Do we need to negatively rate people

I didn't even know there was a facility to negatively rate.

Do you have the same problem with "likes"?

IMO, if you can't accept someone disliking something then you shouldn't accept somebody liking something.

Now this wasn't my thread and as I said I can't even see where there's a facility for negative ratings. Indeed I only have a "like" button and nothing else at all.

However I'm with David on this one

No

VERY different though because it's the internet and it's VERY VERY well known that you get some rather bizarre behaviour and people giving negative points just because you might have given an answer they didn't want. Because there's a tendency to hide behind anonymity "some" will also begin to act like a Chihuahua yapping behind a gate and do things like giving negative points just because they hold a different view or opinion.

Regrettably anonymity leads in itself to atypical behaviour!

It's for that reason that there's a heck of a lot of forums have de-activated that facility even though they have a like button.

Also it's well known that reinforcing positive behaviour has much more effect in terms of benefit than disciplining or penalising negative behaviour.

I'd not be happy with negative points and personally would NEVER use that facility and I'm likely to tell anyone that does use it that they'd be much more respected in my eyes if they just said what they didn't like.... might be an English culture thing?

I'm happy to accept "likes" though. No different to my horse accepting a carrot or a pat on the neck or a scratch on the butt as a reward.

I think that generally the members and the moderators jump on the overboard negative issues so quickly that it is not an issue. We can police ourselves.

Discussion of subject matter is quite a draw to a board. Lively discussion is fun, but enlightening is much better. A negative should have some text to it, an explanation for discussion. Just a thumbs down becomes snark. Glad the feature was reconsidered - specially the spell check! LOL

There were many possibilities for the post ratings to be used throughout the website. Unfortunately people focused on one rating out of whole group and only focused on one way in which to use the rating. Post ratings have been uninstalled. End of discussion.