Why care? There is no karma system. Just move on
If you’re moderating a small community, downvotes can bury posts and hurt its growth.
Can’t they just block the communities?
Already 2 steps ahead, 3 steps backwards, and 2 forwards. If one shows up on the “all” feed, I block it. Ain’t much left AFAIK.
It’s best for me to block them rather than just downvote a random post purely based on the community it’s in.
I still think downvotes (and upvotes!) should count for more when they come from subscribers. At least for sorting within the community
for some reason i literally can’t downvote anything
Sorry, sister. As others have said Blahaj Zone doesn’t do downvotes. I think it was to ensure a less negative space for The Community (in that you can still downvote things and brigade without being clocked as bigoted) but that’s a bit apocryphal.
You’re on a no-downvote instance.
Instances can disable this feature maybe blahaj has done so?
Avoid „default” communities and instances, they tend to bring the worst of Reddit to Threadiverse. It’s slightly less of an issue if you stick to places that try to be different. You won’t avoid drive-by downvotes from /all but I don’t think it’s that much of an issue (there’s just too much crap there for anyone to browse it by time of posting).
I always browse by “new” but only with the subscribed communities. I see a pattern that some of my subscribed communities keep getting downvoted
Yes 🤤
I worked at a site with a karma system years before reddit and the like ever came into being. There will always be people who just downvote anything they don’t like. Unless you start finding and removing those users, nothing is going to change with them. And if you start removing chunks of your community, you have fewer posters, less interaction, etc.
I’m on Beehaw. I don’t see down votes. Blissful ignorance.
Expanding on what I said to another user. The problem with simply removing downvotes is that people still find low-hanging fruits to voice disagreement through, often worse than the downvotes. Then there are two choices:
- let them be. Hexbear does this, and its users use emotes instead, that increase the visibility of bad content.
- moderate against it. Beehaw does this, and it burdens its moderation team further.
Note mod burden is the major reason Beehaw is not federated with LW or SJW, even if its admins would be otherwise OK with those two.
It’s things like this that make me think we (people discontent with downvotes) are a bit too eager to throw the resource away because of its flaws, instead of trying to address them.
I don’t think you’re wrong about the tradeoffs, I just think the tradeoff is worth it.
What if all votes were hidden? You could still press the buttons and it would affect the sorting, but nobody sees the number.
Perhaps it’s my personal bias, but I don’t like the idea of hidden information. If you can’t see it, it’s easier to manipulate.
What if it was the opposite - all votes were shown, including who up/downvoted? From what I’ve noticed, people think twice before mindless downvoting if they know they can be called out for it.
Votes are public as far as the API is concerned and there are tools to show you who voted in what way.
I’m aware of lemvotes.org. However, I think this should be part of the default interface, for everyone.
In Lemmy currently this feature is exclusive to comms you moderate:
Sadly I don’t expect anything similar for PieFed. I really like plenty of its features, but when it comes to vote visibility it’s going the opposite direction - making them unavailable by the API instead.
making them unavailable by the API instead.
Votes are available via the API. There is a setting to limit it to your local instance. By default, they federate.
That’s a rather recent change, isn’t it? From what I remember the votes were cast by alternate profiles, so even if you tried to grab them from the API you wouldn’t know who voted on what.
If you’re modding a small community trying to get off the ground and you’re suffering from downvoters who aren’t participants in your comm, ban the downvoters.
You have two downvoters, probably the same person
flyingsquirrel a sockpuppet with 0 comment / 0 posts
https://lemvotes.org/user/flyingsquirrel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
nothis a vote manipulation account with 0 comment / 0 posts
someone I’ve had to remove from my communities https://lemvotes.org/user/nothis@sh.itjust.works
Probably a real person’s main account, but just really combative with nothing to say
Not made by me, but excellent oc by another lemmite https://startrek.website/post/27897300
Yes. It takes real restraint for me not to reflexively downvote news I don’t like, or posts that makes me cringe but they’re legitimate for the topic at hand. Also sometimes I downvote by accident without realizing.
Asking why things are downvoted or complaining about them are the two most surefire ways to receive plenty of them on the Threadiverse.
Upvotes or downvotes aren’t worth anything, don’t take it personally if you get downvoted. I’ve said unpopular stuff too and received downvotes. Once I wrote a raunchy joke and the votes on it went (1 -> 0-> 3 -> -5 -> 6 -> 20)
It’s funny because several mods on that instance do ban people for downvotes.
Sadly… yes.
