By default, Lemmy allows downvotes globally. However, when a server disables downvoting, it is similar to using a feature that is usually reserved for enterprises and very small, non-federated communities.
If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.
This might be a real unpopular opinion but I think the down vote is a broken feature. We do need some kind of vote to help the best stuff rise to the top, thus the up vote. Down vote basically says “I disagree with your opinion but I don’t have a strong enough rebuttal to engage in the discussion to explain why”. A basic agreement doesn’t usually add a lot to the conversation unless the comment itself comes with additional context, a disagreement requires some level of dialog as to explain why. It encourages this bubble hivemind instead of open discussion. Really makes me miss how popular forums were in the mid 2000s.
It doesn’t really stop spam, we have stronger mechanics for that like reporting, moderation and spambot tools. Plus posts without any engagement usually just fall off pretty quickly without reaching a wider audience.
Then you have your trolls who collect down votes. Having a vote score of 1 is way less compelling for a troll than -15.
Edit
4 down votes without discussion, we’ve just proved the point.
Eh, up votes are just as likely to be an “I agree/like” rather than a topicality, importance, or quality indicator. And it’s just as likely to be done without any engagement worth seeing.
This is also a way to form bubbles/echo chambers since sorting by anything but new will surface just the stuff most agreed with.
If down votes are broken, then all votes are broken. The only way for voting to be not broken is to have them not change what all users see. You’d have to use some other metric for sorting that isn’t time based, and specifically exclude any vote based sorting at all.
Which is entirely possible, and I think that’s the way it should be. Keep votes because they work to filter out useless comments to some degree, but don’t let them matter.
Downvote do have a role… It sort of reading the room.
Sometimes the hot take is too hot, sometimes person literally spouting wrong information with confidence of ChatGPT. You don’t always have to engage.
All of this is true in “natural” social media tho once it becomes big enough too many bad faith actors get involved and no consensus can be built
I agree that it’s a broken feature, but I disagree with the idea of simply removing it and calling it a day. It is useful; the content that surfaces up might not be always the best, but the content near the rock bottom is typically shitty.
In my opinion the best approach would be to force some feedback from the user while they’re downvoting the content. It doesn’t need to be fancy, nor to go against the pseudo-anonymous of downvotes; just something like a pop-up asking “why are you downvoting this?”, followed by 5~6 options (for example: “disagreeable”, “rude”, “factually incorrect”, “unfunny”, “off-topic” etc.). In that situation, even if people downvote you based on opinion, it’s damn easy to detect and say “nah, they just disagree with it”.
Love this idea. Down vote is severely lacking a why and ultimately doesn’t change anything but good reasoning can go a long way.
Yes and no, I agree we need a better alternative to only downvotes but adding a reason to be able to downvote will only make the problem worse.
They are removed to protect the sensibilities of the users, so instead of seeing ambiguous 100 downvotes, now you’ll have 70 downvotes with messages that might go from no or ew to horrible insults I’m not going to type here, if it was hurtful or discouraging before, it would get worse.
Sadly I don’t have the creativity to come up with a better way, the only alternative being to move to a forum where they can control as they please and categorise everything until the fediverse (or Lemmy at least) has the tools to give them their safe space.
I am not proposing that you’d need to write down why you’re downvoting the content, but that you’d pick an option. As such, the ability to say “ew” or hurl an insult would be zero.
And the goal here is not just “to protect sensibilities”, but to force the downvoter to provide at least some feedback. Because a lot of what makes the current system feel awful is that downvotes are interpreted as “this is bad”, but nobody can be arsed to tell you “why” it’s bad, in a way that you could fix.
Disagree, the downvoters would just pick a default reason and move on… maybe even turning one of the reasons into a troll motive.
Remember we’re talking about people who only care enough to go out of their way to mass downvote or even have scripts to do it for them; not normal users who up/down vote and move on (which weren’t the problem back then, as far as we were told).
Forcing a reason maybe would stop people who actually cared enough, for the rest it would just be a nuisance so they’d pick whatever (or the meanest option).
Honestly… after reading another guy’s comment, I am more inclined to just say fuck it and say we return to the forums, no upvotes or downvotes, things neatly categorized into their place (specially so sensible things can be hidden but still available) and if someone wants to interact they’d have to comment.
People who mass downvote, with or without scripts, are better dealt separately - it’s vote manipulation, those people shouldn’t be voting up or down on first place.
You’re still doing two clicks to downvote someone, instead of just one. And in the meantime there’s always some room to think “why am I downvoting this again?”
And perhaps I’m judging other users too much based on my own usage of the downvote button, but often I’d rather have a way to say why I’m downvoting it - because someone were rude, or because they’re babbling bullshit, etc. I tend to believe that other people are like this too, but perhaps I’m wrong, dunno.
For reference, Slashdot uses a similar-ish system; except that it does it towards people voting up. I see “types of upvotes” problematic because often good content checks multiple boxes, but the rough idea works.
The problem with this approach is that chronological sorting leads to a lot of trash, as people know that their shitpost will be still highly visible for the others. Kind of like 4chan.
We’ve reached the point I’ve been trying to get to, thank you.
We are not talking about people who think about doing these things, we’re talking about people who do it just to be an ass. No other reason needed.
The ones who think or somehow rationalize their votes are people who already moved on or blocked what they didn’t want to see, those are not part of this problem. Do you really believe a dedicated group or person who just keeps on creating instances, scripts and bots to troll a comm/user is someone who is going to care about why?
So the same problem if we browse Lemmy in chronological order? I mean… there’s a reason we have multiple kinds of sorting and the forums also have their own way of sorting, also why Lemmy and other platforms have moderation, to keep the shit out and enforce the rules (enforcing quality would also be cool but they say it’s too subjective to be doable).
That’s also why categories inside a forum are used, you split the shitpost from the actual content and if you want shitpost you go to that part of the forums, if you want nsfw you go to that category, if someone wants nsfl they can go
fuck themselvesto that category, and so on; it’s would not be like Lemmy where you either see everything you haven’t blocked or only your subscriptions.