Removing Post Upvotes

sort of support. It needs to be taken off announcement threads 100%. It should be kept for Journals, Art and Trade Threads and the like. I like the idea of a mandatory "Full Support, Partial Support & No Support" poll on suggestion threads instead of upvotes for if you want to put forth your view but don't want to comment.

I personally don't mind them one way or another. But one thing I've seen a couple times on the first page is a lot of people saying "Support" posts like i support this. Or "this" posts. Those are all considered spam in most places and are already basically against the rules. So they should be happening anyways unless it is in journals. However likes have indeed been used to harass and intimidate other players and can be considered toxic considering those who are toxic are misusing them. I think likes in general have a purpose and i still support their original intention. I used to use them to show that I've taken care of orders in my shop so that i wouldn't be spamming myself after every single post. Seems counterproductive to post that much. So it has its uses, but if the mods think the bad outweigh the good and decide to remove them it won't really affect me too much either way. Apologies if some of this doesn't make sense. Working has been hard today.

Sorry for being sparse in replies here, I pretty much agree with everyone's thoughts so I haven't had much to say ^^ but I really do appreciate all the feedback. Upvotes can definitely be useful in many scenarios, so maybe just removing them from specific forums is the ideal solution. Thank you guys!

I'm also someone that uses the upvote system to keep track of whether I've sent trades or not in shops/threads, so losing that option means I'm either always posting Sent, or keeping a list which ends up neglected. (The upvote system for running a trade shop is very adhd friendly if you can keep up with it.) That said, I think if there was an option for mods to toggle whether or not upvotes were visible in a thread, like locking a thread or adding a poll works, that'd be a rad fix! Upvoting discourse for the sake of discourse isn't really helpful, and all it does is pit the userbase against each other and the mods. I honestly wouldn't mind the rules being a bit more strict against being harsh in posts, as it feels like things can get heated in recent announcements. If you can't present your argument without being clear, polite, and collected, then you should take time away from the keyboard to think it through or face the consequences. Its hard to determine exactly whats rude or not, as its not only a personal opinion thing but conveying tone and intention over text online is hard, but I'm sure it can be figured out through discussion!

I'm personally neutral with this one. My only complaint about likes is that I can't remove an accidental like I give to someone because I misclicked when I wanted to quote them... Happened in the past and that's annoying, especially if I don't agree with the user ._. Also, most of the time, even if I agree with something I don't give the post a like. And there's no way I'm the only one here to do that. So it's perfectly possible that someone with less likes, may in fact have more people agreeing with them, it's just that not every user gave a like to the post '-'

This reminds me of when the 'little things that bother you' thread was permenantly deleted bc the thread was so toxic and the mods didn't know what to do. I was gone for a while but the forums I guess have gotten even more toxic since that?? Toxicity doesn't go DOWN when you take away ways for people to vent their frustrations about things. It goes up. Taking away things that let people air their frustrations with a little upvote on a post of someone who maybe said something more elequently than they could have won't fix toxicity. If anything more people will just say they don't like the thing instead of quietly liking a post. And the whole 'bullying people with likes' thing is... such a poster problem? Like if you interpret Likes on a post you made as bullying then idk what to tell you. This isn't twitter. You can't actually get ratio'd. If someone wants to bully you they gotta do it to your face. And when they do you just tell the mods.

Maybe a better solution would be to hide any upvotes over a certain amount; say you have 12 upvotes, it would show as 9+ to other people. example: