This forum is missing something

General Discussion
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Whats the logic in having the " :blue_heart: " option when the " :broken_heart: or :-1: " one is missing. Getting forced/bated into meaningless never ending reply wars from players from far the other side when we can just have this nice little option back.

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I’ve found a reply by a Blizzard employee (probably community manager) on the WoW Forum and they said:

We originally added this feature as a means for players to assist with forum moderation by upvoting helpful posts and downvoting inappropriate or toxic posts. In practice, however, we found that it was primarily being used for things like downvoting a post simply because they disagreed with it, which was not the intent, and too often led to different opinions getting unfairly buried. Moving to an upvotes-only environment will remove this unintended abuse, while still allowing players to give recognition to posts that have a positive impact on the World of Warcraft community.

As a reminder, you can still report inappropriate or abusive posts to the moderation team by selecting the “Report Post” option located in the dropdown menu on the right of the offending post.

On the OW forum, another community manager replied to a similar question:

User:
yea, i feel like the down-vote system was just some anonymous griefing tool (sometimes warranted) for people to just be spiteful to opinions not shared by their own.

Community manager:
This is definitely part of the reason. We also wanted to encourage people to write a constructive counterpoint rather than using the downvote button to hide someone’s opinions/thoughts.

Basically, the downvote function wasn’t used as intended.

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So its ok to upvote a topic if you agree with it but its not fine to disagree with it ?
That just makes every topic look like it’s helpful even when majotery think its not.

Im all up for the forum rules but its clear that they don’t exist here seen from all the spamming and bumping everyone is doing on top of the meaningless reply wars about oppinions. Its much more cleaner to see how many peole agree and disagree then to show only the once who agree with set topic.

Yet again so why not just remove the upvote system as well it does exactly the same thing but in the other derection. Ill be on the US forum they are topics with 1k “likes” but the moment you go to the comments you see nothing but people who disagree with it since they have no other way to take a side other then getting in reply wars that are used to bump up false topics who only have likes on them.

On top of the fact that the report systom on topic is as automated as the report system in game, meaning that everyone who doesn’t agree with it will report/flag it and if that topic hits like 10 or so flags it will get auto deleted and the user will get punished.

All in all ill be much more happier if i can just hit a “dislike” on a topic then getting in agruments of why its wrong then going “fact hunting” that will mean nothing to someone whos from the far left side of things.

That way if someone wants to express an opinion he can but if he just wants to show that this doesn’t stand for that topic he has that option as well.

They are things they can do like ad the Dislike opthion only to the OP of the topic and not to everyone who comments on it or something like that its better then saing random stuff and getting only likes. Its to easy to ignore the people who don’t agree with something and its to easy for people to boycott/force blizzard to do changes.

Btw as someone who’s all olver the blizzard games forums like hearthstone-diablo-starcraft, overwatch is the only one without a “dislike” option its like facebook in 2006. And ill be its clear that people have gived up on this forum since its nothing like it was before atm it’s just the same 10-100 people posting here weekly.

This forum is to one sided to enjoy.

Update: one last thing i want to add.

If i don’t agree on a topic atm i have to go to it and comment, but if i do that i’m just dumping it and it gets more attention so latly i’ve just been holding back just so i don’t bump topics and get in reply wars.

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Since it’s a discussions forum, we need to keep the act of discussions on the focus. If you find a reply that you really like, either because it’s well written or you agree to the author’s opinion, how can you show it?

If there was no upvote function, you would have to reply to that post with “I agree”. However, this adds nothing to the discussion and when it’s a popular opinion, the thread gets kinda spammy.

However, if you disagree to someone’s reply, you can easily show it by replying why you disagree with them, moving the discussion forward. Players who disagree with the OP’s opinion and then looking at your counter argument might upvote your reply.

Keep in mind that you can upvote someone who disagrees with the thread, too. A thread with an unpopular opinion might have no upvotes but a counterargument might have a ton.

It is easier to explain why you disagree than to explain why you agree. By enabling an Upvote only environment, you cause a more organized discussion.

A downvote without censoring the reply might be possible but that might result in no discussions at all. Instead of replying to a post you disagree, you just click the downvote button and walk away. Since this is a discussions forum, I think this is not what you want.

Looking at the Hearthstone forum, I noticed they still use the old domain so I guess they haven’t transitioned it yet.

Well, this has less to do with the lack of the downvote option and more to do that the OW EU-forum lacks attention by the devs. This is why it seems pointless to write on this forum.

That’s the point of discussions tho. If you disagree with someone, you either ignore them or confront them, driving the discussion further. This is exactly what you should do on a discussions forum, arguing with other people you disagree with. And that attention can be on one side or another. When the thread gets attention, people stand on either the OP’s side or your side which can be seen by more comments or the number of upvotes you get.

I’ve noticed it on an “h0mophobia” thread where I got more upvotes than the OP, meaning more people agree to my arguments than the OP’s.

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In a perfect world yes but this forum is far from perfect.

Like you’ve seen me get in agruments all the time. Have you seen what happens?
its

  1. The non stop reply wars that don’t end up conveying no one from the 2 sides. Since legit facts are hard to find on top of the fact that for this forum it seems think that a legit fact is someone popular making a video on set topic. And at this point you can find a video that agrees and disagres on that topic furder more making it meaningless.

  2. Most people aren’t exacly mature enough to even hold a debate without going to tactics like insulting the other adresant, breaking the coc non stop without the slightest care in the world since nothing gets reinforced here unless its flat out hardcore flamming even then it stays for a week.

  3. On the fact that person A sees a topic and coments an opinion disagreeing with it, you have person B, C, D and the OP who are just ready to jump you and start bumping the topic back up again making it go on “tranding”.

All in all its the lack of rule reinforcments and lack of disagree opthion that made this form look like “boycott blizzard town” to me. Furthermore making it meaningless for me to even disagree with something to me it doesn’t feel that I want to ignor set topic but it feels like the moment i comment on it i end up helping that topic even when im fully disagreeing with it so i end up being forced to ignore it. As someone who studied philosophy i can tell you that the hardest thing you can do is to prove a negative to someone who doesn’t see it as such.

I can agree to that but it happen when they swapped domains. Aka the new forum that’s basically the same but without a downvote option. This is just me nitpicking and it’s far from the main problem that’s the fact that even on eu if you enter the forums you are by default set to US for some reason.

Topics like that are nice but the once that concern me are the once that talk “game balance” and they can get really opinionated.

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I see your points.

Well, we definetly can’t have the downvote option like before. It was meant as an indirect report function, after all.

The only thing that needs to be changed is that downvoted threads/replies don’t get greyed out so no “cencorship” out of disagreement happen.

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No it wasn’t. You can have topics like on hearthstone that have -3k downvotes and nothing happens to you. The topic doesn’t get deleted, you dont get punished, nor dose it get down from “trending”. It just shows how many agree and disagree. Ill be if someone wants to like someone he does.

But now people just flag topics they don’t like, so they just get deleted once enough people do that. And its automated.

I can agree with that. That part is harsh and uneeded and i think its mostly to hide flamming but yeah its not doing that job at all.

On top of the fact that upvoting everyone who agrees with me looks really petty to me. ← this doesn’t matter since it’s just a personal preference.

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