Basically it means the comment's in the negatives for likes. There's no way to figure out how far exactly down it is, aside from being able to know whether it's -1 or not. (if you upvote it, close out of comments page and reopen/refresh, and it's at 0, it was -1, if it's still got a triangle, it was -2 or less.)
The system is designed to discourage the Bandwagon Effect:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect
.
Basically if one person down votes something, more people are likely to down vote it just because it has a down vote. If you see a comment with 10 down votes, or 100, you're more likely to just down vote it because everyone else is doing it. By not showing exactly how many down votes something has, it reduces the effect.
.
This is similar to the reason why the number of likes on a post is listed as ... for the first few minutes after posting. If the first few votes are negative, the post may still be good, and if the first few votes are positive, the post could still be bad. By not showing the vote count until a sufficient number of votes have accumulated, FunSubstance forces you to vote on your own and not just because other people have.
- FunStats
(this is just speculation, but good speculation)
Just as often it means you wrote something intelligent and well argued and some right-leaning bozo didn't like it, but can't be bothered to (or just can't) give a sensible reply too, though; it goes both ways.
Moreover, though, this post wasn't even *remotely* political, why make it so? Bad guest.
3Reply
deleted
· 8 years ago
Wait but then if you downvote the post with the downward arrow it only says -1 vote
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect
.
Basically if one person down votes something, more people are likely to down vote it just because it has a down vote. If you see a comment with 10 down votes, or 100, you're more likely to just down vote it because everyone else is doing it. By not showing exactly how many down votes something has, it reduces the effect.
.
This is similar to the reason why the number of likes on a post is listed as ... for the first few minutes after posting. If the first few votes are negative, the post may still be good, and if the first few votes are positive, the post could still be bad. By not showing the vote count until a sufficient number of votes have accumulated, FunSubstance forces you to vote on your own and not just because other people have.
- FunStats
(this is just speculation, but good speculation)
Moreover, though, this post wasn't even *remotely* political, why make it so? Bad guest.