First off, I am going to start off and say this is a rant so if you aren’t in the mood, you probably want to skip over this. Second this isn’t an angry rant, it is a disappointing one. I am not mad at any of the parties specifically involved, but more disappointed as a whole at people and how ungrateful we are as human beings.

So where does all this disappointment come from? I am glad you asked. I am a member of the community Forrst (http://www.forrst.com), which is a community where designers and developers share snaps (pictures), links, code snippets and questions. It is a great community, I highly advise signing up for an invite for anyone in the design/development industry. This rant is not specifically against forrst users, just my point is well illustrated in a conversation that has been going on there. First off some Forrst basics. People post items (images, code, questions, links) and other members can “like” an item and/or leave a comment. This isn’t new to Forrst, this is like Facebook or Digg or any of the 1001 other sites on the internet. Unlike those other sites, the purpose of Forrst is to get critique. So someone suggested we had a dislike button, something I strongly support (also on Facebook and Digg), and apparently I have discovered I am clearly in the minority. Now I have no problem with Forrst not adding a feature that they think would hurt the community, infact I think it is extremely responsible for the owners/creators to understand their users and create a system that functions how they function, what I am actually saddened by is the users themselves. The arguments for the lack of a dislike button appear to be as follows:

• People will just dislike an item and not comment on it which is useless feedback
• People will dislike things just to be mean
• Novice designers/developers will be discouraged by too many negative votes and not continue to learn

Now what makes me sad is that I think every single one of those things is wrong, sad and an obvious deficiency in our community. The fact that we are so self important that we think that people owe us their time for length comments, so childish we would dislike things out of jealousy or so fragile that negative feedback would stop us on our journey to become better is absolutely ludicrous.

Any Lovin is a Good Lovin

Anyone who takes time, even one second, out of their day to help me with critique, suggestions, comments, answers, whatever… is doing me a favor. Whether that be liking, disliking, commenting, taking screenshots of and marking up, branching my code and making changes and sending them back… whatever it may be. I will bend over and kiss each one of their asses as they are doing something for me out of the goodness of their heart. They have decided to busy their brain with my passion/problems/work, if for even 1 milisecond, I should be thankful as they owe me nothing. The audacity I have of making my ego easily puffed by with a single click of a button, but requiring those who don’t agree with me to have to spend more time to express their opinion seems as though I have no interest in obtaining negative feedback. Are comments better then votes? You bet your ass they are, they are way more descriptive and helpful, however why then can I just as easily give praise with a single click? Does that mean the praise is worthless? I am not so high as to think that any spec of help I get from others isn’t valuable and I will thank them for it every day with my whole heart.

Promoting Mediocrity and Fear of Bullies

Why do we continue to allow people to create mediocre shit and tell them it is awesome? If something sucks, I say mark it as so. You can only get better by understand the flaws in what you do. I think there are extremely tactful ways to provide negative feedback without “hurting someone’s feelings”, and to be honest I hope it hurts their feelings, that means they were passionate about what they did and only put it out when they thought it was the best they could do. That is the guy I want to work with. If he has any sort of smarts, he will realize at no point in your life will you ever be better then everyone else in the world at everything. So even if I put out my best work that I am super proud of and you tell me it is shit, at least I know how much my radar is off. If there ends up being people that are assholes and just vote things down out of jealousy or anger, their votes will most likely be lost in the averages as well as the community will weed out the garbage as it grows. You don’t get paid to give your opinion so why would someone waste their time being mean or shitty if they didn’t get a reward?

Crying Over Spilled Milk

If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen. You can’t ask for feedback and expect to only receive glowing reviews. First off that is unrealistic and useless. I am not sure how a person would be so discouraged by bad votes, but would however not be discouraged by critical feedback comments, but that is a whole other issue. We contribute in feedback communities to make each other better people, not to blow smoke up each other’s asses.

So there ends my rant. In reality, whether Forrst ends up having a dislike button or not it is irrelevant. My insight into some of my peers thought process on feedback has certainly been an eye opening experience and if anything I guess I can say I am greatful for that.

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