We have recently seen a lot of down-votings in some threads. We also saw different kinds of reactions on this phenomenon. I would like to ask a question about these reactions.
First I assume that there are several possible reasons for downvotings: dissent – misunderstandings – misuse of buttons without knowing it– a social scientist who writes a paper about the reactions – a test carried out by RG – some technical problem, etc.
I would like to have a discussion about the reactions on the part of researchers. We have seen calls to ban down-voters or to cancel their anonymity. Elections in democracies are anonymous and there are good reasons for this. I think most of us agree about some basic traits of democracy, the right to stay anonymous is among them. What about these basics in social media?
I don't know why so many downvotes without reasonable explanation? and How I can find a researcher that downvote my answer and question?
Please see this question and answer:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_I_can_find_a_researcher_that_downvote_my_answer_and_question
@Martin, I can only share briefly. When you see a thread with downvotes on several posts, would you place a comment at all? My time on RG is limited, so I prefer to put sensible comments where they are welcomed. My friends communicate with me, and we avoid downvoters and their questions, and if necessary, stop following them. Thanks for your question. I hope it stays visible.
This is a very interesting question, thanks for sharing! In fact, we still don't know much about phenomena like downvoting and unfriending on the Internet. Existing research by Sibona & Walczak (http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/hicss/2011/4282/00/07-05-17.pdf), however, suggests that people unfriend because of several reasons, the most important ones being: unimportant posts, polarizing posts, inappropriate posts and everyday life posts. I'm not sure whether the same applies for ResearchGate. ResearchGate would be a very interesting case to conduct a content analysis on downvoting because it's one of few platforms where such an option exists.
Dear Martin,
I experienced an incident two or three weeks ago. Some "scientists" wanted to punish me by downvoting with the weapon of our democracy. Here you are the story from which I prepared a thread (which was deleted later by an RG editor) :
"Are hackers (down voters) in RG authorised?
I have thought that RG is a scientific forum where honest and decent scientists change ideas, information and discuss scientific as well as important public questions.
Yesterday, an anonymous down-voter – whose motivation I cannot know - decided to start a punishing expedition against me. He visited my profile and systematically started to down vote each of my comments in four of my questions. He down voted even when I thanked the contribution of participants. This shows clearly he/she was motivated exclusively “scientifically”.
According to the rules of RG these fair people can attack everybody using their anonymity and destroy the operation of RG which is based on openness and confidence.
I have asked the editors of RG https://feedback.researchgate.net/responses/how-do-you-like-your-profiles-overview-tab but they have not answered yet.
What to do? Do simple RG participants right and opportunity for defence?
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_hackers_in_RG_authorised#share "
This a most sensible question for researchers who - en passant - happen to have, all of us, big egos.
Let me please shift to a particular point, which is the immediate or automatic matching between democracy and science (or research).
It is true that democracy entails anonymity in voting - however, not absolutely, only to a large extent. The discussion could go, on the one hand, about the history of fascism and nazism in the 1930-1945 that shows the "importance" of anonymous collaboration with the regime. I could go dig into this, but the space here is limited.
I have the impression that science is about open dialogue and critique, open discussion and debate. I love the American tradition of "authors meet critiques". It's, it seems to me, a sound tradition. Authorship is a matter of standing out and expressing one' s opinions openly, frankly.
If so, then my personal worry about down-voting consists in its anonymous character. I have nothing against down-voting under the proviso that arguments are provided.
Just to stimulate discussion:
-Democratic rules should apply for everyone, which implies that both down-voting and up-voting should either be anonymous or revealed.
- It is obvious that people, like scientists or journalists or professors, often do not agree. This is an important aspect of the mechanisms involved in the evolution of scientific or public or education knowledge.
- There will never be discussion (and no RG) when people always agree. For instance, the first that replies to an RG question is always right and the followers then always claim she/he is right.
- Public down-voting occurs permanently in exposed political discussions, like television debates between people from different parties aimed to get elected.
- Down-voting is only truly destructive in the absence of constructive arguments why people do not agree.
Downvoting, especially anonymous is very bad for social network like ResearchGate ! As mentioned before, there are many downvotes for the reason of "punishment", as @András mentioned.@Miranda is aware of some examples of continuous downvoting of some posts, as I am! @Carlos, yes, if down-voted then explanation with good arguments should be provided. It is possible to realize/change this approach by slightly modification in RG software. When you want to downvote something, fill the explanation window before and than downvoting is possible! The main issue here is anonymity of downvoter!
