To keep absolute sheit off the site.

Personally I never use the downvote, so I don't care if it goes away. But I can see why some people (ie: Ant) might be perturbed if that power was removed.

If I don't like a video, I tend to downvote it and send a death threat to the publisher. Sometimes I rape them if I think they may be the type to get all uppity. How else are they to know not to post shit up here!

>> ^MarineGunrock:
To keep absolute sheit off the site.

Who are you to decide what is "absolute sheit" or not...if it gets 10 votes it should have the same chance to flourish as any other video. If it is "absolute sheit" then it will wither and die.

I am me. That's who I am to decide whether something is absolute sheit. Just because I downvote a video does not mean it goes into a tab or channel called "AbsoluteSheit".
It means I think it's shit, and it's MY vote, so I will cast it as I see fit.

But for the most part, if something is absolute sheit, it will wither and die from down-votes.

uhh, stop right there,non-confrontation-station....., we have downvotes because there's shit we don't like, for whatever the hell the reason we chose, + acountability...., you, Nazi-for-asking-this-question omni-tard!!!

*unquality!!

ant....help me out here-KIDS ASK "WHY"??, and not talkin' baby goats here, grimmy...

Yeah...it's "your vote" so you either "vote" or you "don't vote". When you "down vote" you are actually taking an action that "cancels" someone else's vote.

If there is a video that has 20 votes and two down votes the system does not show that the video earned 20 votes...it instead shows that the video only has 18 votes which isn't true.

If the power freaks on here absolutely must have their "down vote powers" then the accurate representation should be that the video has 20 up votes and 2 down votes.

Anywhere else 100 people vote for something and 25 people vote against and it is not misrepresented by saying that it only got 75 votes.

power freak© is a copyrighted button push phrase

Im going to have to side with choggie. *unquality. I think my downvote speaks for the content. Ill upvote videos I don't necessarily like, but know that others will. I'll down vote shit i hate, either because it truly is a horrible video, or because its really bad quality. I.e. - anything that is a recording of a tv gets an automatic downvote, even if its the best thing put there, content wise. "Quality Control"

i just downvote anything that makes me think 'well that was a waste of my time' after watching it.

So far many of you have explained why you "think" you need the option to down vote a video. But no one has given a good reason for why a down vote should nullify an up vote. If a video gets 25 votes then it should show that the video got 25 votes. If we have to have down votes then it should just show that it got 5 down votes.

It is misleading to say that the video only has 20 votes when in fact it has 25.

If you want to know the total ups and downs, go to the bottom. The published number at the top, is just the difference of the 2. its all fine. its purposeful. it dosent remove knowing the total ups. it is relivent to the context of sifting (on which the difference is based) and has its place.

*unquality

I think right when I started I downvoted a couple of things, but I felt so bad about it that I stopped. I agree with Grimm; videos won't rise unless I vote for them. Unless other people like the video, and then it rises. Ah, democracy. And I think these un *quality comments are uncivil. I'm taking my internet and going home.

Awarding Grimm with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by sbchapm.

Why should a video with 30 upvotes and 5 downvotes show a score of 25? For the same reason that if someone gives me 30 bucks and someone jacks 5 bucks, I only have 25 left. Math. Why SHOULD it show a total of all upvotes? Is your issue with the verbiage accompanying the number? Would you want to have it say "score" or something else rather than "votes"

There are three things I will defend with my life... my family, my freedom and my right to downvote stupid crap on the sift.

Maybe it's just me...but I come from the old school of thinking that "ever vote should count" (yeah I know it's naive).

I don't have a problem so much with people registering their dissatisfaction with a "down vote" if that's going to somehow make them feel better. My objection is in the way the down vote is allowed to "subtract" from how many votes a video really got.

When they pass a bill in congress with a vote of 60 (yes votes) to 40 (no votes) we say the bill passed with 60 votes...we don't allow the 40 no votes to nullify 40 yes votes and say the bill only got 20 votes.

I think of voting here like voting on a ballot proposition, as opposed to voting for an elected official. A proposition (video) has to overcome all of the nay votes with more yea votes to get passed (published). Personally, I'd like to see more downvotes getting cast, but VS culture has already developed to the point that people take that personally, having some sort of attachment to "their" vids.

I see what you're saying about a 20-4 vote on a video being analogous to a 60-40 vote in the Senate, but one difference is that we don't have a fixed # of voters. Imagine the Sentate trying to work with the same proportion of abstentions as we have here.

I think the only way to solve this is Thunderdome! Two men enter. One man exits. Grimm steps into the Dome followed shortly by MarineGunrock! Who will rise the victor? Place your bets!

Seriously though, in your analogy, Grimm, it's not that the 40 nay votes don't subtract from the 60 yay votes, but rather it subtracts from the percentage spread, which is the maximum 100 votes. In other words, 60 out of 100 votes conveniently translating to a 60% majority vote. I don't think a percentage spread of votes cast would be a terrible thing to show on the video's page. Up top you could show 20 upvotes out of a total 40 votes cast would show that half of the people liked the video and half did not.

The current system works on a vote-to-vote system that can cancel votes, and I get that you think that is unfair, because you'd rather see a percentage spread showing the true upvotes compared to total votes. The problem is getting the video out of the unsifted ranks, at that point, because having the video just receive ten upvotes would decrease the site's ability to police video quality (which is what the site is founded on: quality control). Negating other's votes seems to be the system to keep lower quality videos out of the sifted ranks. Do you have an alternate solution for that, Grimm, that you think could work better? I think everyone would like to hear it.

