if we are looking at "changes" vs "no changes", 61% of people voted for changes and only 39% for no changes :P

The other sentence was rather a rambling stream of consciousness. 

I'll take your word for it. I can't see the Like/Dislike counters.

I don't care that the nasty, divisive buttons still exist. I no longer have to see them.

They were added so you could express your disagreement with Brexiteers without implying that 52% of the nation is somehow stupid and morally bankrupt. 

Fixed your statistics for you. In no way meaning to suggest that someone still using the wrong number, 3 years after the poll, to imply greater support for leave is either morally bankrupt or stupid. 

https://www.indy100.com/article/brexit-leave-remain-52-48-per-cent-voter-tu...

Please don't turn the thread into a brexit debate. As it is, I think it's an interesting and broadly useful debate about the like/dislike buttons that has managed (rather impressively!) to avoid both nazis/hitler and brexit. Can't we try and keep it that way?

UKC isn't for debate. It's sole purpose is to make you realise that climbers aren't this cool group of individual thinkers who do cool stuff and instead gain an understanding that most just like to be ####s to everyone else. I guess if we weren't so antisocial, pig headed, disagreeable and self-riteous we would do a team sport. Instead we chose to be just out of range of conversation, refuse to accept help calling it beta, kick up a fuss over the validity of anyone's claim to climb anything in the name of ethics. UKC really stands for Uninspired Kangaroo Court. I personally like the dislike button because it gives you an opportunity to argue twice. 

Oh no it doesn’t ! 

Oh yes it does!