I was looking in the Your Announcements forum and I saw that you can't give +1's or -1's.

I noticed you often find people saying "I just released this game, please play it and tell me what you think of it" in the Announcements. Wouldn't it be a good thing if the poster could give +1's to people who take the time to play their game and give their opinion about the game? People could also +1 the poster when they think the game (or whatever they're announcing) is worthwhile.

I don't really see any other forum where people can ask for opinions on their game in its entirety. It wouldn't really make sense to post in the Game Design forum if you're asking for opinions on a game, including its art, music, and everything else, would it?

If people could give +1's in the Your Announcements forum, maybe it would encourage more reviews?

If there was a way to give reviews and rate games or apps in Your Announcements, that would be pretty cool. Though I'm not sure how that would work or even if it could be integrated into the site smoothly.

A lot of the time I want to reply with something as simple as "Nice!" or "Good work!", but I hate two-word posts... so instead I go to just give them an upvote... but I can't, so I end up closing the tab

Could there be a way to indicate when people want detailed feedback? Like when certain tags are highlighted? Something like "critique requested" might encourage people to give detailed feedback. I know deviantart has a similar feature.

How about if we allowed up but not down votes in that particular forum? (Note: Just an idea, I'm not actually sure how easily we could actually do that right now.)

I definitely think it was the right move to disallow voting in The Lounge and CSI, but I can see a valid case for allowing it in Your Announcements. If we did allow it, should we allow down-votes there as well, or just keep it nice and positive?

I've seen some announcements receive outright rude "feedback" before, which I definitely would've downvoted if possible...

Ok, lets here some more opinions then -- do a lot of people feel that voting should be allowed in the YA forum, and if so would you like to see down-voting as well as up-voting, or should we limit it to positive feedback only?

I think down-voting is a good thing, but there seems to be an air of negativity around using it.

The purpose of down-voting is to say "this post doesn't offer good advice" and things to that effect, right? So why do people lose reputation when they down-vote - isn't it still a contribution, even if you're causing the poster to lose reputation?

I think it's a good system that the more experienced members can use to kind of "correct" other members when they say something that isn't helpful or true. However, it seems to be viewed as a way to call out people who are just being rude or flaming others, which is probably better solved by reporting the post and letting the moderators deal with it instead.

I've noticed a lot more down-votes on negative attitude than I have on anything else, and I think down-voting would be better used as a 'red flag' saying "be wary of this advice". Now, it seems to be used more to get rid of someone's reputation because they're always acting rude and you want it to show on their rep. Maybe it'd be more beneficial to the community to just make down-votes be a way of "discrediting" a specific post, not the poster him/herself - in other words, make down-votes not affect the reputation of the voter or the voted at all anymore. Does that make sense?

I do see the down-votes being used incorrectly in the YA forums, though. People shouldn't down-vote an announcement because they think "this game sucks", because that's not helpful at all; but I think it could still be helpful to say "this advice sucks". Hell, maybe it'd be best to remove down-votes altogether and just force people to voice exactly why they think a post sucks in the first place...

I think down-voting is a good thing, but there seems to be an air of negativity around using it.

The purpose of down-voting is to say "this post doesn't offer good advice" and things to that effect, right? So why do people lose reputation when they down-vote - isn't it still a contribution, even if you're causing the poster to lose reputation?

If it didn't affect the user whom is down-voting, then it would be abused to easily to attack people whom they may not like, at least by attaching something to your own profile, then it causes people to really think about when to hand out a down-vote, and at worst, the +1 for daily logins easily balance's out any general down-votes that get handed out.

I think it's a good system that the more experienced members can use to kind of "correct" other members when they say something that isn't helpful or true. However, it seems to be viewed as a way to call out people who are just being rude or flaming others, which is probably better solved by reporting the post and letting the moderators deal with it instead.


