Please add a downvote button & counter for COPA posts.
I have hope it could reduce the problem of toxic incipient politics posts leading to more. Trolling victims should have a way to express our disapproval without having to respond with a post.
Also the resulting like/dislike count can provide meaningful worthwhile poll consensus type feedback for other valid innocuous posts.
I like the down vote button idea.
For some reason, however, there is a reluctance to provide a down vote button on social media. Instagram, Facebook, and others have resisted the calls for a down vote button. Not sure why.
Warren and others:
That is what the 
button is for. Flag it!
It will show how many flags give.
The idea of an up-vote and Down vote of opinions doesn’t work well. We are discuss our opinions on this site. We are not discussing issues that have black and white answers, supported by facts and science, Which is where a Down/Up vote system works well.
We want to support the Positive and distract from people doing the negative. This is what Discourse(Our Forum Software platform) is built on. Self Moderate, Trust Levels, etc.
We (The COPA IT TEAM) are only supporting core functionality and Supported plugins, Down-votes is note likely to be either of those based on the opinions and views of their founder.
Here is a very good video from the founder of Discourse, where you can get a feel of what he feels Discourse would become. Video is from 2013.
While I don’t disagree, if only the "offending’ posters would look and see that they have zero thumbs up while their counterparts have many, maybe they would start to realize that their comments are at odds or add nothing to the discussion.
Unfortunately I don’t have enough reputation on this software yet to ignore certain posters. If I did, there have been a few lately that, IMHO, that have been adding little of value to the threads at hand and seem to simply be stirring the pot.
Jim,
There’s a thread I’m following sporadically that is up to over 6,000 posts. There’s a handful of posters I look for. I’m exasperated to the point that I now start at the end and skim backwards to find one of their posts, then click on their profile to speed read through their previous posts I may have missed. It helps cuts through the chaff.
Sadly, I can see that one of my favorites seems close to giving up. So, I still send him a thumbs up.
Warren, respectfully, no matter how outraged you might be when you see such a post, when you post a flame of that post that contains nothing at all pertaining to the subject of the thread, you are contributing to the problem. Your post is just as “noisy” as the one you’re responding to. Has nothing to do with any political side or the other; pouring gas on the fire doesn’t help, no mater how strongly you might feel or how “right” you may be.
If you think a post violates the posting guidelines, just press the Flag button on the post and leave it at that. Don’t rise to the bait by replying.
The reason is that a thumbs down is ambiguous. If I posted that I crashed my plane, or my dog died, would you go thumbs up or down?
Depends. What breed of dog? 
Okay, that made me laugh.
Just another way
I think if we can have an ambiguous thumbs up we can have an ambiguous thumbs down.
Of course … how do you stop brigading? Majority rules. Hopefully on a site comprised of mostly 40+ year olds that doesn’t happen but we could test.
Plus if you say things that constantly irritate people I guess you’ll have to take the thumbs down moniker.
Narrator: Downvotes…they’re not just for reddit any more.
While understand and appreciate your side of the argument for the downvote, I happen to agree with the developer of the software:
- systems of fact, data, and science can benefit from downvotes, because statements can be scientifically proven to a reasonable degree.
- systems of opinion do not benefit from downvotes and are in fact materially and seriously harmed by them, because nobody can prove an opinion. Empathy is the order of the day in opinion systems.
As I have mentioned earlier in this topic, this software doesn’t support down voting.
We will not be implementing custom code to create the feature for us.
I tend to the default of: If these guys are building it this way, there is very good reason for it. It’s their business and product.
They feel so strongly that when asked to add it you get this response from the founder of Discourse:
However his co founder has asked door sponsors to gage the need to create it as a core option. If you would like to sponsor the development of it as official core function, you are welcome to do so.
See this topic, here
But here is a snippet:
How much do you want this? It would probably take a few months to build properly so 20-30k dollars seems like a pretty reasonable budget for it.
Do you feel 20 thousand dollars passionately that this feature is missing from Discourse?
If I hit the Powerball the check is in the mail…
How about something simple like the ability to know where a member is from? It is next to impossible to find members near you, at least for me. This is one application which the old site dwarfs this one. Member lookup is sorely missed.
And a question, what good does it do to delete a post since it is visual foe 24 hours? Now I have to wash my mouth out with soap before I speak.
Member search…It’s coming!
It won’t be part of the forum discussion side, it will be on the main site with integration to the passport membership data members provide.
For legal, security, and privacy reasons we had to put more development into it. We could not roll it out as part of the launch as we had to rush it a little more than we wanted due to stability of the old system.
We will be writing a roadmap post that will outline some features and projects coming to the website.
One of those things Along with the membership search, will be a COPA member business directory that members will be able to opt into as well.
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