Why a minus 1 for a simple question?

Even easier would be just to display the total positive votes as the primary number. Or to separate the questions from discussions in all views so that questions aren't rated together with discussions.

able2know site actually started as fluencynow.com (now someone else owns this site) for my English students, so I obviously love having the English questions, but I get why the more discussion oriented people vote them down.

To me, the big solution is to separate the site more between the discussions and questions but I think I'll wait till the next topic type to do that as it is a bit more of a disruptive one to the current pattern. In the meantime we'll work on different vote aggregations and reworking it to use the positive votes as the primary number.

That way, it's just less positive on the grid and never negative.

Well, if it's answered, why not. It's probably only of interest to the OP. He/she should be able to find it. How about thumbs up when it's open, and down when answered?

Hmmmm...I am tending to thumbs up any question I come across that I cannot answer in hopes it may assist to keep it visible until answered.

Answering thumbs it up now, willy nilly.

Well, right, Sis. I said if it's answered. . . .

I know you did Rat.

I completely gave up thumbing down a thread, as in time I forget which
thread it was and then I look anyway. So I am defeating my own purpose.
I can scroll around it!

Eventually I think people will use them more sparingly because of this, because if they keep checking what they collapsed they probably shouldn't have collapsed it.

I hope I'm doing this right. If there is a topic that isn't very important to me, I vote it down, so that the topics I do want to follow are the only ones I see. I hope "disappearing" topics from my view is the reason I'm supposed to use thumbs down on threads. Posts are not quite the same. I try to focus on giving thumbs UP to really good posts, and give far less thumbs down to posts...unless it's some big, lumbering scroll-worthy mess I want out of my way...or it's so offensive in some other way that I want it reflected. Re: the latter reason, I hardly ever do that. I try to give the same kind of leeway I'D want extended to me.

I've culled A LOT of topics from my queue.

I'm doing it the same way. I think craven's idea of never having a negative thread count is a good one.

I still don't get it but that's just me. On the old site I was sorry that I ever replied to the song thread, not knocking it but it just wasn't my cup of tea. It was popular, hair on it and those who liked it, and it kept appearing but it wasn't that big a deal.

Wouldn't a "delete from my view be better", especially for "questions"? An answer doesn't always mean that it's been answered.

I agree. It does seem like removing a thread from view and voting it down should be two different functions. When I remove a thread from view, it is not necessarily because I have some problem with its content. It might simply be that I have nothing useful to contribute to it. It seems unfair to make the thread suffer because of that.

I felt the same way until craven/nick added the tweak that auto-incremented the up count each time a new user responded. The number of responders should keep the number at a high enough level that it doesn't disappear from view to the users or new members. NOT that I'm a fan of voting topics down as the only way to keep from having to scroll through them, but I understand the current logic. I also agree that further tweaks would be beneficial.

I think A2K is an educated , matured forum where the participants should have some basic civility and decency to answer the post and give reasons for their positive or negative judgment.
I had consoled MMM in another thread that I am the target of those cowardly disturber in this forum to mark all my posts with negative votes by hiding themselves and not justifying their assessment.
Most disgusting, despicable, detrimental, dastardy behaviour in A2K.
Rama
( Extremely sorry for my verbal vomitations)