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Jerboa @lemmy.ml

Dessalines @lemmy.ml

10mo ago

What should be Lemmy's default way of displaying votes?

take.quiz-maker.com /poll5157102x9B484B2c-156

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14068273

We're adding the ability to customize this in the upcoming release, but I'm wondering what people think would be a good default.
The 4 pieces of showable/hideable info are: Upvotes, Downvotes, Score, and Upvote %.
In Jerboa, I had a temporary default (until the next lemmy release), of Score + Upvote %, but people seem to dislike this a lot.
I'll check back on this in a week to see the result.

Lemmy @lemmy.ml

Dessalines @lemmy.ml

10mo ago

What should be Lemmy's default way of displaying votes?

take.quiz-maker.com /poll5157102x9B484B2c-156

115 37

15 comments

Upvotes & Downvotes is the best. Everything else makes me try to calculate them.

I think simple always wins, and that is Upvotes + Downvotes. It gives you the size of both sides of the coin, while it also allows me to kinda see "woah, this post is generating lots of engagement", whereas score + % may show a 2 + 50% and I don't really know what that means.
- 2 + 50% means that 51 + n people upvoted and 50 + n people downvoted, where n is a natural number. Making the % (x): 50% < x < 50.50%, where x is rounded down to 50%.
  
  A smartass and wrong! You obviously messed up thinking OP's initial upvote wouldn't count towards the percentage. The correct formula is n + 2 upvotes for n downvotes, which makes 0.5 < (n+2) / (2n + 2) < 0.505, solve for the smallest possible n₀ = 100, giving us 102 + n upvotes and 100 + n downotes
- I like being able to see upvotes and dowvotes separately as it is done now.
  Arstechnica has them separately but also shows the sum which could be an option. For example, 90 (93 / -3) but with green and red color.
  Having a show/hide sum in settings could help please more people but it's extra work for developers.

I'm on a Jerboa version which displays the number of upvotes and number of downvotes separately, and I think that's the best way of doing it. We're not Reddit; we don't need to do smoke and mirrors to obscure data.
I do appreciate you giving us options though.

One of the biggest complaints with reddit was the artificial up/down score that they changed your ability to see. Before, you would see and watch the up/down votes happen in near real-time, so it was easy to see if something was artificially pushed up or down. I would like us to at least keep up/down votes as an option.
Also great idea letting the user decide what they want. Kudos to the team.

Another up and down preference here. It really is the optimum way.

I like the way they're currently displayed. Upvotes/Downvotes. I don't think downvotes are negative, i think of all points as engagement points. I want nothing that obfuscates the reaction to my or other's words

I can see Score + Upvote % being ambiguous. At the same time, I think the point of showing downvotes is to have an idea of the ratio of users that agree / find it useful, so I think a percentage conveys this information better than absolute numbers.
So my vote is for Upvotes (Upvote %) - this gives a general idea of how many votes there were; the upvote/downvote ratio; and the fact both numbers refer to upvotes reduces ambiguity.

The easiest to grasp at a glance is Upvotes/Downvotes.
Though I understand how Score + Upvote% would be useful, percentages are impactful when there's more than 100 reactions (which is uncommon).

Please show upvotes and downvotes separately by default

Who cares leave it up to the display. Be it an app or a custom viewer

15 comments