Are you a good sport?

Nope.. I just understand Afrikaans.. and It was a joke. It's not funny because he ran away instead of laughing

Some players mark their opponents as a bad sport, simply because they lost the game. Giving players such power is a horrible idea. It leads to discrimination, because average public opinion can be very unfair. Players should not be treated as Youtube movies or Facebook posts which people can like or dislike. The feature should be deleted! Other invalid reasons (at least, invalid according to me) to mark someone as a bad sport could be:

• the player hates the opponent's race, nationality, age, gender, profile picture, or who knows what
• the player is offended because the opponent declines draw offers
• the player is offended because the opponent offers a rematch (instead of being honoured), especially when the opponent just has been lost the previous game
• the player is offended because the opponent declines a rematch
• the player is offended because the opponent refuses to resign (especially in a clearly hopeless position), and instead keeps playing
• the player is offended because they lost a winning game on time because the opponent refused to resign
• the player falls into a draw by the 50-move rule (or even loses the game) from a clearly winning position because the opponent tricked them to fall into a difficult endgame or endgame they didn't learn (queen vs rook, bishop and knight vs lone king, ...)
• the opponent has a higher rating than the player (Yes, even that is offensive to certain players!)
• the opponent refuses to chat
• the opponent is "too slow" (The meaning of "too slow" is subjective. For certain players, 60, 30, 15 or even 5 seconds per move can be "too slow".)
• the opponent refuses to play the way the player wants (the opponent does not cooperate)
• the player is irritated or even offended by the opponent's unusual or "annoying" moves (1.a3, 1.Na3, 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5, Scandinavian defense, Bird's opening, unexpected winning sacrifices, especially with check, ...)
• the opponent playing with winning underpromotions (lone king vs king and 4 pawns underpromoted to 4 knights). Certain players are really, reeeally, reeeeeeeeeally offended by that.
• it's Sunday evening/Monday morning
• the player's colon absorbed too much/too little water from their solid waste body products
• the player ate too much beans, cabbage, or onions
• just for fun
• just because they can

It's a terrible idea to let members rate each other. You cannot say the false positive bad sports are impossible. How do you know that there are many more accurate bad sport ratings than the inaccurate ones? The accuracy of forum comments has nothing to do with the accuracy of "good/bad sport" rating. All non-favourable comments can be shadowbanned, hidden or deleted by the poster or the admins, so, the accuracy of comments themselves is questionable. Can players see the reason why they are downgraded as bad sports, and who downgraded them and on which game? Ofcourse they cannot. And as you said, players cannot see even the number of thumbs up/down, but yet, being a false positive bad sport leads to serious consequences. It is much, much easier to just anonymously click the "bad sport" button, than to spend time and effort to non-anonymously write a disparaging comment.

Hm. As a kindly person, I tend to mark people as "Good Sports" when they've played an honorable match, win or lose. I would not tend towards marking others as bad sports if they simply stopped playing (as annoying as that is) unless they were simultaneously saying "nyah-nyah" in the chat. What if their internet connection failed them? (It happens.)

However, I came across this thread trying to determine how the feature was used and if there was evidence of it on one's profile. I'm guessing it's experimental?

I'm the opposite of what bernardifeanyi  describes, though I agree with much of his statement otherwise. I'm not certain this is a good idea unless it's clearly defined how it impacts us.

I rather like speeduptheserver's comment: reward those who are constructive. Let the "thumbs up" prevail. Get rid of the thumbs down on "good sport" - though allow a "report" (perhaps) for truly egregious behavior, if that seems needed.

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EDIT: I found more information about all of this over on this thread:
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/livechess/sigh-was-so-and-so-a-good-sport?page=2#comment-42648456, and it's an interesting conversation. It seems more about helping guide people toward both correct behavior and to the tools to deal with those who misbehave (such as blocking and reporting ... I thought these might be here ... just never used them ;-). So ... that doesn't seem like such a bad thing.

Tad2721, I try to cause a draw or a stalemate by repetitive movements, is that what you are talking about, or are you talking about when an opponent refuses to move, or does it very very slowly?

Yes, the "bad sport" button should be deleted, and leave the "good sport" button! Good idea. Who knows how does that potentially dangerous "bad sport" button impact the chess players on this website.

Over the course of a few hundred games, I've seen this option maybe twice. Are other people seeing it more often? (Now that I think of it, both times I saw the "good sport?" question came just after an opponent aggressively used the chat feature. Maybe that's what triggered the question?)