Some people feel like (I would say “think” but that seems not entirely accurate:-P) their preferences are the only ones that should matter, and that their right to “speak” should triumph over (“trump”?) your right to not have to listen. Entirely without the slightest hint of awareness as to the irony that they are supporting the very right-wing fascist ideologies that they claim to be against!! (I have taken to calling these the “Alt-Left”, since they act identically to the USA “Alt-Right” that uses “alternative facts” in lieu of real ones as the basis for their belief structures). e.g. if they do not like a certain book then it is not sufficient for them to simply never read it - instead, everyone else must be denied the opportunity to access it as well, regardless of the circumstances you may find yourself in (being required to read it as part of a college course, seeking a well-balanced viewpoint by examining all sides of an issue, even highly negative ones?).
See also the phenomenon of “Eternal September”. When people who act like children - of whatever physical age - flood the room, it becomes impossible for adults to have any kind of rational conversation. Put another way: respect is not something to be expected on the internet. When they go low… well, you have no choice but to take it and like it! Or you can leave.
No seriously: if you can move to a PieFed community, that would provide the only realistic solution I can think of to that problem that you are describing. Lemmy provides none (well, there is one but it is enormously extreme: it would involve making a community visible only to people on the same instance as wherever it is located, blocking out the entire rest of the Fediverse by default and forcing people to have accounts on every instance that chose to do this, thereby invalidating the entire concept of federation itself; although note the concept itself has merit for narrowly discussing certain instance-specific matters where outside opinions are neither appropriate nor welcomed, at the behest of the instance owner + admins) - and I doubt that it ever will, given how far behind Lemmy is in terms of features and how slowly those are added (it uses the very difficult to learn Rust coding language), plus the authoritarian biases present in the current set of its developers (who seem to prefer an admin dealing with such at the instance level rather than granting that power to anyone below the admin level). However, PieFed allows communities to receive votes only from people who have actually subscribed to that exact community - others can view the content, but only if they click the subscribe button can they interact with it to sway its visibility in that manner.
Yes, I am saying that PieFed might very well legitimately “save” the very concept of threaded social media, preventing it from being abandoned entirely by those of us who cannot stand the screaming cries of toddlers fucking literally fucking every fucking single fucking place that we fucking go. I would rather go read a book that I checked out from a library and never visit the Threadiverse again if I could not find such hope that no, somebody else’s preferences do not get to dictate literally every tiny aspect of life that we all are allowed to live, which does not sound the tiniest bit like “freedom” to me.
Though I admit that I may be too overly sensitive right now to the absolute tidal wave of emotional vomiting that goes on across the Threadiverse (I live in America where the “will of the people” is leading to ah… uh… “big changes” as of late, so sadly I am losing hope that the masses always know what is “best” at all times - especially when not articulated in a well-reasoned rebuttal but merely delivered as a drive-by downvoting spree).
Not just fediverse, I think any site that allows “downvotes” has this issue.
Personally, I don’t see why the ability to downvote needs to exist. If someone is trolling, ignore it or report it. A troll post with a score of 1 and no comments is better than one with a score of -100 and no comments. The downvotes probably encourages the troll. They know they’ve upset a bunch of people. All their posts getting no interaction will bore them.
On the other hand, downvotes existing leads to things being hated on for no reason. Someone on asklemmy asks what your favourite pizza topping is and the top comment is pepperoni with a score of 100 and bottom is sardines with a score of -50. You see that and think nobody likes sardines. But what if taking away downvotes changes the scores to 100 pepperoni and 12 sardines. Now sardines isn’t looking so bad even though the number of people who like it hasn’t changed. What does the downvoting add? It just makes the people who like sardines feel bad. They might end up not contributing in the future and then every answer to asklemmy ends up being identical.
I really liked how you explained this, thank you
Downvotes are useful to make bad content sink. Without them, the bad content has the exact same score as fresh new content, content that failed the Fluff Principle, etc. And you do want the bad content to sink; if you don’t reduce its visibility, some clueless muppet is bound to interact with it, usually generating more bad content.
That’s why I’m not sure if the best solution is to outright remove downvotes. It feels to me like throwing the baby out with the dirty water.
Instead I feel like splitting its role into 2+ buttons might alleviate the issue. Perhaps a simple “disagree” button, or a more complex Slashdot-like system, dunno. Either way, giving people way to say “I disagree!” without interfering on the main purpose of the button - sorting content.
This could also solve another issue with downvotes I don’t see people mentioning often: you’re often downvoted without knowing why.
Someone on asklemmy asks what your favourite pizza topping is and the top comment is pepperoni with a score of 100 and bottom is sardines with a score of -50. You see that and think nobody likes sardines. But what if taking away downvotes changes the scores to 100 pepperoni and 12 sardines.
At least in the default interface, the sardines comment would show +12 -62, so you know at least 11 people upvoted it.
