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Some clarifications about the Downvote

Hi everyone, ✌️

Thank you very much for your feedback in relation to the Downvote. 👎
We totally understand that many/most of you are not happy with it.

However, based on the feedback we're reading, I'd like to clarify some points:

1) If your posts/replies frequently have many good reactions, and sometimes you get 1 or 2 downvotes, out of MANY good reactions, you really shouldn't have to worry. 👍

2) If there is a user that has been downvoting you in many posts, that user will eventually start seeing less contents from you. 📉

3) You don't have to worry if a user tries to use multiple accounts to downvote you. Either the system knows about it already, or will know in the future, and that will only go wrong on that user, and never affect you. 🚩
Only a few users have attempted this so far, and we've sent notifications to those users. The targeted users were not affected by the fake downvotes.

4) A comment or post will only be pushed down if the amount of downvotes surpass the amount of good reactions (and only if a minimum of downvotes was reached, for that to happen). You don't have to worry about the visibility of your contents being impacted just because of 1 or 2 downvotes, when you got several good reactions too. 📊

5) Even if a post of yours got more downvotes than good reactions, it doesn't mean that your audience will be impacted on other stories/questions that you post in the future. It only affects the post that got downvoted. 📚

5) The downvote does have a slight impact on your account reputation, but that impact is VERY negligible. If you maintain a much higher amount of good reactions, versus the amount of downvotes, your account will NEVER suffer any consequences. Only accounts who have more downvotes than good reactions are the ones that will be really impacted. 😊

In summary: You don't have to worry if you get a few downvotes here and there. Only if the amount of downvotes surpasses the amount of good reactions (very rare cases), you would be affected. Only troublemakers will be affected by the downvote.

I want to apologize again for not being clear in my original post when it was announced.

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Thank you for your support and we hope you continue to stay with us.

We are constantly listening to your suggestions, so please keep giving them to us, as they are very important to the future of Similar Worlds.

Very kind regards, 🧡
- The SW Team

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NerdyPotato · M

Thank you for the explanation! So essentially it's the same as muting, but for individual posts rather than entire profiles. I like that added precision!

If that can be extended to other posts about the same topics in the future, still only on a personal level, that would be even better. That would essentially make it a more advanced and easier to configure version of a word filter that has often been requested.

I have seen a lot of complaints about downvotes on posts, but not a single one where these outweighed other reactions. So for none of these examples, the author was technically affected. Preventing a post to be shown to others seems to require a lot more than teaming up with some friends and not possible in practice so far, thus it doesn't seem prone to abuse at all.

It being possible in theory, virtually immune to bullying, is something I like though. Reporting is great, but people who use that, already saw something they didn't want to. And before that is handled, others may still see the content and feel uneasy about it too. If downvoting can theoretically prevent people from seeing such content at all, that's much better than letting reporting do that in hindsight after it making more victims.

Now I did say earlier the author was "technically" unaffected. That ignores the feelings of receiving a downvote and people scrolling past a post because the downvote icon is visible, regardless of the ratio with other reactions, which isn't immediately visible and not at all for non-VIPs. Those are negative effects, and as they have no technical implications unless the author should have seen that coming, unnecessary in my opinion.

In short: I think this feature is a very welcome addition to muting and reporting, but displaying the number of downvotes causes unnecessary hurt. Removing that part keeps it a very useful update, but makes it harmless as well.

SW-User

@NerdyPotato exactly!!

JustGoneNow

@NerdyPotato I’ve really enjoyed being able to mute by topic. Much of politics has disappeared from my thread.