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Some time ago, there was some discussion on removing the dislike button, but at the time I wasn't able to really get involved in the discussion or do anything with it. Now that I have the time, I would like to reopen discussion...do you feel that it's something that should be kept, done away with, or what?

I think it serves some purpose but not across the forum as a whole; people will misuse it out of pettiness etc, but if we had it in certain forums (such as legislative or cultural areas) I could see it serving a useful purpose. I don't know if that would be feasible with SMF though.

A number of Reddit subthreads removed their dislike button due to the habit of certain users downvoting posts and comments based on who they were or what they supported rather than content that was actually harmful to the community. I feel like that's happened several times on our server, thankfully in very localized instances, but I feel that's enough to want the button removed just the same.

I think the button alone makes our community toxic. It does more harm than good. We'd be better off without it.

Aye, there have been several cases where people have disliked posts just because of their author, so I guess the button is causing more harm than good. If we can't disable it for certain areas and keep it for others, I definitely say get rid of it.

I think the button alone makes our community toxic. It does more harm than good. We'd be better off without it.

I think toxic is a strong word to use, button or no...I've never considered our community toxic, especially compared to other NS regional communities.

Honestly I say keep the buttons. I see no point in getting rid of them as abuse merely devalues them more....

I think that the button has few uses outside of MAYBE the legislative area that aren't flaming or petty...
I think it should be removed entirely... Even in places where it can be used to show opinions, it's usually preferred that someone actually type out their opinions to make a comment so I think it should be removed...

While there may be some use somewhere, sometime perhaps for a such button, I'd much rather see it be renamed to something positive. If someone disagrees with or dislikes what you said, they should just tell you why. So the button ever benefit the discussion?

I think the core of the issue is that public counter everyone has to carry in their profile. Most often you can't really help receiving those dislikes, there's nothing you can do about them. So why count them publicly? Even if the button doesn't go away, I say the counter has to vanish. Punishing people for having opinions isn't us, is it?

TD;DR Let's not waste the existing code, let's rename the dislike button to something more constructive and positive. Perhaps even something as simple as "Agree" button without public counter could better serve the community. Not my greatest naming innovation, but had to suggest at least something for credibility.

//aaand Reon was there, rendering the first third of my reply repetitive. Pardon my ignorance.

I still think they should just be kept as they are, but make them somewhat useless. Maybe disable counters by default and allow people to turn on counters for themselves if they wish?

Or maybe turning likes/dislikes into some form of currency of some sort that's really useless

(And honestly removing likes/dislikes only hurts those whom have gotten high amounts of likes or those whom have attempted to get large amounts of dislikes (Not that anyone has to this point, but honestly I could probably see this happening with someone...) if we do remove it, all of the karma should be converted to Krones when we do get that implemented...)

I don't think anyone here is suggesting removal of the like button, that's a fairly good and liked feature.

Yeah, the like button can be helpful so we maybe don't have to repeat ourselves so much or just to generally support something...
I don't support the removal of the like button...

To confirm, I'm only considering removing dislikes.

I feel like anyone could ironically dislike any of these posts to prove a point. (e: Point proven, exactly how I wanted it to be )

If anything, another reason for removing the dislike button: the amount of negative karma displayed has only shown how contentious someone is in the community, further signifying dislike towards a person rather than a post.

Still should keep the dislike button around....just hide the negative karma if that's a freaking issue (which I personally do not believe is one, but w/e)