I've noticed a lot more down-votes on negative attitude than I have on anything else, and I think down-voting would be better used as a 'red flag' saying "be wary of this advice". Now, it seems to be used more to get rid of someone's reputation because they're always acting rude and you want it to show on their rep. Maybe it'd be more beneficial to the community to just make down-votes be a way of "discrediting" a specific post, not the poster him/herself - in other words, make down-votes not affect the reputation of the voter or the voted at all anymore. Does that make sense?

shouldn't the user be held accountable for the bad behavior?, if you strip out down-votes from having any real affect on the user, then they have absolutely no reason to quit acting the way they do(not everyone of course cares about this, but it is something that alerts other users to that person's tendancy's.).

I do agree that posts with excess down-votes should be marked and/or hidden, as clearly it's not helpful.

I do see the down-votes being used incorrectly in the YA forums, though. People shouldn't down-vote an announcement because they think "this game sucks", because that's not helpful at all; but I think it could still be helpful to say "this advice sucks". Hell, maybe it'd be best to remove down-votes altogether and just force people to voice exactly why they think a post sucks in the first place...

I agree that down-votes shoudn't be included in the YA forums, but defiantly up-voting would be a plus, if a user has a problem with a particular game, they should be forced to tell the OP about the problem, rather than able to hit an anonymous button, and the OP has no real feedback about why they are getting down-voted.
and up-voting is nice because it's a way of showing positive support, even if you don't have many words to say to the person.


as it feels right now, YA feels like a dead place, so many posts, but rarely does any post get a response, or more than 1/2 that arn't from the same user posting updates/asking for feedback.

I think with +1's it'd at least give the OP a sense that people are listening, even if they are not saying anything.

If it didn't affect the user whom is down-voting, then it would be abused to easily to attack people whom they may not like, at least by attaching something to your own profile, then it causes people to really think about when to hand out a down-vote, and at worst, the +1 for daily logins easily balance's out any general down-votes that get handed out.

That makes sense...I figured this was why down-votes gave negative reputation. I suppose it doesn't really matter that much, though, since as you said, the log-in +1 reputation will probably more than make up for it, since a lot of people don't have to use down-votes all that often.

shouldn't the user be held accountable for the bad behavior?, if you strip out down-votes from having any real affect on the user, then they have absolutely no reason to quit acting the way they do(not everyone of course cares about this, but it is something that alerts other users to that person's tendancy's.).

I do agree that posts with excess down-votes should be marked and/or hidden, as clearly it's not helpful.

What I was thinking was more along the lines of having people just report posts that can be considered "bad behavior", e.g. flaming others or being rude in some way. Then the moderators could act accordingly by deleting the post and possibly lowering the poster's reputation (based on how severe the offense is).

That way, down-votes could be used on posts that are actually trying to give good advice, but are misleading. I don't think giving bad advice is a horrible thing to do, because in most situations the poster simply doesn't know that what they're saying is wrong. In most situations, someone will come along and offer good advice, correcting the bad advice in the process. It doesn't seem like making the mistake of offering improper advice every now and then is something that should warrant a loss of reputation unless you do it all of the time and refuse to listen to people who are correcting you, because that would be a big problem with your character, not your knowledge.

That's just my take on the situation, though I'm not a long-time member of GameDev or anything, so maybe I'm offering bad advice myself

if a user has a problem with a particular game, they should be forced to tell the OP about the problem, rather than able to hit an anonymous button, and the OP has no real feedback about why they are getting down-voted.
and up-voting is nice because it's a way of showing positive support, even if you don't have many words to say to the person.


as it feels right now, YA feels like a dead place, so many posts, but rarely does any post get a response, or more than 1/2 that arn't from the same user posting updates/asking for feedback.

I think with +1's it'd at least give the OP a sense that people are listening, even if they are not saying anything.

I agree.
It seems like the YA forum should be a bigger part of the community than it is now. It's a good way to share the progress people are making and get feedback and encouragement, but people aren't really doing a whole lot of that now.