Why the "insightful" and "fun" votes? I am new and I immediately dislike them.

submitted by [deleted] from self.SaidIt

If this community dislike downvotes, that's fine with me, I am completely neutral about the downvote debate. But why not just have 1 arrow / heart / like? I don't even understand from the ToS what the true purpose of the "fun" vote is. It seems to be used in practice as a passive-aggressive downvote for controversial opinions as well as a genuine laugh react.

It's nice that Saidit exists as a free speech alternative to Reddit, and it does things its own way (the pyramid is a nice touch). But, my first impression is that the voting system just seems too ugly and unintuitive for me. Plus the counter + timestamp are bulky: 2 insightful - 2 fun - timestamp The hyphens give the half-second impression that you have a negative score as well.

Anyway, thoughts?

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[–]mip 12 insightful - 5 fun12 insightful - 4 fun13 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

The fun vote might sometimes be used as a downvote, but in doing so, you still push the comment upwards instead of down, so it doesn't exactly work towards enforcing biases as on reddit.

[–]NitexKnight 12 insightful - 3 fun12 insightful - 2 fun13 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

I think it's fine. Insightful if the post is informative or thought provoking. Fun if it made you laugh or is just ridiculous. What doesn't make sense?

[–]DiveBarDiva 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

That’s how I’ve been using it. It didn’t occur to me to use it as a downvote.

[–]Chipit 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

That's what makes this "new account" sus. There are only a few people who do that, and most of them are on /s/lgbdropthet, a hidden subsaidit that doesn't appear on the main site. Because they're feminists who don't believe in free speech. Well, until they got banned from Reddit, of course. Then they were outraged that their free speech had been censored. So they came to Saidit and immediately began censoring anyone who disagreed with them. They think this is OK. Free speech for me but not for thee.

[–]raven9 9 insightful - 4 fun9 insightful - 3 fun10 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

Saidit uses the old reddit platform software so turning the downvote button into a fun vote was probably a bit of a hack. I didnt really like it either at first but once I started posting here I found that without the downvote abuse of platforms like reddit, the vote system is really a lot less important and it does not really matter.

[–]Vulptex 7 insightful - 5 fun7 insightful - 4 fun8 insightful - 5 fun -  (0 children)

Maybe they could change the hyphens to bullet points.

[–]filbs111 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

I like them. It's one of the notable differences between Reddit and Saidit, and creates a sense of niceness.

[–]Ehhhhhh 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Perhaps, you should give it a try and experience it a bit more before criticizing.

[–]Entropick 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

Oh shit, I've been using it as actual 'fun'.

[–]Chipit 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (0 children)

It is.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 5 fun -  (2 children)

Yea. Lots of these guys are pretentious cunts. But basically, they can ban you if they think you don’t contribute to the community. This place sucks.

Sometimes I just wanna call a person a cunt.

[–]IkeConn 8 insightful - 6 fun8 insightful - 5 fun9 insightful - 6 fun -  (1 child)

Please dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT to leave a comment.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

O Heyyyyy, fuck you.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IPnTCBnn-lQ#dialog

[–]send_nasty_stuff 4 insightful - 4 fun4 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 4 fun -  (2 children)

I'm kinda against the fun vote as well. It's often used to downvote people anyway; i.e. a way to 'laugh' at people for off topic or ridiculous comments.

Saidit needs a return of the downvote but let's innovate and create one that doesn't go into the negatives. Downvotes are only bad when people use them to totally crush comments and keep them from rising. Your downvote shouldn't count if someone is already at zero. That would allow for possible redemption of comments that people have the initial impulse to downvote.

Another interesting possibility is a 'bounce' downvote? I.e. it takes 2 downvotes to get to -1, 4 downvotes to get to -2, and 8 downvotes to get to -3 but only one upvote to go from -3 to -2?

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

If downvotes ever made a comeback here, I agree with the zero minimum. 0 is enough to show someone they fucked up in the wrong part of town without completely hurting feefees.

[–]raven9 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Saidit needs a return of the downvote

No it does not. The downvote system is a toxic low effort, zero intelligence way of suppressing other peoples point of view.

[–]Alan_Crowe 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The front page has tabs for hot, new, insightful, fun, top,...

Go try them; they don't do what I want. I want

hot - recent ranked on a weighted sum of insightful and fun

insightful - recent ranked on insightful

fun - recent ranked on fun

That way, I can choose according to my mood, serious or frivolous. But insightful and fun are long term, showing me posts from a year ago :-(

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Fun is fun, it gives the author fun points. Some people might try to use it in a passive-aggressive stance, but in doing so, they give credibility to the poster, even just as a FUN poster.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, I wasn't super happy with Saidit being different at first either. It's an adjustment.

It has its pros and cons.

[–]rubberbiscuit 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't know about others, but if something is funny, I click the laughing emoji. If it is useful info, I click the lightbulb. Sometimes they are both, and I click both.

[–]package 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The idea is that it provides context to potentially allow for better sorting/categorization/filtering of posts and comments, but because of position and lack of explanation in the UI it's mostly only used by people thinking that it's a downvote. IMO there needs to be at least three vote categories that are visually distinct and distant from a downvote button on other sites to avoid this, but since the site primarily just reddit's code base with visual changes I don't see that being implemented any time soon.