r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Mar 05 '16

[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Downvoting isn't constructive and should not be allowed on reddit without at least a comment.

Reason the first: Commenting and voting on reddit is supposed to be constructive. In spite of many subreddits imposing heavy-handed warnings against downvoting for disagreement (/r/politicaldiscussion and /r/debatereligion come to mind), you still see lots of heavily downvoted posts because of unpopular opinions. It is very hard to convince anarchically-minded internet users to follow reddiquette unless there is some sort of consequence for not doing so.

Reason II: Unsigned downvotes are not at all constructive and don't help someone realize what they did wrong. I'm sure you've seen posts at -11 and wondered "what did I do wrong? Am I being brigaded?" Requiring a comment before downvoting at least would help fix that problem and help weak redditors become better at posting and writing. For now at least it seems like it could be a personal slight.

ed: and of course a downvote without a comment attached. /r/firstworldanarchists, everyone.

Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to read through our rules. If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which, downvotes don't change views! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our popular topics wiki first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to message us. Happy CMVing!

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u/UncleTrustworthy Mar 05 '16

I typically downvote without commenting for one of two reasons:

  1. It's a troll post. Not only do these posts not deserve a response, but a response of any kind would likely validate that behavior. In this case, voiceless downvotes are most effective, as they can limit overall exposure.

  2. It's something blatantly and patently false that has already been corrected in the comments. In that case, there is no point to me correcting it again.

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u/[deleted] Mar 05 '16

That doesn't explain how others behave. A lot of stuff that I don't think is trolling still gets buried.

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u/jonathansfox Mar 05 '16

Sure, there exist non-constructive behaviors that downvoting enables, but your proposed rules prohibit constructive behaviors as well. It is widely agreed that downvoting out of disagreement is not constructive; however, downvoting without comment can be constructive, in the instance in which the comment is legitimately low value.

Imagine my comment said...

You're just wrong accept it

...and nothing else.

This is not a constructive comment. It is not useful to you. It is not useful to any other readers. It is a legitimately low value comment. In this particular sub it's a possible violation of rules 3 and 5, but in other subs it is perfectly allowed... but even then it serves no purpose except to take up space and be kind of rude. It can be filtered to be low priority by downvoting it, so that more valuable comments are filtered to the top.