Really loving the new experiences here on Lemmy.one. But I’m seeing many subs with off-topic posts. Community downvotes will help overworked mods find and remove such posts. I understand no one likes to be downvoted but it’s a necessary tool for our community and only helps users understand and refine what and where they are to be posting their content.
Oh crap. Lemmy.one doesn’t have downvotes - this is bad.
Without downvotes it is not easy to know which comments are controversial. I don’t want to join another tiktok or instagram, I want to join something informative and thus a proxy of the value of the information (while not perfect) is critical.
I thought it was community specific, but looks like I can’t downvote even on other instances.
I need to look for an alternative now.
Yes, you will have to be sure to join an instance aligned with your values on moderation.
I think not having that will turn this into a tiktok or instagram.
I’m now trying out lemm.ee which has downvotes, and so far looks good.
I disagree, but it sounds like lemm.ee will be a better fit for you, and that’s the beauty of the fediverse 👍
Yeah!
The thing is others can downvote you from other instances. Just you can’t.
I don’t know if lemm.ee takes the downvotes into account for the score, or ignores them. But from other instances you can downvote the same post or comment.
-1 in terms of a comment score? If you can’t downvote, yes, the score is never going to be negative.
That’s the beauty of federation: you can choose any of the 90% (or higher) of Lemmy instances that allow downvoting, instead of one of the few that doesn’t :)
Do you happen to know what happens if someone is on an instance that allows downvotes and downvotes a post on a different instance which doesn’t allow them?
The downvote isn’t federated.
I don’t know. I like the lack of a downvote.
If I like it, I up vote.
If I have something to say to support or refute, I comment.
If it needs to be reported, I report it.
Otherwise, I exercise my own right to social media “mokusatsu” and just move on. Almost like it’s not even worth my effort to downvote.
Yeah, the downvotes are really unnecessary. Just a lazy way to be negative.
Speak up, report, or move on with your life. Whatever is appropriate to the situation.
I disagree. Downvoting was often used as a super anonymous way to bully people. I am glad it’s not a feature here and hope that it remains not a thing on Lemmy.one.
I would down vote this post if down vote was possible
please no! This is the reason I chose this instance, and downvotes is something I always hated on Reddit - and occasionally even HN
I don’t miss it. For a lot of people down vote is just a I disagree with your take button instead taking the time to leave a comment instead of refuting it.
If a comment is really problematic better to just report.
Absolutely my feeling as well. I think the discourse is better for removing that button, and I haven’t missed it.
I also know that if it returned I would use it as a I disagree with your take button as I’ve always done.
I disagree. Initially, I thought lacking downvotes was an issue as well, but I’ve changed my thinking.
If it’s a post or comment I disagree with, I try to reconcile WHY I disagree, and then use that to participate in the discussion, as opposed to just dropping a downvote and moving on.
If it’s a post or comment that needs active intervention by a moderator, reporting it is the best solution anyway, not simply downvoting it.
Vote counts are a great way to measure public sentiment at a glance. It’s also mostly (but not always) correlated with the quality and/or accuracy of the post. If people only judge a post based on that number, it’s a problem with the people and not the voting mechanism.
I recently had the experience where I was looking for a squid farm design in Minecraft. A Youtube video came up that explicitly said it worked with my version. As you probably know, Youtube recently decided to hide all downvotes. But the video had a few thousand views and ~50 upvotes, so I spent 3 hours collecting the resources and building the farm in my world. And then it didn’t work at all. There wasn’t even an adjustment I could make to fix it. If I could have seen the probably 100+ downvotes, I would have known to look into it more and not waste my time and effort on that stupid design.
I agree with this sentiment, however wouldn’t an actual text post saying it doesn’t work with your version have been more beneficial than downvotes? I think that is a good example of why downvotes are, to me, the “lazy” option. Not having them means more direct engagement is required.
I recently had the experience where I was looking for a squid farm design in Minecraft. A Youtube video
you would never know if the downvotes are because of video quality, someone not liking the narrator’s voice (or the content creator itself). As someone else mentioned, an actual comment saying it doesn’t work on a version is way clearer
it’s also mostly (but not always) correlated with the quality and/or accuracy of the post
it hasn’t been my experience in quite a few communities. People will downvote things they don’t wanna hear, even if it’s the truth, or just an opinion.
You’re right that people may downvote for a variety of (possibly bad) reasons, which is why that metric shouldn’t be the only one you use. In addition to just being interesting and informative, I see overall negative sentiment as an indication that the content deserves more scrutiny. Not to discount it, but maybe verify claims that I would have otherwise taken at face value.
Also, the process of manually reading and categorizing comments as positive or negative and then adding them up is much more labour intensive than just looking at a number. I can appreciate that there are some benefits to that approach, but I don’t think it’s worth it considering that there’s a native feature specifically for that purpose.
I guess people in general prefer this way - which is probably why 99% of Lemmy instances have downvotes enabled. You can choose any one of them :)
For me, it makes me more stressed about posting stuff, specially since you can be downvote bombed just for saying you didn’t like X book, or whatever.
It also makes me more stressed when reading comments, for some reason. Either when I see an innocent random comment with negative points - I feel bad for the commenter - or when I end up using it as a disagree button and get more stressed. IDK why.
So for me, not having it is way better. Otherwise I maybe wouldn’t even have created a Lemmy account, and used the “opportunity” (Reddit down in flames) to be less online - which I guess would also be a great outcome.
TLDR: some people prefer no downvotes, but most instances allow them. Your user is already on lemmy.ml, so why do you care?
Without the downvote option, i just seem to block people way more frequently. Which honestly probably works out for the best
It definitely leads to a more relaxed experience.