@Marcel, strange, I have posted comment before You, but Your answer appeared first. So, it was the reason I have not commented it. I do agree so much with your words "Down-voting is only truly destructive in the absence of constructive arguments why people do not agree."
May be presumptive of me to say so, but I think most including me up vote to denote agreement and avoid repeating the same or similar points of view.
Down voting however can be really more destructive specially if anonymous. No one can question the existence of professional rivalry and as long as it exists anonymous down votes can be majorly misused.
What can prevent it. is not as easily answered.
May be a system where a vote gives the voter the option to provide reasons for the vote with their identity being displayed.
The value of the vote can then be judged by readers either by the reason or lack of it.
Is down voting really such a disaster? Why shouldn't we say that a ratio of e.g. 300 up-votes to 20 down-votes indicates an interesting discussion?
When we discuss our new ideas we want to hear what peers and friends have to say about it, involving new ideas and new contexts. Maybe we abandon the idea afterwards or we find out that it was not so very new after all.
But what about saving time? What about another form of questions in a forum? We sometimes wish to see if a majority is tending to decline a point of view, or not. We do not always want to read 20 answers involving new contexts with new implications.
I can imagine a situation where we distinguish types of discussions (and types of proposals!) within the dimension
“controversial” (50 ups /50 downs) - “interesting” (80/20) – “boring” (100/0).
This topic may persuade the dear down-voters to change their behavior!
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_main_criterion_for_upvoting_an_answer
RG useful tips
https://help.researchgate.net/Topics_Guidelines
Downvote questions and flag comments that you believe to be inappropriate or irrelevant - you’ll be helping us keep topics useful and constructive.
Vote up and ‘Like’ high quality questions and replies, this will help to make sure the best content is visible and always seen first.
Anonymous down voting should be eliminated. we have seen in some threads systematic down voting of all responses. You can disagree with a view point in which you should have the courage to say that instead of down voting without any explanation. If the anonymity is eliminated then the problem would be solved.
Dear Martin,
Among people of reasoning down vote is not a disaster. However, RG is open for anonymous down-voting because half a dozen of electronic running amoks are able to paralyse the operating of the system.
I think one can discuss but with arguments and not with down votes.
I would like to stress that not the scores matter only the ideas and the argumentation. Down voters do not discuss, they only press buttons.
@ Nageswara
I completely agree with your view on systematic down votes.
Elimination of anonymity is a good idea. Alternatively, percentage of up votes can be shown for every member on the stats page.
There's a new 'feature' relating your questions. Small icons are shown in the list of your questions that say: 'The question has been demoted/approved/featured'. By whom? I cannot see any relationship to the above mentioned up and down votes (for example, one of my questions with 37 upvotes and no downvote has been demoted).
Is it RG testing a new feature here?
I share András view. instead of downvoting, issues should be discussed.
When I disagree with a post I do put the thought in writing so that if it is a misunderstanding it comes clear that it is and if there are differing views then it is clear that they are. Down voting by itself is not useful and doing it in an anonymous fashion serves no purpose and muddles what is the spirit of scientific research through collaboration and openness.
Just a thought
I am totally against downvoting. Martin, you mentioned that in democracy anonymous vote is the norm, but those vote are upvote. There are no downvoting in democracy. The main reason why I am against downvoting is that it is against the spirit of dialogue. In a few occasion when I was downvoted, some participants felt compelled to specify that it was not them that down voted me. The fact that it is anonymous, everybody become a suspect. What a pity.
In my opinion, down-voting is actually antidemocratic as it erases an existing valid vote instead of adding an opposing and equally valid vote. In a democracy, valid votes for which ever sides are counted not cancelled against each other. Thus, we should see how many people agree and how many disagree. 25 up-votes and 25 down-votes indicate a controversy and a lively discussion, as indicated by Martin, whereas 0 votes either way gives a different message.
I also noticed just now this demoting but there is no mention of it anywhere to my knowledge. I think it is important that whatever are the rules for operation should be clarified. This anonymous business of categorizing without reason is not healthy for scholarly activities. RG should at least be open when they are introducing a new feature. It should not be retroactively applied without any justification.
Louis,
We lately had a referendum in Berlin about the development of buildings around the field of the former airport Tempelhof. The majority was against more buildings. Those who were in favor of more new buildings because of the extremely raising rental rates stayed at home, trying to foreclose the whole referendum by that. But, of course, there was also the option to vote per. Everything was anonymous.
