So why are so many people down neverending/games?

Your question goes back to the concept behind voting on the new A2K. If we vote down the thread, it disappears from our view. It's not so much a thing anyone does because they hate the game threads, just that they don't want to wade through them.

I'll sooner or later catch on - I have mine arranged by posting date so voting doesn't impact my order.

What lilK said. It's nothing personal. Those threads tend to move very quickly, which puts them on the top of the "new posts" page frequently, so people who are not interested collapse them with the thumbs down to clear them out of their personal space.

I like some of the neverending games, still play the haiku one, am still interested in the acronym one.. and I played a lot of them when I started at a2k, gads, almost six years ago. That's why my post numbers were fairly high originally. But... six years of scrolling by them all the time to find threads I'm interested in has taken its toll. I now enjoy being able to minimize their impact on the page.
Doesn't mean I don't like them in concept, I just don't want to see them many many many times. And yes, this is a key element in the voting system and tag system are about, to be able to organize your own time at a2k.

Plus, those looking to find them can click on the appropriate tag at the left of the page.

Indeed. Now don't anyone take it personally when I knock this answered question out of my view too.

Gee, I guess that I'm not the only one who associates negative rankings with negative emotions. Funny how it seems a lot of people feel the same way.

Cycloptichorn

short attention spans?

I'm still learning the tag thingy - I haven't been successful, but then again I can be slow sometimes.

Click to the able2know page, find the Popular Tags box, find/click Trivia and Word Games.

No... but you are one of relatively few having trouble digesting the perfectly reasonable explanation.

I think that is the intrinsic problem with the negative rankings. I am finding that if I remove the threads of which I am not interested (no disrespect intended), I find my experience on A2K is so much more efficient.

And here I was feeling bad for these poor saps and I was voting them back up!

No, I don't have trouble with the explanation. I understand it perfectly. But unless you are going to take the time to explain it to every single new person the second they get to the site, or have some method of doing so, people are going to be presented with negative impressions upon their first reading of A2K. Not a good thing. And it can be avoided while retaining the same structure with only minor alterations.

Cycloptichorn

don't feel bad; i appreciate what you did, even if i'm outnumbered by the negative voters. many, including me, have suggested that a Collapse Topic or Ignore Thread button would serve the same function, without causing any misunderstanding or hurt, but there's been no word this will happen. i'd at least like to know if it's because of technical difficulty or lack of interest.

I like that feature; however, I would prefer a straight "Ignore Thread" option, myself.

Edit: Which, I now see, is what yit said in the post right above this one.

Because they aren't interesting (to the people doing so) and they never end!

I also hope our most generous and able powers that be will also reconsider an ignore or bypass button to deal with threads we want to move out of the way. There are thousands of members on A2K and the fact that so many continue to misunderstand the 'collapse' mechanism despite how many times it has already been explained says to me that the 'collapse' mechanism is a negative no matter how much we try to make it a positive. Unless there is a hall monitor on duty to explain to every newbie that his brave new thread isn't being criticized as a bad thread with all those negative votes, it will continue to be misunderstood.

That would just fracture the voting (which already needs more scale to be useful at all), and the people who wanted to abuse it would not use the alternative option.

What's really needed is the ability to view a grid based on the subjects you are interested in, for example to be able to remove "politics" or "word games" from your view so that you don't systemically vote them all down.

Separating questions from discussions is also a good idea. In any case, those things conflict with the ease of the "all in one" view and people will be sure to hate the change but it would be a big improvement.

Another thing that can be improved is that the negative ratings offer more incentive than the positive ratings, because the negative ratings help hide information and the positive ratings don't provide the individual user with an immediate benefit. So doing something like making replying auto vote up the post/thread being replied to would make the use of the behavior more positive. After all, you the voting ideally represents posts/topics worth reading and replying to.

Note: before anyone asked why that's different from reply count note the difference between unique users and total replies. A thread with 1000 respondents and 2000 posts may be more worthwhile to read than a thread with 2 respondents and 20,000 posts.

Some tweaks need to be made here, the system is not ideally suited for positive uses and those two changes would make a big difference.