Like I said in the message you were responding to they cancel each other out on other websites, Reddit being one example. Of course there’s no way to know if they would in this case since there isn’t a thumbs down feature. Nor did I say it is a given that they would. I don’t think you can extrapolate from how things are currently that a thumbs down wouldn’t cancel a thumbs up or visa versa though since it all depends on how the developers decide to implement things. Usually that’s based some kind of standard for how liking or disliking posts in discussions forums are usually implemented, but of course it doesn’t have to be.
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FYI, downvoting is now available on the support categories:
Additional use of thumbs-down or downvoting will be consulted with the whole group of local moderators and a recommendation will be shared for community input.
5 Likes
as I see it, it turned out quite unrelated to thumbs up or down.
I tried with an answer with a score 2, I put thumbs-up to it, and the score remained at 2, then I downvoted it, and the score went to 1. there’s no thumbs-down reaction available.
Interesting, I hadn’t considered the preconceptions that users might have coming from other sites with their own up/downvoting systems. The most relevant one to this community would be OSMCha, which has 
and 
buttons to rate changesets. Sometimes a user passive aggressively clicks on each of another user’s contributions, seemingly out of spite, and the recipient of those downvotes wonders aloud whether it’ll cause their future changesets to be blocked from OSM or a data consumer’s maps. (It won’t, at least not automatically.)
As another point of comparison, GitHub has both and 
. Despite its shortcode :confused:, is used not only for confusion but also for skepticism, annoyance, indecision, or hesitancy. Maybe for “meh” as well. Even though can technically express dispassionate disapproval, people often perceive it as an aggressive gesture akin to a 
in a contentious debate, especially if nothing is being voted on. It’s just another example of how languages evolve illogically.
The existing set of emoji already afford plenty of ambiguity. (
is for when an angry poster needs a hug to brighten their day, right?) If a reaction is added and it’s intended for dispassionate disapproval, that intention should be indicated in the UI or documented somewhere to help avoid unintended conflict.
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as yet another point, on StackOverflow you need to have reached some minimal level of trust, in order to downvote anything. Downvoting is associate with a price in terms of reputation, you can’t downvote all that you read, or you will quickly end without any reputation left.
indeed, if any reaction is added, intended for dispassionate disapproval, this should be indicated somewhere. I think that “dispassionate disapproval” is useful just as we already now have “dispassionate approval” (or do we always agree with all that we read here?) and I think that since we use for dispassionate approval, the best choice for dispassionate disapproval still is .
After several rounds of discussions within @forums-governance and with the forum’s moderators, @Firefishy has now preliminarily enabled thumbs-down reactions for posts.
We will be observing the effect this has on conversations, and we may revise this decision accordingly. We still welcome your views on the new reaction, especially once you observe the impact this has on your communities.
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And if you want to test vote this post down. I will not be offended 
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Thank you @Firefishy, your punching-bag post is cathartic. (Dispassionately so, of course.)
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It would appear not?
To get the icon, I have to hover over the icon. This was confusing. 
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