Downvoting with no explanation makes no sense. It is tantamount to punishment without knowledge of the crime committed. It also offers no suggestions for "improvement" if such indeed is even merited.
I concur with Dr Posinasetti. This aspect of "demoting" just "comes out of the blue."
I agree with Nelson. Nelson, very well articulated. It is not about votes; which is a drop in the bucket either way. Certain answers may be vitiating the spirit of spontaneous response. If the negativity or the clarity or some other issue with the answer given were the case, there are more civilized ways of deliberation. It looks as if I cannot leave this answer without making a jocular remark. Is a 5-4 decision at the US Supreme Court laudable? In this case, yes, as it may mean the difference between life and decimation. Down voting, however, is demoralizing. When I first started posting my answers in RG, recently that was, I was curious about this down voting, I was naive. Moreover, the voting button maneuver is so deft and classic, which provides with an opportunity for down voting, unbeknownst to you! In a professional and dignified exercise, down voting can be demoralizing. The provision to change the vote is something like a water droplet in a desert!
I am strongly agreed with the following answers.
Prof. Ljubomir Jacić-When you want to downvote something, fill the explanation window before and than downvoting is possible! & "Down-voting is only truly destructive in the absence of constructive arguments why people do not agree."
Prof. Nelson Orringer -Downvoting with no explanation makes no sense.
Prof. Louis Brassard-In a few occasion when I was downvoted, some participants felt compelled to specify that it was not them that down voted me. The fact that it is anonymous, everybody become a suspect. What a pity.
Prof. Asmat Ali- The down voter is a pseudo intellectual, jealous or/and neglected person in the society.
On few instances my response, was down voted and i did not like it.
As a researcher we should understand ourselves as "only a contributor" to qanda session and not a "evaluator". Frankly none has the RIGHT to Down vote, because they didn't like a particular response.
It shall stop the person to contribute and continue in the discussion. We need to "oil' the thinking process and get all possible brains to feed their responses, which is "per se" the intend of the session.
Dear Martin,
Yesterday I noticed that a lot of questions I posted received downvoting identity symbol. Initially it was a dilemma for me, but after a while I realized that there is a key - a qualitative assessment tool, probably used by RG staff. Key - a tool analyzes the key "words" of our professional interests our topics and all answers. Questions that were referenced to the core of my area of academic interest, remained. Open questions related to the context I mean culture, methodology received downvoting. Unfortunately, I believe that the evaluation tools used by RG staff are imperfect, leading to errors in the results and discourageing us to answer "demoted" labelled question. What are the consequences for Scholars?
Firstly, we were through our down-voting and up-voting symbols stigmatized and the reactions to the experiments are different, some may be outraged and feel a decrease self-esteem. Secondly RG staff inclined us to walk almost like experimental rats to choose only beaten track, which I strongly psychologically restrictive and is destroying the potential of creative spontaneity. Thirdly, the dilemma RG staf could be related to persuade us to the expert questions and only merit answers. I think a lot of open, contextual questions gave me in answers more creative thoughts and scientific inspiration, than any other, very specialized. RG staff should note that we, scholars are not robots nor rats but creative people and after this, should withdraw from the labeling our questions.
Krishnan, I can see the impact associated. One need not, however, take to heart, this cynical maneuver - down voting; that relegates the person.
Dear Martin,
I have noticed this down voting of few of my questions only today but as far I remember it was not there even 2-3 days ago.
I must hasten to add here, however, that I was down voted 4 or 5 times successively in a thread the same day, about which I noticed only two days later., should this be of any consolation. I shrugged off!
I am venturing into a wild speculation here, which may not be untenable. Is down voting an answer is a reaction to the exoticism perceived in the name of the person from whom the answer emanated?
Down voting may also arise, I posit, owing to "blink" factor (after Malcolm Gladwell).
Dear friends,
Many of you know that I’m not 100% against downvoting. But how about this: Imagine a conference where the participants have to wear buttons
“23 people are against me”
Absurd, isn’t it?
Dear Martin,
Restrictions are killing creative thoughts even these example with buttons or labelling our questions by "demote" identites. Btw. as a woman I do not need wear buttons. Persuading us to behave on RG like during official meetings or like on distanced public speeches while conferences is in my opinion poor idea. RG would become a dead place.
