An idea .. This may be possible... Two options:
- Flagging or Downvoting
Flagging is for other more harsher things like: fraud, spam, trolling and can affect the reputation adversely beyond the reputation gains on the item being voted.
Downvoting is more for reward reduction and is limited to removing payout and reputation gains only as much as the item being voted.
a) Calculate a max negative weight for the downvote and allow limit the negative vote weight to this range. And b) A special flag weight (magic digits for the least significant bytes) to indicate intent (flag or downvote) and user interface detection and display.
If downvoting does not go below 0 (to negate their past reputation score) then a downvote is essentially not going to hurt the poster's reputation aside from removing the potential reputation gain on that particular item. So in this case the payout reduction and the loss of a reputation gain are one in the same.
This is a user-interface only change. No hard-fork needed.
The intended effect: This will give people an outlet to soften their actions and reduce the stress on the community.
That's a really cool idea.
The feedback that I have heard from a lot of people is that just changing the current 'flag' back to a 'downvote' and removing the counter that highlights how many flags/downvotes a post has right at the top, would go a long way.
If there was an easy way to actually have separate flag and downvote options with different degrees of severity like you have described - that would be even better!
I am not a techy guy like you guys but I commented here to @jamesc -- my idea.
I have always felt there should be both -- the DV button and a flag option.
I can DV a post and it carries less overall harsh consequences and save the flags for the super bad stuff or reasons, one does not always = the other on here. But currently --- they do.
I tend to agree, we probably going to use both downvote/dislike and flag buttons on Busy interface.
I totally second this. Downvoting should definitely be a part of the system - it has been so crucial for Reddit's success. Like I said elsewhere many times, criticism is as valid if not more so than positive opinion.
I'm not sure about the "Flag" metaphor - we can come up with something better. Centralized networks have "Report" - this would essentially be a replacement for that.
True, I think flagging and down-voting are two completely different things. Each has their own reason!
I think you are right on here! We need to separate the downvote and the flag... nice thoughts here James :)