Love it! Thank you!

Also, the site seems to have been running a lot faster lately ... yay! Good job, guys!

I liked this improvement.

I miss the dislike. It was a cathartic way to deal with trolls.

I appreciate this. I hate trolls, but I really hate the idea of someone with an unpopular opinion feeling like they can't express themselves here without being ganged up on.

Boooo!

Oh, thank goodness. It seems like the "dislike" was just getting used for dissenters, which is counter to the usual atmosphere of this website. Now if you don't like something, you actually have to use your brain to say why and not just be a coward about it :)

Great! I'm pleased to see that--I hated that feeling of total embarrassment I felt when I comment I thought was thoughtful was "disliked"--especially when it had no responses. Even worse, I hated feeling pissed off and defensive afterwards, and had to stop myself several times from writing a second, angrier comment lashing out. That's the last thing you need to help facilitate positive, good discussion.

haha, I guess I was one of the few people who really liked the "dislike" option, for a few reasons. (I guess this comment might get "disliked" in the old system, but I can take a bit of anonymous internet disagreement. :) )

1.) There are comments that are trollish and disrespectful that might not qualify as being "abuse," but that probably don't do anything to further discussion. (Not dissenting viewpoints)

2.) Sometimes a comment would have five likes and five dislikes. I always thought those comments were really interesting, because it showed that whatever this person was saying was controversial. Either you loved it, or you hated it, so to speak. I wanted to understand what was being said in those comments to see what was likely a big split in feminist viewpoints.

And as far as people being afraid of being "disliked," most people who post with a truly dissenting viewpoint on here usually know that their viewpoint is unpopular, but they are commenting anyway. I'm not sure why someone disliking a comment would keep someone from posting, or silence them, especially if they are getting a lot of comments in response arguing against their position anyway. And there didn't seem to be any record on your profile of either liked or disliked comments, so it might be disliked in one thread, but that wouldn't affect any comment you ever post again.

::shrug:: I thought it was cool, but maybe I spend too much time on Digg and Reddit, where they give you the option to upmod and downmod things, so I'm used to that tool.

And isn't having say, the post you write in dissent with zero likes being followed by a post arguing with what you said that has 8 likes kind of the same thing?

One word: Disemvowel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disemvoweling

Thumbs up! Of course, I will probably always prefer Ravelry's comment ratings system: you can click "educational," "interesting," "funny," "agree," "disagree," or "love." Probably too broad for a place like Feministing, but "educational" might be useful.

I don't think it is. All that "no likes" means is that nobody was struck positively enough about your post to give you a like. They could have been neutral or just thought the post wasn't well enough stated or original enough to get a "like". On the other hand, a negative rating means that somebody actively disagrees with what is being said. I personally liked the disagree option because it allowed me to see not only how many people liked the post but how many didn't. If somebody wouldn't post for fear of a "dislike" or would allow it to get them all worked up then they probably need to get a thicker skin. I find a rude reply much more aggravating than a simple dislike score. I also liked to look at the really controversial replies that had a lot of likes and dislikes.

The above was supposed to be a reply to AgnesScottie