A suggestion that really shouldn't be put in, but would benefit the site.

Question

I am speaking from a Community POV. Everyone is ALWAYS complaining about this, so I guess we should do something.

Remove the -2 when down-voting.

Anybody who is point grubby complains about this. (It's not a stereotype if it's always true.) I guess it should just be removed. Not much to really say.

The final decision is yours, PM. I really don't care what happens.

Comments

There are always going to be point grubbers. This is just the start to their desperation. If we remove this, they'll consider us more 'gullible', and then yee'll start asking for a removal on the -10 points from downvotes... XP

Anayways, I'm sorta with you. I don't know if we should do it or not. I guess it would shut up the point grubbers, but then spam voters will come back.

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I think it's there to discourage voting especially as a new user, though it does help tell who downvoted as well as when someone's spam voting.

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Yeah... I think we are all going to be so-so with this one.

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It should be kept because it helps restrict users from down-voting unless its a really bad question/answer.

If there were no point loss, users would pretty much be encouraged to down-vote any wrong they see, not matter how small and they would start to be very generous with their handing out of down votes.
Besides, is 2 points really that much?

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Or maybe, the first 2-3 downvotes won't take away any points, but then after that they start deducting 2 points for every down-vote, and it resets every 24 hours?

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If only there was -1 :[

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It is there to discourage spam down voting, not down voting. Nothing is wrong with a down vote.

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We know. But there will be people who take advantage of that and will do it anyway. I like Dr.Flame's comment; -1 seems pretty fair if you ask me. It's in the middle. The way I like it.

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I don't know if this would cause bad blood but maybe have an alert system like Facebook so it would say, "SlipperyDevil just up voted your answer!" or something like that. that way you can see who is doing what and where. if all of a sudden you lose -85 points and every alerts says "Pokemaster just downvoted your question!" you'd be easily able to report it. not that Pokemaster would do this. just trying to not use names to seem biased against any users.

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I agree with RedShift, I'm put off downvoting anything no matter how terrible the post may be (luckily, haven't come across any so far though), because I'm still fairly new and I don't want to lose the few points I've gained so far. I think you should be able to downvote say 2 posts a day penalty free, and from then on, a penalty is introduced, it could even be higher than -2 because of this. People should in theory then be more picky about what they downvote if they know they can only do two free downvotes per day, and it would mostly penalise spammers. Also then you are no longer penalising legit downvoters by "awarding" them negative points for pointing out that content is wrong. I reckon most people should not feel the need to downvote more than twice a day...

Answer 1

Problem is, a lot of people might start downvoting a lot if that happens (downvoting good posts I mean). As I have said before, remember that you only lose 2 points but the person you downvoted loses 10 points so they lose out more!

BTW if you downvote a post and it gets hidden, eventually you will get the points back.

Comments

That's why I thought -1 when you downvote was a good idea, agreeing with Dr.Flame. Then again, the more we lower it, the more d-votes there will be.