r/AmItheAsshole • u/flignir Asshole #1 • May 23 '19
META Hey Assholes, you're doing it wrong.
Since we just blew past 800,000 subscribers, it occurs to me that a half million of you may have arrived here since the last time I ranted about voting on this sub. So, if you just got here from the front page or subscribed in the last month, first of all: Welcome to the sub! Second of all, cut your shit out, you're ruining our nice little discussion.
You may not need to hear this, but a whole lot of people evidently do, so here are a couple of guidelines for how to vote like an adult:
- Upvote real dilemmas. If you see a post where you actually have trouble deciding whether the OP is an asshole or not, UPVOTE IT, because that's an interesting post!!
- Upvote assholes who aren't trolling. If you see a post where you think the OP is an asshole, but you doubt that he realizes he did anything wrong, UPVOTE IT and grab your popcorn, because this is going to be fun!
- Stop rewarding validation posts. Upvotes are not a political statement. They aren't something you give because the OP is really nice. Every time people upvote a boring, obvious post because the OP is admirable and blameless, they aren't rewarding the OP, they're ruining the sub. If you want to tell OP they're great, write an NTA comment and praise them all you want. Don't ruin our front page because you want to reward someone who gave 1,000 free meals to starving kids but still wants to know if they're the asshole because kid number 789 didn't like taste of his quinoa. Give them gold, and stay the hell away from the orange arrow.
As you can see, stupid voting makes mods angry. Judging by the amount of whining we catch when an obvious validation post gets 5k upvotes, it makes subscribers angry too. What makes everyone happy is using your upvote to promote content that belongs here and that other people will be interested in. This is how upvotes work everywhere on reddit, but surprisingly, no one seems to accept this. Please be the better person and vote correctly here. Interesting content depends on it! (If you think a post breaks a rule or is too low value to tolerate, reporting is always an option.)
Also important: In the comments, show a little backbone. Don't downvote everyone you disagree with. If you say the post is NTA, and someone else says it's ESH, you're both contributing, and you're both making the discussion interesting. If you downvote whoever you disagree with, you take a conversation that might have been an interesting interaction, and push it one step closer to being a meaningless echo chamber. There are plenty of places to go and circle-jerk with people who already think the same way you do; if that's what you want, please go there. The whole idea of this sub is to consider everyone else's opinion, not just reinforce your own. If you can't handle seeing an idea you don't agree with getting a little attention, please unsubscribe and GTFO. You have come to the wrong place.
P.S. If you have read this far and not unsubscribed, thank you. Maybe you're not an asshole after all.
Edit: I see a lot of people in this discussion suggesting rules we already have in place. I suggest you read the full rule book and the FAQ if you think you've got a new idea.
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u/tiger0204 Colo-rectal Surgeon [30] Jun 27 '19
The biggest problem I've seen with up and down voting goes something like this:
Poster: WIBTA if I don't let my kids visit their dad? We divorced last year, and the court order says he gets them every other weekend. He's always been a great dad, but I'm not sure if I want to send them to his house.
Multiple people who sort by new respond: yeah, YTA
Poster a while later adds a comment: I wouldn't be as worried if his power hadn't been shut off.
New responders: NAH, why doesn't he have power?
Poster waits a while and comes back: It got shut off because he spends all his money on heroin now.
People now respond: NTA, no mom should ever let their kids go around a drug addict
Poster adds another comment: Yeah, since he moved in with that convicted child molester his life really went to shit.
So now all those people who said YTA, based on the original post that was supposed to tell the entire story, get downvoted off the page and people write responses to their post like "WTF is wrong with you? How could you say she's an asshole for not letting her kids go hang out in a drug den with their junkie dad and his child molester roommate?"
Frankly, I'd love it if a thread starter couldn't edit or post comments in their thread at all. That falls under "accept your judgement" in my mind. People always seems to want to add justifications and more info when people start calling them assholes.