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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Speaking as a mod, our tools are pretty limited. It's easiest if you report something so we can take a look.
I'm conflicted when it comes to down votes. In the reddit universe I'd watch within a small community where things were corgial and welcoming that for inexplicable reasons posts and replies would get down voted. This was a fountain pen group.
It might take hours or days for the up votes to take the comment or post into positive territory. The best the group could figure out was it was bots. I suspect some curmudgeon who didn't like when you'd mention Kaweco or what have you because they had a beef with them.
I believe an option just to report is the best option.
corgial
I think I like this word better than the original
I vote we use this as the new official word. Corgies are very corgial, so it just works :)
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.
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 👍
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 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
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.
Wouldn't those other bots also downvote if they could anyway?
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…”
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
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 agree.
It would be interesting to open this up to the instance and see how they feel.
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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.
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.
The answer, then, is moderators, not institutional passive-aggression.
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
Yeah I don't think it really makes sense to disable downvotes for everyone on the instance. Why should I be unable to downvote something on an external community when everyone else viewing that community has the ability to downvote?
As far as your instance is concerned, no one can downvote, even outside of your instance, because downvotes are rejected by your instance. This means that downvotes from other instances aren't visible to any users of your instance or any other instance that has downvotes disabled, and they don't affect the sorting of posts.
unfortunately downvote are not only used on off-topic posts. it could also be about disagreement, not about the quality of the post.
so it's not always a good indicator of the value of the post and can be use in a way to shut off divergent opinions, encourage a single point of view. not always a good tool.
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.
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?
It would be a useful feature for Lemmy.
It's already a feature of Lemmy. The Lemmy.one admins has merely disabled it.
A relaxed section for uncategorized discussion. Post a question, share some advice, let us know how your week is going, etc.