A Modest Proposal
Favorite Answer
Nope. Just remove the anonymity. Abuse of the system is against community guidelines, and the abusing accounts (if there is someone with multiple accounts) can more easily be identified and depressed while maintaining the voting system if the thumbs were made more like the stars system.
Of course, that depends on whether one considers the voting system serving an actual purpose (a quasi-peer review system), or is just a novelty as anyone can read an answer and judge for themselves its quality.
οικος
Hardly worth the effort. The nice things about thumbs up is that they boost your score when you get "best answer". Thumbs down just let people vent in many cases. However, under "Pets", they might save an animal's life, if the questioner pays attention to them.
David
I think they should be eliminated, or at least eliminate the 'hiding' system.
It seems pointless to me and just a bad example of unnecessary censorship. If someone clearly violates the site rules they are reported and their answer quickly deleted; that's fine. Yahoo has the right to set their own rules and if you violate them they have the right to restrict your usage of their services.
But to hide an answer simply because people disagree with it? I have never agreed with that.
If the thumb system were meaningless, or continued to benefit the best answer in terms of extra points, it would be much better. But hiding an answer just for having 5 more down than up is wrong.
antarcticice
If answers implemented the same system used by many forums that logs ip address against account you would see troll/denier activity drop away to nothing overnight. Have to say I love Ratna Rai answer
"loosers always gets thumbs down" P.S. it's "losers", hmmm That's almost funny in a poetic justice sort of way.
"always" from an account created today, as I've said before trolls are not very bright.
The way the current system is setup thumbs mean little and absurd high or low numbers, especially in any question Jim is involved in mean virtually nothing and I am certainly not the only one to have noticed that.
DaveH
On a scale of things that actually matter in the world, I don't think it even makes the list.
Some people are clearly going to the time and trouble to game this system (why they would bother is completely beyond me) ... so knowing that it's not representative you should just ignore it, and them.