Casting down votes now costs reputation points

Question

After evaluation of many posts and complaints that we receive from users on potential abuse of the down-voting privilege, we have decided to make down-voting questions and answers cost 1 reputation point. The change is effective immediately. We want the community to focus on up-voting the correct and well-written posts and editing, commenting and flagging posts that require improvements.

Due to this change, we have also made down-votes more meaningful. They now reduce the reputation points by the same amount that are obtained from up-votes. In other words the up- and down-votes void each other. The detailed reputation points table is available in the Help Center.

Please let us know if you have any questions!

Note: The change on down-votes costing reputation points was reverted: Content Quality Updates [Part 1]

TibiaQA.com team

Answer 1

Wow, what a bad idea :o So over a year I tried to repair database by downvoting some completely wrong answers, I have never abused it and tried to think twice if it was really necessary... and now I've been punished for it and lost over 30 points!

Editing should be good in case when we should add some additional information to the good, but incomplete answers. If anybody wrote something completly incorrect and misleading and he doesn't respond to any comment, we should feel free to downvote. It shouldn't be our job to completely change wrong answers.

For example:

If anybody answered "no, [explanation]" and the correct answer is "yes, [explanation]' then it should stay as it is. We shouldn't change meaning of the answers.

Seems that now I should find all downvoted answers and unvote it to not loose any points, no matter if the answers were wrong.

First of all this kind of changes shouldn't be retroactive, because in the past you asked people to downvote wrong answers to make database more valuable.

In my opinion it is another way to grant spammers and punish users who took care of the TibiaQA's content quality.

Comments

I got -30 points too and I didn't even downvote 30 times. I was really excited to participe here, but every day this things just make me fell uninterested to stay here...

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Hey, Pochwalona. Thanks for your input.
Re: Editing - you are correct. Editing should never be used to change the meaning of the post. It can only be used to fix spelling, formatting or adding small details to the posts.
Re: Retroactive point changes - I totally agree with you and it would be better if such changes did not impact any actions taken in the past. Unfortunately, this is a platform limitation. Re-writing the part that handles user points would be very time-consuming.

Please note that this change is in no way meant to be a punishment. We still want experienced players to downvote clearly incorrect and incomplete posts. We are just trying to encourage the users to think if there's another way this post can be improved and to help prevent users from randomly downvoting anything.

btw. I have 226 downvotes cast as I write this, so I'm just as affected

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@Oriibsz
 Cus you lost 1 additional point for each downvote you get, so in total 23 points less for downvotes you get, and 4 points for downvotes you gave out.

@Ellotris Guardian
Re: re: retroactive point changes - I'm really glad, that you agree, but it is still not users' fault that this platform works in this way. Yet we became responsible for it and we lost points. Unvoting all the downvoted answers will be time consuming as well.

It's hard to not think of it as a punishment, because we lost a lot of points for doing everything according to the rules and your suggestions.
One thing I'm 100% sure, I won't give any downvote even for the worst answer ever, as long as according to the current rules it's me who will loose points.

Re: btw - I appreciate the dedication, but I think that none of users who lost so many points will feel better because you, admin himself lost more.

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I have been injured many times by the points system, losing 50 or even 100 points without doing anything illegally... many others too. It's really normal :) I understand you, because now you get harder points but sometimes just inevitable.

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@Tynusiiaa I'm even longer here, than you so all the changes before affected also me. It's nothing new :) I had never any problem with it till now, when this particular change is in my opinion bad. And I'm not talking about increasing of points loss due to getting a downvote. In this case I don't care. But why there is a system of downvotes if users can not use it? xD Why the rules of the site state which answers should be downvoted, while other rules state that you shouldn't downvote, because you will loose points. And finally why such changes that works retroactive are entered into the system if users have no ability to check the history which answer was downvoted by them - to let them decide if they want -1 point? :) I feel that my time here is disrespected and I'm afraid that one day admin implement some happy changes, which cause I'll loose e.g 2000 points. This is the main problem. So I don't agree with you that it's inevitable. Such sudden changes should be avoided and the regulations should be stable, because then users feel it this way "I was really excited to participe here, but every day this things just make me fell uninterested to stay here".

Answer 2

I kind of have mixed emotions about this. I was scared to downvote clearly wrong answers before, but now I'm really scared to downvote. I like the old system better, but I do know others would abuse downvoting. At least there's changes with the point system so that was a good thing to make downvotes more meaningful.

Comments

Thanks for sharing this, shawtay. Why exactly were you scared of downvoting wrong answers before?

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I just posted a new answer about Rabbit Foots on an old question. I was sure the original answer wasnt quite right but couldnt replicate the results until today. Everyone was wrong on the question but i felt nervous about saying it. Now I'm now not downvoting them because they were using the best info they had. And as strange as it sounds, when you start putting time into Tibiaqa.com a downvote hurts.

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I was scared of downvoting wrong answers before because people would downvote you back, at least this is my opinion. Recently I gained confidence because I don't like misinformation being spread. But now I'm like eh, I will rather just post a comment, edit the post myself, or just make my own answer to avoid putting myself others in that situation. Downvotes add up for both parties over time but I do think this change is a positive change to make some people stop downvoting like crazy.

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Thanks for explaining. This is something that I've also noticed and unfortunately, down-voting users back happens from time to time (sometimes they even assume the wrong user and downvote them). I think a strong shift in thinking is needed in the community to both encourage users to downvote more (we should be clearly marking incorrect answers) and users getting down-voted not taking it as a personal attack, but a signal that they might be providing incorrect/undesired content.

Answer 3

I like the idea of needing to be serious about downvoting and willing to pay the price for it. I however respectfully say that maybe it should not be activated on past posts, or if it is, give a little time for people to go back, look at their downvote and decide if they still stand by it.

As an alternative, require people to post the reason why they downvoted because feedback might probably improve the answer?

Comments

Thanks, Severable. I totally agree with you. Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the platform. Re-writing the parts of the code that are responsible for user points to make them work as you described would be very time-consuming. It seemed that this time is better spent on new functionalities, such as notifications - https://meta.tibiaqa.com/1527/introducing-notifications and points for improved posts - https://meta.tibiaqa.com/1519/improving-posts-is-now-rewarded-with-reputation-points

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I added an edit before I saw your comment and the fact you can go back and pull back downvotes and remove negative scores if you really dont feel serious about it. Great to hear what you say about the comments on the downvotes/comment part. The times I've been downvoted and the person doing so has told me why Ive usually been able to fix the problem with the post