Dear RG & Fellow Members
I would like bring your attention to a very serious issue of unjustified down-voting/demotion of Q&A anonymously. Time and again, I observed that several questions and answers posted by learned RG members despite their worth are being down-voted/demoted unscrupulously. Recently one of my questions "How do we meet food and energy requirements of our future generations?" which has received 581 views, 17 up-voting and 42 answers from RG members within a period of only 5 days is marked by someone as 'demoted'. Some question followers have also expressed concern over it. This is quite discouraging and will be detrimental for the repute of RG. Hence, RG should look into it very seriously and take appropriate measures to curb such kind of unscrupulous act.
Y.C. Tripathi
Has anyone got ideas for additional tags ("Topics") that I could add to my question in order to find more people to join our discussion?
I do not feel that down voting is bad but the person involved in such action should have the courage and decency disclose his identity, so that a healthy discussion may start related to his disagreement and disliking. Anonymous action should always be condemned.
Recently I find some of my questions have been demoted though the subject matter related to those questions are serous research topics and one can get number of research publications by reputed persons in reputed journals. I don't know who is doing this and why this is happening.
I am sure that there is abuse of downvoting by some persons because of a story, which happened with me sometime ago, which proved beyond doubt that there is abuse.
RG & we can certainly overcome this problem.
As for RG, anyone who downvotes an answer ought to be asked to contribute an alternative "correct" convincing answer within 2 to 3 days in the same thread otherwise the downvote is omitted. This suggestion is valid scientifically & the downvoter remains anonymous. The majority of us, here, seeks the truth & wants to learn more.
As for us, I have this idea which I did yesterday. If my answer is downvoted in an unfair way, then I shall delete my contribution at once. If I see my dear colleagues downvoted in an unjust way, I shall give them an upvote to compensate so as to keep a balance.
What really annoys me is when a young scientist asks for help to a research & an experienced gives the help but it is downvoted. The young will become confused & may go into the wrong pathway.
Dr. Nizar Matar,
I agree with your point of wiev. I noticed too that some contributions where downvoted. The good news is that the same question has positive reaction,too. I think there is a balance between all this reactions.
If one answer is downvoted you dont need to remove it at once. People on RG are free to express their opinion and it is quite normal to have diferent opinions. Let's see the democratic side of this matter.
Dear Friends,
Please invite more fellows to take part in our discussion
I exhausted my possible messages for today. Thanks!
Dr. Liliana, I revere your point of view. I specified that I omit when the downvote comes in an unfair way. I really like the downvoter to be brave enough to offer the "correct", but I do not like it when downvoting is done for "personal" reasons such as when someone follows you & you do not follow back, then a "revenge" comes by downvoting for no scientific reason.
An opinion is simply the thought of a person. You can agree or not, but that's the beauty of freedom of thought. Freedom of thought should not be punished in a friendly conversation which I think is the one that takes place on RG. I believe that the ultimate goal is to open up to other people's thoughts or even contradict it, never punish. The dictatorship of thought does not exist, if a few posts do not like you just do not vote for them. I have never downvoted an answer on RG, at most I ignored.
I am not so adapt at the social media thing, but RG has helped me improve this. In such forums, I tend to regard personal or unrelated comments as inappropriate. My gut reaction when they appear is to say why this is so, but everyone is different so I tend not to say anything. For relevant opinion (however different to my own), I would never dream of a downvote. They are permanent, visible to all & cast a stain on the contributor. I do not consider myself to have the right to openly judge others in this manner. If I disagree with them, I have to approach it by way of reasoned argument (& know when to simply walk away). If what they say is genuinely offensive in some way (I have not yet seen it), then you can report it directly to RG.
What does get me however, is the Facebook approach to upvoting. An upvote is a mark of agreement from the peer community, not a social 'like'. When people provide reasoned answers to questions, with links etc (they have evidently taken time to reply), by all means upvote. But when someone wishes their colleagues happy holidays, types 'I agree' etc, then why do these deserve the same amount of recognition?
I see the most trivial & flawed replies receive upvotes from people who treat the platform like FB. RG is a professional social media platform. We don't collect followers like 'friends', feel compelled to sent trivial messages (lol) etc. I think that if we keep this in mind, the platform will stay functional & stand outside scrutiny. There is a range of discussions about the RG score & people are increasingly using this as a marker of their professional engagement. I do not think those who would be more suited to FB should be able to influence this with their 'dislike' button. If you have something to say, then say it clearly, respectfully & in a reasoned manner. If you can't do this .... then say nothing.
If we have to have a downvote system, then there should be a button 'Mark as Inappropriate' - you are then asked to explain your judgement & RG adjust scores, notify the member etc. There should be no publicly visible 'downvote'.
I'm participating in the thread opened by prof. Asmat Ali, asking for clarification about "demoting" questions.