*Nonissue *unquality. I think we can move on now.

I think the "quality control" argument only works good in theory.

1) People are able to down vote for whatever random reason they want with quality of the video having nothing to do with it. (I got a down vote the other day because my embed was from College Humor a blessed host btw).

2)Quality...like art and comedy is very subjective. So if 25 people think a video is quality and 5 think it is NOT quality it's not accurate to portray the video as only getting 20 quality votes and why should those 5 people be able to change the rank of a video that 25 people voted for to be less then equal to any other video that 25 people voted for? As far as anyone knows those 5 votes could have been Scientologists that thought the video was anti-Scientology. Or Obama supporters who don't like videos that support Clinton etc... The down vote can just as easily be used for "personal" reasons in the name of "quality control".

How's this for quality control....if you don't like a video "don't vote for it"! Why do people have to have the power to negate the votes of others?

I guess that doesn't look like it will fly here though so my alternate solution is to just show the true stats...show how many up votes it got and how many down votes it got. The videos rank should be based on the actual up votes.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
*Nonissue *unquality. I think we can move on now.

Not too surprising that someone who wants to keep the power to squash a videos rank also wants the power to squash a discussion...even if it means conjuring up non-existent invocations.

>> ^Grimm:
>> ^MarineGunrock:
Nonissue unquality. I think we can move on now.

Not too surprising that someone who wants to keep the power to squash a videos rank also wants the power to squash a discussion...even if it means conjuring up non-existent invocations.


Um, let's not get too dramatic.(!)

>> ^Grimm:
So far many of you have explained why you "think" you need the option to down vote a video. But no one has given a good reason for why a down vote should nullify an up vote. If a video gets 25 votes then it should show that the video got 25 votes. If we have to have down votes then it should just show that it got 5 down votes.
It is misleading to say that the video only has 20 votes when in fact it has 25.


I've concluded ages ago that downvote serves a couple of primary purposes:
1. increasing the effective queue escape level (why the negatives end up nullifying the ups is answered here)
2. the quality control which has been beaten do death in discussion above, but to be complete I cite it here.

Hope that helps

>> ^Grimm:
>> ^MarineGunrock:
Nonissue unquality. I think we can move on now.

Not too surprising that someone who wants to keep the power to squash a videos rank also wants the power to squash a discussion...even if it means conjuring up non-existent invocations.



Ummm, what? I'm not even sure where you were going with that, but if it had anything to do with the *unquality - Maybe you didn't notice that I wasn't the first to say it.

>> ^Krupo:
I've concluded ages ago that downvote serves a couple of primary purposes:
1. increasing the effective queue escape level (why the negatives end up nullifying the ups is answered here)
2. the quality control which has been beaten do death in discussion above, but to be complete I cite it here.
Hope that helps


Well...no...repeating over and over that "down votes" equals "quality control" does not make it so. Like I've said...that works in theory...in theory if we all agreed to a degree what was and was not quality and in theory if we all used it "only" for the purpose of "quality control" then you would have a point.

Like I said above...
"Quality...like art and comedy is very subjective. So if 25 people think a video is quality and 5 think it is NOT quality it's not accurate to portray the video as only getting 20 quality votes and why should those 5 people be able to change the rank of a video that 25 people voted for to be less than equal to any other video that 25 people voted for? As far as anyone knows those 5 votes could have been Scientologists that thought the video was anti-Scientology. Or Obama supporters who don't like videos that support Clinton etc... The down vote can just as easily be used for "personal" reasons in the name of "quality control"."

There is no proof at all that "down votes" have contributed to any "quality control" on this site.

It's a power thing in my opinion...if a video gets 10 up votes and 1 down vote keeping that video from being sifted why the hell does 1 persons opinion about the videos quality have more power then the 10 people who voted for it? I don't even care if it got 5 down votes....why do 5 people get the power over the 10?

Example of "Quality Control" at work.

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-most-amazing-ukelele-playing-you-will-ever-see-Jake-Shimabukuro

Has over 500 up votes and 14 down votes. Seems more like 14 people who just didn't like the video as opposed to any "quality control". This btw would be one of the shiet videos MarineGunrock wants to keep off the site.

How else would I express my distaste for John Stossel?

>> ^Grimm:
Example of "Quality Control" at work.
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-most-amaz
ing-ukelele-playing-you-will-ever-see-Jake-Shimabukuro
Has over 500 up votes and 14 down votes. Seems more like 14 people who just didn't like the video as opposed to any "quality control". This btw would be one of the shiet videos MarineGunrock wants to keep off the site.


No it wouldn't. But I'm glad you know me that well. I never said the SOLE purpose for the downvotes was to keep shit off the site. When I downvote something in the queue, it is, but it also means I simply really do not like the video. When I downvote something that's been published, I am merely expressing my distaste for it.

As for the ukulele video, well, I just don't think it deserves so many votes. I think everyone here would agree with that.

to say that it doesn't deserve that many votes is a declaration on your part that the voting system is flawed here. Some people over use it. I haven't seen that with MGR, but with more "bleeding hearts" on the site that don't like to see puppies being kicked by steel-toed boots. I for one usually just not vote if I think its crap. Rarely do I feel the need to dv. The control of content by the user is what makes this site aweshums. I would like to keep my right to downvote if I have to flex.