Feature Request: Thumbs Down or Anti-Kudos Button

[Nancy OShea]

In the interest of fairness, I'd like to see a thumbs down button added to the platform.  It doesn't make much sense to have one and not the other.

[Amebr]

Imma love that email. "Congratulations! Someone dekudoed you!"

[Just Shoot Me]

Although you may find both an Up and Down thumbs button on other web sites, social media site and the like, I seriously doubt the need for one here. All that shows in Negativity towards someone and whatever they posted. In that case, if really a negative post, report that post and the username as abuse. Otherwise give it no mention, no thought, and No Thumbs up and then move along.

[Peru Bob]

Instead of thumbs down, you should just post a civil reply explaining your disagreement.

I can see the thumbs down thing being an issue in many ways.

[Nancy OShea]

Let's be clear, I am not influenced by social media.  I couldn't care less about it.

• Was this helpful YES or NO? 
• Was this answer + or -?  
• Star rating systems.

You see these all the time in technical forums.  They are not negative. 

A bad reply gets posted but nobody pays attention to it.  Then along comes the LIKES brigade to show support for their pal.  So now we've got a bad reply with lots of un-deserved LIKES and no way to dismiss them.  That's not right.  We need a way to balance  LIKES with equal and opposite ANTI-LIKES.  That's all I'm saying.

[Just Shoot Me]

But you said Thumbs Down. Not a Rating system. Actually it is nearly impossible to get an OP to mark a reply as the correct answer, whether it is or not. The Thumbs up is there to give recognition to replies that people like, not just the OP.

Please give links to these Bad replies that have lots of un-deseved LIKES.

Likes mean Nothing. There is no reward for the Most Likes. There is no reward from the forum or Adobe for Likes. And there was no reward for the point system of the old JIVE forum.

I'm not sure I understand your frustration with the Likes (Thumbs Up) system. There was Likes, actually a Helpful button, on the old forum also and that gave the person that got the helpful nod one point, IIRC. But no matter how many point you got you got nothing for them. No monetary reward.

[Nancy OShea]

"Please give links to these Bad replies that have lots of un-deseved LIKES."

It's bad enough when a few people abuse the LIKE button but now bots are exploiting it too.  Do we really need this LIKE/KUDOS thing and if so why?

https://community.adobe.com/t5/adobe-community-professionals/kudos/m-p/11218648?page=2#M27269

[Peru Bob]

If a reply is wrong, and you think it's wrong, you should post a reply saying why, not just vote it down.

I've, unfortunately, posted several incorrect replies in my time on the forums and have usually been politely corrected. It's embarrassing but preferred, in my opinion, to a thumbs down.

[Nancy OShea]

I said a bad reply, Bob.  Not necessarily a wrong answer.  There's a world of difference.

Let's just say the remark could be hyper critical of Adobe or the product or just plain inane.  But it doesn't violate any forum guidelines.   What we're discussing here is the LIKE brigade and how to mitigate that once it starts.   There's a lot of abuse potential when you have a LIKE button with no way to balance it.   And before you suggest locking the thread, let me remind you that the LIKE button works on all discussions, locked and unlocked.

[Peru Bob]

I have no intention of locking the thread, Nancy. Or were you being light hearted?

We clearly have a difference of opinion.  Your opinion is just as valuable as mine, whether or not I agree with you.

We will have to agree to disagree.

[Nancy OShea]

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.  The LIKE button works on all threads, locked as well as unlocked.  So locking a thread (any thread) does not stop it.

[Jacob Bugge]

I quite understand your suggestion, Nancy.

I believe I care as little as you about social media; actually, these forums are the closest I have ever been to them.

My formative Adobe forum years lay before Jive came along in 2009; I can see that I have have made 2 keyboard mishits since then, resulting in as many Likes, getting the punishment of a First Like Given badge.

Another (im)possibility could be the suggestion of abolishing the Like option.

[Nancy OShea]

I am perfectly fine with abolishing the LIKE button.  I don't know what prompted its use in a technical forum  in the first place. This isn't a popularity contest.  It's a vehicle for disseminating accurate information to product users.  I don't expect to get LIKED for telling people they can't use CS3 anymore. 

[Just Shoot Me]

But this is not a Technical Forum. It is a Social Community to try to help other users and find what it Trending on the individual community spaces.

The above is a total Pun.

Likes don't bother me. I personally don't see why it bothers you so much.

If you don't want to get notified of likes given to you I think you can turn that off.

[Nancy OShea]

Call it whatever you like but 98% of forum questions are from people seeking help with software, installation or reaching Adobe support.  From where I sit, that's not social, that's technical.

[Just Shoot Me]

Nancy I know that. I was making a joke. When this forum system started one of the Adobe Employees said the Relevance Sort order, which was the Default and always changed back to Relevance no matter what a user changed it to,  "was better to see what is TRENDING on the Community". Or something like that. I do know, Remember, the word Trending was used.

[jane-e]

Hi

I just followed a link from "Related Conversations", so I'm coming in a few months late to this thread. My vote is against a "thumbs down" button, as I see its greatest use might be in posts like the one below from AI76484. He would have given a thumbs down to Derek, and maybe the person who clicked "Like" would have as well. Yet as we can see in the very next post, Derek was spot-on in his reply and Apple replaced the computer.

~ Jane

[Nancy OShea]

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.  Everything is abused from time-to-time, Jane.  There's no way to stop it entirely.  But we can balance it a little with the right tools.  Presently, we don't have the right tools.

Technical forums like StackOverflow allow users to up-vote and down-vote respectively.  This gives everyone a very good indication of which answers have the most merit and which ones fall short.  IMO, that's the model these forums should follow.  And I've been saying so for years.