Honestly, I'm quit sick of the continuous rating people, thoughts, now also entire threads.
I do not believe that quality, knowledge and sociability should depend on shallows like/unlike clicks, least of all the anonymous ones [that remind me the sense of the herd "stoning" women and sentenced], and those without a clear explanation of the mechanism.
Many years ago when I began to participate in virtual communities, I didn't agree with the voting methods, such as stars, dots, etx.
Now, the mechanism of up/down-voting has gone much more backward, getting the state of "uncivilized", in my opinion determining that:
#1. the value of any contribution is "influenced" by a rating system that has a very low degree of accuracy and validity;
#2. the value of personal identities suffers the same "influence", both passively and actively: contributors started to write-to-obtain-likes, they fear dislikes and inhibit any self-expression of negative opinions;
#3. the logic of "influence" is causing a series of derivatives processes, every time diverging from the original core of the reasons expressed;
#4. the business of "influences" [and approximative pseudo-rankings] is going towards a pure marketing-logic;
# 5. an absurd sense of "fatalism" of the causes and their effects for each event, is macroscopically growing while the criteria of constructivism and rationality are slowly decreasing;
#6. what is actually interpreted as an enthusiastic "positive-thinking" is nothing more than a overbearing stupidity;
#7. a rampant sense of authoritarianism by the massive platforms is emerging: according to the continuos-delivery systems, platforms such as RG [modeled by the "influence" of Google/LinkedIn/FB's archetypes, and all the other massive environments] overnight changes the shared mechanisms, without the right of our critical sense to organize any effective negotiation. Because the law of the market applied to users is not applicable to the ecosystem itself [not in a comparable degree], the massive platforms act as a compact super-organism, defending themselves in a consistent, rapid and efficient way; while we — the mass of users — are naturally slower and disjointed. This is obvious: we "adhere" to a mechanism, we do not write a single line of code or rules;
#8. any autonomous choice not to participate is consistently incorporated into the mechanism of the massive platforms. It has been made consistent with the lowering of the individual social status [for each participant], that entails further negative "influence", and a lowering of his reputation. Therefore, it is extremely difficult for someone to leave, and the choice is "influenced" to adapt passively;
I'm asking RG to progressively eliminate voting systems, and to migrate towards self-resilient evaluation mechanisms.
—g
https://feedback.researchgate.net/responses/question-is-demoted
I fully agree with well thought comments of Prof. Kamal, Nicholas and Giuseppe Laquidara. I am sure; the idea behind down-voting/demoting proviso is to maintain the quality of discussion by way of significant, pertinent and worthy Q&A. In fact, down voting/demoting is not bad if exercised justifiably without anonymity mentioning valid and acceptable logic in favour of disagreements and disliking. When everyone is free to express his/her opinion then there is no point in unjust and intentional (as appears to be) down-voting. I strongly endorse the suggestions by Nicholas and Giuseppe Laquidara for tackling this issue.
Dear Martin,
Dear All,
Down voting without explication are good for nothing (ein Schlag ins Wasser). One cannot guess from the fact of a “pure” down vote what was wrong in his/her comment . Many of us can suspect but jealousy, laziness and a symptom of helplessness in this behaviour. Certainly, there are explicitly evil intentions behind some down votes when even a thank you is down-voted.
Dear All,
I need desperately two things from the comments already sent: the opinion of down voters: what is the cause of such behaviour without explications and the desire to learn the arguments of a given commenter?
How can participants of a thread protect the ambience and normal mood of a discussion?
I think there is no need for a downvote button at all.
If someone disagrees with something, let that person give his/her opinion in the answer box and we can have a mature discussion about it. We are not always right about everything and discussing it can clear up misconceptions, cultural and language barriers etc.
On these forums, it is easy to forget that there is an real person behind every question and opinion offered here - real people with ambitions, hopes, questions, opinions and needs just like oneself. This can be set right by removing the downvote button, so...
Down with the downvote button !!! :-)
Does any one know what does it mean of a newly introduced "A Heart Symbol against your question?
Dear Friends,
Please invite more fellows to take part in our discussion
I have reached the end of my possible messages for today. Thanks!
Dear All,
What a surprise, RG staff deleted labels from questions.
Dear Giuseppe,
I agree wholly with your argumentation and your 7 points!
Please, do not forget: we are subjects of psychical manipulations which have got their economic and disinformation backgrounds.
Dear Beata,
Yes, you are right: symbols have disappeared. What does it mean? RG operation can be managed and controlled efficiently and quickly!
