I can't find the records of the past conversations we've had about this, but the final decision was this:
A like (or whatever) button is a way to show appreciation without leaving a comment. It is pleasant to get likes, it provides positive reinforcement, and it's simple.
Dislikes would do the opposite, it's like someone spitting on you and not knowing why. You can express your dislike in a comment, which is perfectly adequate.
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Moreover being Facebook a commercial system, dislikes would have negative impact on its advertisers. So I think that this togheter with the above reasons made up for a like-only rating system. No need to look for more esoterical reasons.
But still the article was appreciated and it might spin up interesting conversations.
decentralized social network program pump.io has a dislike button. But features like this are implemented as apps, and so you can implement these kinds of features however you want. In effect a like or a dislike is an activity post on your own account with a backreference to the content, and others who subscribe to your feed see this. You can't aggregate all data as in a facebook "like" system, but I see this as a feature rather than a bug.
Comments
Interesting for comparison could be Diaspora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_%28social_network%29) github final comment on why they would not implement a dislike button (https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/1474):
[...]
I can't find the records of the past conversations we've had about this, but the final decision was this:
A like (or whatever) button is a way to show appreciation without leaving a comment. It is pleasant to get likes, it provides positive reinforcement, and it's simple.
Dislikes would do the opposite, it's like someone spitting on you and not knowing why. You can express your dislike in a comment, which is perfectly adequate.
[...]
Moreover being Facebook a commercial system, dislikes would have negative impact on its advertisers. So I think that this togheter with the above reasons made up for a like-only rating system. No need to look for more esoterical reasons.
But still the article was appreciated and it might spin up interesting conversations.
Anyway, I'd greatly approve a dislike button :)
decentralized social network program pump.io has a dislike button. But features like this are implemented as apps, and so you can implement these kinds of features however you want. In effect a like or a dislike is an activity post on your own account with a backreference to the content, and others who subscribe to your feed see this. You can't aggregate all data as in a facebook "like" system, but I see this as a feature rather than a bug.