If I can see it and I view it as bad content it’s getting downvoted. Especially since such content usually is inflammatory political post from niche politic subs that have no problem espousing their politics in a “either you agree with us 100% or you're wrong/the enemy”. The rest of the time it’s weird fetish porn.

I browse by all because it’s a good way to see communities/content I wouldn’t otherwise see if I stuck to a curated community list. Not being part of the community doesn’t matter because I’m still seeing the content and still behaving consistent with using the downvote button to collectively filter it out.

I think a better option is these communities opting for the post not to get sent to all. Which won’t happen because a lot of previously mentioned post; the target isn’t the community who already likely agree with them, it’s everyone else. Better yet these communities could implement rules against post that are clearly inflammatory/flaming but then where would they grandstand?

I usually see a lot of people downvoting posts in a language they don't speak, presumably because they don't care.

I would suggest those people to select their languages in their settings so that they don't see this kind of content.

I was sorta with you until the "Clueless Downvoters Wall of Shame" bit at the end.

You can ask people to try and think about their voting behavior, but that's just a bit weird and obsessive.

Users do users because humans do humans. The only way to change how humans use the software is by changing the software. Trying to instead change the humans is sure to fail.

I'm gunna down vote this

Until there is a proper hide feature voting is the only way to hide a post across apps and the web-ui.

Remember fake internet points don't matter.

A little before I started using Reddit, my mate who told me about it said upvoting was used as a means of promoting posts or replies that people may be interested in, not because you like or dislike a post or reply.

I think Facebook has changed that and I will admit I will thumbs up a post/reply because I like it, but I will also upvote posts I think other users may be interested in.

I downvote and upvote whatever I wanna 🤷. Deal with it

I feel its a feature not a bug. It theoretically should filter the overall content to a more "average" viewpoint be the one that bubbles to the top this should mean that the more extreme views will be downvoted more and help solve the massive political divide that the existing echochambers have helped create.

Downvotes will always be used as a "i dont like this" and "i disagree with this" thats just what people gonna do when they have an emotional responce to somethibg they see. I recon its fine tho cos all people are going to dislike bad content but only specific groups will dislike other content. Might lead to some groups getting targetted but only the extremists like the nazis, communists, and vegans will be targeted and thats fine they are extremists.

This assumes that people who are interested in a community are subscribers, which isn't always the case. Users like me who subscribe to RSS feeds for communities, for example. This also doesnt account for people who might create a new or alt account. Wouldn't they have to resubscribe to every community just to get their votes counted?

With your great suggestion, i got an idea for lemmy software : why not activate vote only to subscribed community ? You haven't subscribed, you can't vote. But you can hide /filter the community.

The frontpage also need a rework because when you cross-post it flood thus people tend to downvote those posts. And lot other things.

What if upvoting and downvoting IS an active method of participating in those communities?

Hi there, you seem to be getting a lot of pushpack on this, so I thought I'd just chime in that I agree with what you've written, and have noticed the same problems in the smaller niche communities that I frequent. I worry that this behaviour could be a limiting factor in the growth of niche communities, which Lemmy desperately needs more of.

Another thing: don't forget that votes are public. Lemmy UI has a very handy feature for moderators that shows everyone who upvotes/downvotes any post or comment. I'm tired of posting content to different communities and be met of a pour of non-subscribers on the downvote side.

Do you think moderators could or should consider banning users whose only interaction with the community is downvoting posts? It would seem that the user isn't interested in these posts anyway, and the result would be very similar to if the user had simply blocked the community to begin with.

People will never use downvotes the intended way. They haven't done so on Reddit either.

I see no productive use for downvotes, so I've disabled them.

I sincerely doubt it. The main reason might be that people actually think that they are "helping" by downvoting?

In their own eyes, such content actually should have their rankings lowered, yes? (most especially in the "those leopards surely won't eat my face off" sense)

And tbh, isn't that what a downvote button is meant for? So however sparingly we may choose to use it, can we really complain all that bitterly if others choose to use it more often?

As someone who already follows these guidelines, I believe that most other people will never follow these guidelines. Far worse, even if >95% of the people across the Fediverse were to, that's still an awful lot of downvotes, compared to the number of people that have heard of a brand-new sub that is trying to get up off the ground.

Lemmy is at best beta-version software - the apps I hear are amazing but Lemmy itself is still relatively undeveloped (most of the time lately whenever I try to up-vote something, I have to do it 2-3 times for it to "stick", and getting comments to go through is also problematic, sometimes I have to cancel and try again, across multiple platforms and OSes including Android and Mac, Firefox and Chrome). We are desperate for a place that is not Reddit or X, but if we want something, we have to build it.

My suggestion: make downvotes public, not just to admins and mods but to everyone. Tbh I doubt very much that that would do the trick, but it is a thought to try to help people break out of that system of "I am anonymous so I can be as insensitive to the needs of others as I wish" mindset. i.e., if they thought that there might be consequences, then they might behave ever-so-slightly better? But ofc that would only reach the subset of people who actually cared.

bruh you literally are advocating for echo chambers

From the title alone i agree completely with you i just don't have the patience to read the body.

it's pretty clear reading this thread that different folk have different ideas about what or how downvotes should be used. what is intented behavior for one is wrong for another. i doubt that even clearly defined rules would change that as they woud be essentually the same thing - someone's opinion on how it should work. plus different instances have different rules.