Downvotes are useful to make bad content sink. Without them, the bad content has the exact same score as fresh new content, content that failed the Fluff Principle, etc
I don’t see how downvotes help filter content. It makes sense at first, but either people are sorting content by New, in which case votes do not matter, or they are sorting by Top and will get only the “good” content. Several instances already have downvotes disabled. I don’t see any complaints from their users about “bad” content having the same scores as “good” content.
lemmynsfw had to disable downvotes because gay content posted in gay communities was being downvoted. It wasn’t being downvoted for quality, but for not being what the majority of users wanted to see. That doesn’t mean all users now have to see gay content they don’t like because they can’t downvote it. It’s still easy to filter using the block feature. Again, I’ve never seen users there complaining about being unable to filter good from bad because they can’t downvote.
if you don’t reduce its visibility, some clueless muppet is bound to interact with it, usually generating more bad content.
I’ve seen posts and comments with -100 votes often get lots of interaction from people who can’t stop themselves from arguing with a troll. Sometimes there’s only 1 or 2 comments under a post so the score doesn’t even change its visibility at all.
Either way, giving people way to say “I disagree!” without interfering on the main purpose of the button - sorting content.
The way to say “I disagree!” is with the reply button! Votes don’t prove who is right and who is wrong. I’ve never changed my opinion because of downvotes. Sometimes I even agree with a downvoted comment because I form my opinion based on arguments, not votes.
I also like seeing different opinions. Yours gave me a lot to think about! It’d be a shame if people didn’t post their thoughts because they feared being downvoted for it.
I don’t see how downvotes help filter content. It makes sense at first, but either people are sorting content by New, in which case votes do not matter, or they are sorting by Top and will get only the “good” content.
Think quantitatively. Ideally “meh” content should still be easier to see than the bad one.
lemmynsfw
In their situation (as admins of an instance where downvotes were consistently misused), I agree with their decision. However I still think something needs to be done on a software level.
Again, I’ve never seen users there complaining about being unable to filter good from bad because they can’t downvote.
Note this is prone to selection bias.
I’ve seen posts and comments with -100 votes often get lots of interaction from people who can’t stop themselves from arguing with a troll. Sometimes there’s only 1 or 2 comments under a post so the score doesn’t even change its visibility at all.
If it wasn’t downvoted, you probably would’ve seen way more interaction with it.
(Additionally I think people who argue with trolls should get 1d~3d bans. Just a “stop it, you baka!”. Including myself. But that’s an aside.)
The way to say “I disagree!” is with the reply button!
I mentioned this in the other comment, but basically: if the reason you disagree is due to some issue in the content (e.g. it’s an oversimplification, assumption, or plain bullshit), it takes more effort to address it in your reply than to generate that content with the issue. As such a quick-and-dirty way to voice “hey, something wrong with this” is necessary, even if some people abuse it.
If we’re using votes to rank content then downvotes are redundant because now you have to upvote „right” stuff and downvote „wrong” stuff. Assuming everyone is waging the same kind of information warfare then downvotes won’t anything… but we’re not. Those that downvote willy nilly just want to have more say in things than others who don’t have energy to religiously clean website from „wrong” content. You’re not responsible for safeguarding users from „wrong” content unless you’re reporting rule breaking one. If you don’t like what’s being said but it doesn’t break rules then reply and explain why is it wrong, let others upvote if they agree.
Tildes solved this already. They have regular upvotes and they have labels for offtopic/noise/malice. Being able to use labels is reserved to users with good standing and can be applied once only. Noise downranks things without removing them, malice is essentially same as reporting them. Notably, there is no label for „wrong”.
downvotes are redundant
In practice they are redundant because most people vote based on opinion, so both become the same (agreement gauge). However ideally they aren’t redundant; upvotes are to be given to things that stand out, and downvotes to things that detract from the discussion (noise, trolling, etc.)
Those that downvote willy nilly just want to have more say in things than others who don’t have energy to religiously clean website from „wrong” content.
Some see this as an abuse of the system, not as its normal usage. I’m not sure on the dividing line between both things, though.
If you [=anyone] don’t like what’s being said but it doesn’t break rules then reply and explain why is it wrong, let others upvote if they agree.
The problem with that is Brandolini’s Law: even if we ignore “intention” (whatever this means), it takes far more effort to address bullshit, assumptions, oversimplifications, “ur sayin dat cuz ur…” etc. than to come up with it. And if it takes too much effort, people won’t do it.
As such, a system can’t rely solely on replies to let users show each other “hey, this post/comment is bad”.
You can rely on stricter moderation; but that comes with additional costs.
Tildes solved this already.
Incidentally my proposal to fix downvotes isn’t too different in spirit from what Tildes do.
So, people want to up/downvote based on opinion, right? Let them do it. But give people other ways to quickly show some piece of content is bad, and why. Effectively splitting the downvote button.
Complaing about downvotes? Straight to jail.
