I feel like flagging a post as Off-Topic or Inappropriate is a very aggressive move and I feel guilty doing it. But there are many posts that I see comments on that do not contribute to the discussion, especially on the Developers page. It’s quite annoying asking a technical question and getting responses from people who are clearly non-technical who say something that’s not really on-topic or contributes to the thread…
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i think it’s a very good idea. i don’t have a technical background so i would never answer a question on the developers page. so your idea would be, if a comment has more downvotes than upvotes it will be hidden? or even more strictly deleted?
I don’t know if even has to be anything like that, flagging could be reserved for stuff you think is removed.
Just to show how on-topic or useful a comment is, nothing more or less.
Like, if I see a comment with +50, -5, it’s probably to be trusted, but something with -10, +5 is probably thought to be a bad opinion or useless comment?
I saw some people comment on some development threads stuff like (paraphrasing)
“Well I don’t know how to answer that question, but here’s an off topic anecdote”
IMO those kinds comments should be for chat/discussion, development should be a high quality resource for developers looking for help and answers.
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There is a clear distinction between that you personally don’t like something (dislike) or that it should be removed because it is against the written rules. (flag)
Therefore I agree that a downvote should exist. It basically gives you an easy way to express your feeling towards that post, just like a “like” does now.
However, I don’t think that is possible right now according to discourse’s co-founder:
But as far as project goals and philosophy, we at Discourse are ideologically opposed to downvoting / dislikes – and I don’t see that ever changing. If downvoting is a hard requirement, you should look for different free / open source software that meets your specific requirement. (source)
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Yes and also a LOL icon or heart one as sometimes I want to reply with lol, but not message or fire or hearts ect would be cool
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I am still quite new to this forum but I can see that the idea of an upvote and down vote button could be very helpful and I would agree with @kevinforrestconnors that it shouldn’t delete the comment but rather reflect the sentiment of the members of the discussion towards that comment…than you could also add filters to sort comments and reply
@Ratty uhh these instant emoji replies would be great!
My self 4 years ago would have looked at me very weirdly for using the word emoji and being excited about it XD
Thanks for the feedback, but as @TamasH said, Discourse doesn’t support something like this and I doubt it ever will, since it will just render it a Reddit clone. Don’t feel bad about flagging a post! It’s not like us staff automatically deletes every post that gets flagged. We will handle it, we can also edit posts if needed.
So answering your question in the OP, if someone posts an unrelated answer or something that doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion, flag it as offtopic, because that’s what it is. If needed, a new discussion will be created.
Thanks!
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