Can we downvote lemmy.one posts and comments from another instance?
you can, but it won’t have effect on lemmy.one, because it’s going to discard downvotes
So a top post on lemmy.one could be a controversial post on other instances?
Sounds like a good reason to block an i stance if it has the predictable results.
Yes exactly. I think each instance calculates separately the score and which posts appear in hot/etc.
I kinda get it, but why would a post be controversial and at the same time not a reason enough to either report or block the user that posted it?
I was initially skeptical of not having access to downvotes, but I’ve not really come across a situation where I want to use it.
My view is likely to change though as more Reddit users migrate to the lemmyverse/kbin as a whole
Agreed!
I personally didn’t mind the lack of (downvotes), but really thought I would at least miss it a little more but I don’t.
Granted I only recently joined so time will tell.
It’s been interesting because I’ve caught the reflex to downvote - and I haven’t been able to. I’ve needed to think harder about my responses.
I dunno. I realize the intent behind downvotes, but on reddit this led to dog piling. And regardless of whether you were “right” or not, if the first 1 or 2 down votes, by pure chance, didn’t like you, your post/comment was basically nuked to the phantom realm.
If it’s that bad, just report it. If its not worth reporting, its not worth the dog piling either
I have to disagree, as I’ve seen posts get an initial few downvotes well into negative playing field and come back after the rest of the community has had a read. We’ve all seen the back up comments to a post like that “not sure why you’re getting downvoted…”
And not having dog-piling leads to reverse dogpiling, where only those with the resources/know how to have a botnet army surreptitiously upvote all other comments achieves the same thing.
You haven’t gotten rid of the problem, you’ve just removed your own and other average users’ ability to participate in the solution.
They probably don’t mind upvote brigading/dog-piling as much because it makes them feel good.
Only positive feelings are just as toxic as only negative ones.
Human experience exists on the full scale. To cut out parts we don’t like causes active harm to ourselves, others, and communities
I liked the fact that we don’t have downvotes here.
In my experience, downvotes do little but encourage dog-piling and echo chambers. I have a few accounts on instances that disabled downvotes, and few that enabled them. The difference is very clear. The instances that disabled them have noticeably more rich and diverse discussion, with users being less afraid to disagree with each other and have proper debates.
The instances that have them enabled vary a bit, but I noticed a pattern that certainly reminds me of The Hard R: Most comments on a popular and highly upvoted post are basically people agreeing with the post over and over again with different words, and then there a few comments that actually disagree, but you’ll have a hard time seeing them because they were downvoted into oblivion. This isn’t always the case, certainly not as much as the other place (at least not yet) but I have already noticed it happen.
I think something that isn’t considered is that people aren’t always going to be happy with you and the ability to downvote is an outlet, not being able to give a downvote could increase the likelihood that the person responds with their disagreement in a way that results in more negative comments.
And if they’re disagreeing in a respectable or kind way, then that’s good! It encourages discussion and debate, instead of simply clicking downvote and leaving the poster no way to know why you disagree at all.
If they’re being rude or inflammatory, then that’s breaking the rules anyway, so instead of being downvoted, it should be reported.
What’s wrong with disagreement? Personally, I’d rather see words that add context rather than an anonymous downvote that could mean anything.
Commenting merely boosts activity on a post… Exact opposite of what you’d want.
Why is that the exact opposite of what you want?
If there’s something objectionable in a rule breaking way, report. Otherwise, this seems like you literally just don’t want to have discussions, which is certainly your prerogative but then what exactly are you getting out of this?
Here’s an excellent example… Nothing against the rules in the comment, but it’s off-topic and, frankly, insane. It should get pushed towards the negative and hidden. https://kbin.social/m/worldnews/t/53687/-/comment/229302
I get you, altho that I’d just report.
If we took a less spammy/insane thing for example though, like just a low quality post, I understand that. Not objectionable enough to report, and no utility in responding because it’s just noise and you’d just increase the noise. And there is utility in getting rid of it (or at least deemphasizing it) because it gives space to actual discussions.
I think that’s a reasonable use case for downvotes. It’s definitely not the only way they are used (e.g. disagree button), but valid anyway. There are other mechanisms to sort this way too (e.g. number of likes + age of comment, so old comments with no/few likes sink - new junk still sits at the surface for a bit tho, possibly longer than if downvotes could drop em). But worth more thought for sure.
On Hexbear we found that downvotes were being used by trolls to anonymously manipulate perceptions on the site. In particular, there was an organized campaign to downvote trans-positive content to try to drive them out so stupidpol types could elbow their way in. We ended up cracking open the database table and banning everyone responsible. We also disabled the downvote.
The problem with the downvote is that it is lazy and anonymous. If somebody is spreading misconceptions, they should be confronted in the open, so those misconceptions can be corrected. If somebody is posting something inappropriate for the site, it should be removed outright. By removing the downvote, we brought a lot of arguments out into the open and have since found consensus on many issues which would otherwise remain ongoing sectarian squabbles.
On the software side of things, I think it would be better if downvotes were enabled / disabled at the community level, rather than the instance level though. There are places where they can be appropriate.
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Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. I just think that the same could be said for upvote brigading. I agree, definitely report. I just feel that reporting places extra load on moderators that I think should be tending to more serious issues in their communities, and it’s just not in the spirit of the curation platform in my humble opinion.
I appreciate yours and the other comments as well. Lemmy.one is a great instance (a very fast and responsive server as well) but I think I’ll be checking out some of the other, more purest-style forms of instances with all the traditional features I expect. But this is exactly why I love the fediverse - so cool that I can just jump over to a different instance that matches my style more closely.