RG is also labeling many questions as "Demoted" .When asked, I got following reply from RG. I am sharing it so that others can take care while posting questions.
Dear Asmat,
Some of your recent questions on ResearchGate were brought to our attention by other researchers. We kindly ask that in future, when using the Q&A forum, you ensure all questions you ask are of a scientific or research-related nature, and are as specific as possible.
To ensure that your questions remain visible, please avoid asking questions of a vague character, such as:
"How big is really, Big Data?"
For further information, please refer to ResearchGate's Q&A guidelines: https://www.researchgate.net/topics.TopicGuidelines.html
Dear Andras,
Once I lost hope, that RG staff is listening to our requests (after situation with Lijo, Patrick and others), but they however are constantly monitoring our answers. The other cause of their reaction is possibility associated with testing new qualitative software of social media discourse analysis. (?). Anyway, Martin had good idea with this question, giving RG staff feedback and collecting our responses to a new "event".
Dear All,
Some (logical) questions on the classifying symbols of threads: Who decided, why decided and what were the assessing criteria in this authoritarian decision?
I think not only downvotes but also upvotes should be eliminated. This is supposed to be a discussion forum, not a supermarket.
Dear All,
Answering the RG editors’ explication showed by Asmat: Remaining correct, unfortunately there are many threads without scientific merit and the standard of a lot of sympathy comments attained often hardly those of a Face book chat.
Impact of discussion is now noticeable. Thanks to Martin who raised a good point that provided ample and convincing feedback to RG staffs. At various scientific fora, when some good thought/idea/comment/question comes from anybody we normally commend by expressing appreciating remarks. Nothing is wrong with voting (up or down) system but it should be exercised with proper explanation and without anonymity.
I have just noticed that all thumbs up, thumbs down and featured symbols have been removed against your questions
Adding to the discussion, I would say the following:
The word 'scientific" question is pretty wide in this era. Not only technological talks but also many fields such as behavioral analysis, collaboration models and implementation strategies etc are now science disciplines. My most recent question, Are you a practical or conceptual person?was asked by my supervisor (also present on RG) during our first meeting about my MSc research.
Social media is a graph consisting of participants, links, published content and scores. With a certain probability (that may be distributed according to scores) new elements appear: new participants join the portal, new content is published, new links are established.
Moreover, the evolution of the graph is controlled (influences) by several mechanisms: messages, alerts, scores, endorsments, votes.
It is a matter of design, whether such graph shoul evolve in a monotonic way: i.e. more links, more endorsments, more answers, RG scores flying high.
I think, such unconstrainted evolution would be dangerous for the portal itself. Anonymous downvoting is a stabilizing mechanism analogous to presence of a predator in an ecosystem. That prevents from publishing unwanted content, which would have negative impact on particpants activity in the future.
Personally, I haven't seen many downvotes and I have never used them.
In spite of the danger that the mechanism is misused, it has generally a positive effect on a quality of the content.
To compare, consider a conference, where only positive reviews are possible?
Dear Piotr,
Your post is very interesting in two ways: 1. In relation to the functioning of the manifold aspects and mechanisms working more or less in the background – 2. There might indeed be a certain effect on “keeping the kitchen clean” . This could work once we stop taking a single down-vote too seriously. I myself suggested something like that in the early times of this thread on May 18:
“…I can imagine a situation where we distinguish types of discussions (and types of proposals!) within the dimension
“controversial” (50 ups /50 downs) - “interesting” (80/20) – “boring” (100/0).”
As far as I see I am standing quite alone in relation to this “Utopia”. (?).
RG community is supposed to be a serious one, as we the RG members are serious people, not the kids! You should not play with us dear RG professionals!
@Piotr,
May be that downvotes can have a positive effect like in a conference. But there you see and hear anti-arguments, not some hidden actions. It´s a big big difference.
and dear all,
upvotes may have a social component like many of you stated. But upvotes are also able to ensure the continuity of a discussion. It´s not only a proof of sympathy like in FB and other social media.
I use upvotes even if I contradict immediately. An alife and vivid discussion is worth to be continued.
Dear Piotr,
How much time have you spent here at RG? How many down-votes have you read?
On what kind of unconstrained evolution do you speak?
Anonymous down-voting does stabilise nothing because the prey is mostly aware of a predator and at the moment of attack there is no anonymity. RG is a social system but your analogue with a predator-prey system is not true. Systems need feedbacks but down voting is not a right signal because it is not informative and comprehensive! RG can be evolved with informative or logically perceptive feedbacks and not with treacherous anonymous quasi signals.
