Can we have something called "downvote" for an answer, just like we have "thank you" on Socratic to distinguish better answers from the rest?

There are a lot of things to mention here, but the underlying principle on Socratic is that students can use upvotes to reward and no upvotes to "punish".

In other words, if an answer is helpful, the answer gets an upvote, which implies that the contributor who wrote the answer gets karma points. On the other hand, if the answer is not helpful, then the answer doesn't get an upvote and the contributor who wrote it doesn't get any karma points.

So if an answer is not helpful to someone, they have the option of not giving the answer an upvote, as opposed to giving it a downvote.

This means that the number of upvotes an answer gets can be used as an indicator of how helpful that answer was. Mind you, the number of upvotes an answer gets is not an indicator of the overall quality of the answer because upvotes are highly subjective.

Think about it like this--what is helpful to you might not be helpful to another student, but does not automatically imply that the answer itself is good or bad.

Another thing to keep in mind here is that allowing students to downvote answers would expose the answers to random downvoting by trolls.

It's important for us to allow the students who land on an answer posted on Socratic to be able to give it an upvote without having to create accounts to do it, if they find the answer helpful, that is.

If not, then they can move on without doing any damage. In fact, that's the case with all the answers posted on Socratic. The vast majority of students who land on an answer don't upvote it.

If we were to introduce downvotes, then that would have to change because the only way to ensure that answers don't get downvoted without a proper reason would be to force students to create accounts in order to upvote or downvote. And even then, we wouldn't be able to protect the answers from random downvoting. We would reduce it, but not eliminate it.

The main point here is that if you don't like an answer, then don't give it an upvote. If you think that answer is inaccurate or inappropriate in any way, which is a separate issue altogether, you can flag it or report it.

Long story short, downvotes are not coming to Socratic, at least not with the way the system is currently set up.