what in the world does this have to do with anything? get a grip.

the thumbs down button serves a very useful purpose. it allows people to express disagreement without cluttering the thread with more redundant posts. 5 thumbs down on a post is better for the community than 5 posts all making the same points disagreeing with a comment. i know i have personally used it in lieu of making actual written responses, and i think that has saved the board a fair amount of pointless back and forths, especially if it's something that could result in emotional responses. half the time, i go back and clear my thumbs down vote anyway. just clicking the button gets it out of my system and i feel better. without the outlet of the thumbs down button, i think negative posts would actually increase. just my opinion though.

i also agree with Aurich that the new system, while well designed and well intentioned, is more complex for the user than is desirable or necessary. as always, i deeply appreciate all the effort Robin and the gang put into this site, though!

Oh my god I just realized that since the update, none of the thumbs-up I've been giving on iPad have counted, because you need to hit the thumbs up button TWICE for it to register, even though it turns green the first time you click it. . Ugh, Bad design in my opinion. Should only have to click thumbs up once, even on iPad. At the very least, it shouldn't turn green until it has actually been thumbed-up. That was giving me false feedback.

I don't really think it's a very large problem ... Just one or two petty people do it, and it doesn't even really affect anything anyway. But if a solution is needed, just limit people to say 3 thumbs down per 24 hours.

Under the old system, the initial tap opened a large pane with several buttons (up vote, downvote, some other stuff). These buttons were single-tap even on mobile. Now, you tap it once, and it simply turns green, signaling to the user that something happened, and showing little to no indication that another tap is required to actually make something happen. It's bad. At the very least, it should not turn green until the thumbs up has actually been given. But I also feel strongly that accidental thumbs up would not be a real problem if it were a single-tap action.

Ok so maybe I'm wrong but this post comes off like you are personally stinging from getting thumbs downed for saying negative things about jpop or predator or MMR or something. I don't think that is a problem with the thumbs down system, that's just human nature. You would have received a lot of negative feedback whether there was a thumbs down feature or not.

I think there's a fairly broad spectrum of posts that get negative feedback - there are posts with incorrect information, there are snarky trolly mean spirited posts, posts that are overly aggressive or threatening, and finally posts that people simply disagree with for a variety of possible reasons (and yeah, viper, sometimes the disagreement is because it's something they don't want to hear). I actually think it is fine for "thumbs down" to encompass all these functions. People, both the people reading the post and the person who wrote it (as Beelzeboob pointed out) generally understand why a post is getting down votes. A more granular system adds complexity without adding any value, in my opinion.

That's a great point.

Yep, I'm also seeing a yellow zero with no upvotes and no downvotes.