I note principle of scientific activity is ambition for finding the truth. Transparency and visibility are elements of sustainability and fortunately here we should not be exposed to political pressure which may need anonymous expressions.
Dear potential Down-voters,
Please use the opportunity here and express your arguments in the mimicry of a fair party.
Dear All,
Major trouble with down-votes is their not interpretability. This is a weapon which gives wounds in each direction. Of course, anonymous treacherousness has its own history and tradition but it would be a luck to forget them.
It appears RG is following this thread and removed the sign by the side of the questions. Good effort Martin for a quick response!
@Nageswara,
I´m astonished and pleased, the marks are disapeared.
Thanks to all.
Yes, I can confirm that there are no icons anymore in the question list (listed as contributions). So, I tend to continue posting here - having been rather frustrated with this 'feature' and on the pullback from this otherwise excellent environment.
Thanks to you - especially Martin.
Generally i don't care with down voters, i think people could agree or disagree with ideas, questions and comments. However people who disagree or do not like something must say why and give powerful or logical responses to their disliking. May be RG should allows down voting (not masked) followed with obligatory comment.
There is two separate problems with downvoting. The Why and the Who.
I like the sudgestion of the automated ''Why box'' if someone chooses to downvote. The reason in the ''Why box'' should be made public for everyone to see. Everybody could then judge and assess the credibility/quality of the downvote.
With a ''Why box'', the reasons for the downvote would be known and the question of the WHO or the anonymous question and the suspicious climate that it presently creates would be minimized. Once we know WHY then we become less interested into the WHO question. Without a Why we fall back on the who by default and a pletora of negative feelings (I am immune to it now but I was not initially). The WHY has the magical perperty of removing the negative personal emotional aspects and make us focus on what a dialogue is: the exchange of rational opinions.
Good question.
Sharing the ideas and thoughts.
Active participation
Dialogue
Debating
Learning process, knowledge, exchange, and so much more...
On the other side, voting - "liking " like on facebook or similar social networks, or anonymous down voting? People choice? Quality or quantity? It is up to individual participant to decide.
I personally do not care much. But this thing can have destructive impact on research gate.
Anonymous down voting isn't OK.
Transparent voting and down voting is good. It should be responsible voting in both cases. If it is not the case then what is the point of voting here anyway?
Voting is the bane of social media and the reason I stay away from social media. I discourage it in all academic settings for students because the unweighed, whimsical, feel-of-the-moment, unanalyzed "like" does not stimulate thought; indeed, it encourages the opposite.
When I find someone on ResearchGate--OK, I'm on one purported social media site--who opposes my view, I vote it up if it is articulate. I am thankful that the participant has taken the time to respond in a thoughtful manner. If I agree and it is articulate, I vote it up. I do not vote anything down, but would feel better if there were no voting at all.
A further thought...
"Like" and "dislike" are not diametrically opposed. "Like" means "hello." Without prior agreement, I use it that way with the person who generated this thread to let him know that I have read his post and vice versa. "Dislike" is not goodbye and not not-hello. It is a signal of disgust, for whatever reason. If a posting disgusts you for whatever reason, go to the next message and forget it.
As I mentioned before in a post on page 7, I consider the function of anonymous downvoting as a stabilization mechanism having rather positive effect for RG. Please let me explain, why I think so.
1) Check the RG founding in Wikipedia. It's revenue stream does not come from advertisments. It is a key point. RG it is not interested in the social activity increasing the network traffic.
2) It seems that the RG mission is to deliver scientific content: publications, informative answers, etc. Hence, short posts like "thanks", "cute", "well done", "good idea" are probably not welcome (RG recommends upvoting). On the other hand, portals interested in the high traffic are delighted with such content.
3) Surprisingly, vivid discussions that extend over dozens of pages are not good for RG. They increase the network traffic, but the information is not condensed and very difficult to absorb. Probably nobody is capable of following the whole thread.
4) The example of a question provided by RG for Q&A shows that RG expects Q&A for rather specific and well defined topics. I think, the target is to provide scientific content similar to that of Stackoverflow for programming (http://stackoverflow.com/)
5) Hence the idea is to make more accurate and comprehensive answers more visible by upvoting.
6) Downvoting or rather a threat of being downvoted simply prevents from publishing posts, which provide very little information, are aggresive or offending. To give an example, answers like "check google before asking a question" probably deserve downvoting.
