I regard them as a misguided attempt to be cool, which actually results in stifling discussion. “Gee, I’d better figure out what the hivemind thinks about this and post agreement with it or I’ll get a bunch of disagrees and people will think I don’t know anything about cars.”
I’ve thought from the beginning of it that this is a bad move for this particular site. It’s trying to emulate Facebook, Reddit, and other “social” sites which encourage blind conformity to popularity rather than individual discussion.
Hi. It wasn’t supposed to be an insult to the community. In fact, quite the opposite. It was intended to add another dimension to the discussion. If you don’t want to make use of it, you don’t have to. Certainly, we continue to look at what’s working or not working in the community, and your feedback is important.
I appreciate that you are trying to keep the community fresh, and would not myself go so far as to suggest that you are trying to insult us, but there are some problems with the approach in this situation:
First, this is a car repair/general car knowledge site which sometimes gets sidetracked into opinions on various topics. Allowing people to disagree with those opinions without having to at the very least admit that it was they who disagreed with it encourages people to hit “disagree” with no fear of being held accountable for it, as mentioned a few posts earlier:
I like the buttons, mainly because I can disagree with someone without getting into an argument about it.
This is an attitude that goes directly against discussion, which is the whole purpose of a discussion site, and therefore should be considered antithetical to the intent of any discussion board - and certainly to the intent of a discussion board which wishes to attract mature, knowledgeable adults.
The problems with this become apparent when looking at Caddyman’s profile. A glance at his numbers, without knowing anything about him, would suggest that he is wrong about 25% of the time (not good odds when you’re evaluating whether or not his mechanical advice will break your car), when in fact those of us who read and follow discussions regularly (as opposed to the users who come here to get a question answered but who don’t hang around afterward) know that he racks up disagrees because he has the temerity to be sarcastic or opinionated, while his actual automotive knowledge is usually pretty spot-on. Unfortunately, thanks to the ability to “disagree with someone without getting into an argument,” Caddyman’s reputation has been unfairly besmirched.
Second, you said “If you don’t want to make use of it, you don’t have to.” That’s unfortunately not true. While I may choose not to hit the buttons on other peoples’ posts, I have no ability to opt-out when others decide to hit the buttons on my posts. So really, we can refrain from damaging others’ reputations, but we cannot prevent others from damaging ours - not really a good opt-out strategy.