7) The final question is why downvoting is anonymous? I think, people generally avoid conflicting situations, especially if they leave traces. Nobody would ever use it.
The deep matter of the question is in the pillar of the algorithm used by RG to calculate the personal Score. What the other social platforms try to get through uncontrolled massive traffic, RG tries to get not using the classical Adv revenues, but stressing its congenital niche attitude: to be ranked. As a social network of people aiming to be ranked ("a new way to be ranked"), the choice went alternatively to publications, citations, and — the real new entry — active social participation, i.e. Questions & Answers. WOW, millions running to get a score inside the scientific community, just talking each other! We're excited. Now a mess of continuos Q&As flows in RG's stream. How to moderate the niche's attitude to get higher ranked by repeating its own congenital routine, to ask themselves and to answer explaining? The algorithm is complex, and the need is for some raw factor decreasing the flow. And if "demoting" is not accepted by people, something more evolute has to come (hopefully).
—g
@Piotr Szwed
If questions will be posted in a purely scientific manner, the responses may never be received or even if received then the response rate may be quite low so making it quite difficult to decide which one is the right answer. In such cases, confusions would rise.
The term well defined varies from person to person. It quires knowledge of the relevant field. Every technology has its own terminology/well defined terms and it not possible for some one to have complete knowledge of all these terminologies/well defined terms of all the disciplines. Only a person of the relevant filed can decide about its status.
@Asmat, what you said is right and I agree with all of you on this: 'If questions will be posted in a purely scientific manner, the responses may never be received or even if received then the response rate may be quite low so making it quite difficult to decide which one is the right answer.'
@Martin et al., thanks for this thread. I have made a post earlier and I was too busy about some other things yesterday to do much. But we can all see here that hardly anyone like the downvote feature. So I just don't use it, please agree with me if you think it's right, thanks.
@Piotr, @Giuseppe,
I got the idea that it might be a solution for RG’s algorithm not to count upvotes of posts that are very short e.g. “Nicely put!” – That may work for very short remarks, but it should not exclude short posts of this form: “We will need real numbers instead of rational numbers for this problem.” – In an extreme form this can take the form of a simple "Real, not rational" or a simple “Yes.” when emerging in a debate between experts.
Dear friends,
I recommend to reread the posts of Giuseppe Laquidara on page 5 and Piotr Szwed on page 7 and also of Nicholas E. Rowe on page 5.
RG members may please check that the tags issued by RG indicating the categories like "question is demoted", "question is approved" and " question is featured" have been removed.
Dear Giuseppe,
Dear All,
I think not the qualification of “demoting” is important but how and who decides on it.
The more important question is however the operational backgrounds and aims of RG. Active social participation is essential. Why is it? What kind of Questions & Answers RG wants? Many mentioned that specific questions on a particular scientific area are preferred by RG staff but everybody knows that it is difficult to get high scores in specific threads where not scores but good answers are needed. Interestingly, as you pot it “millions are running to get a score inside the scientific community”. The easiest way to get as many scores as possible to participate in general threads which do not need much knowledge and experience but politeness and a bit familiarity with the subject. Sympathy voting predominates often.
There are some participants specialised for particular functions: the “repeaters” who repeats facts and sayings of other participants, the ones who are always agree with anybody, the purely sympathy up voters etc. This shows that often the same bias and partiality effect here as in real life. RG staff has had an unfortunate try – using administrative instruments - to filter this very subjective rank and “mess of continuous Q&As flows” which evolved spontaneously.
The best way would be to ask really scientific, philosophical, and cultural questions and not like “is it possible to feed faeces and urine” (which has got certainly its scientific relevance...) or “are you today cheerful or sad and why”.
Dear Giuseppe.
You summarised your wish:
„I'm asking RG to progressively eliminate voting systems, and to migrate towards self-resilient evaluation mechanisms.”
You are right but generally being right does not matter as everybody knows. What matters is interest and intention. A voting system is a bit childish but efficient opportunity to provide a kind of psychological satisfaction and a way to operate an often deformed mechanism. I feel for many – who became addict to RG – not the scientific experience and knowledge merit really but the pseudo scientific authority of having RG scores. It will be difficult or impossible to find a very solution.
But finding this solution is part of the GAME!
Dowvoting need to be supported by justification. This helps the researcher to improve in the future contribution and also enriches the community capacity to exist as a research community. There are some motivations for someone downvoting. Some may be genuine while some may be due to poor understanding of the issue being discussed. Some voters are not competent in the area.
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