An update on our community regarding downvotes - Lemmy NSFW
lemmynsfw.com
Several people in the community have expressed frustration in regards to the fact that any post that fits the community it’s posted to but is slightly out of the normal post type like, for example, being more hardcore rather than softcore, get’s a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post. We have also had complaints that particular types of posts as a whole get more downvotes even if they are in the appropriate community and are the normal type of post for a community. This especially appears to be happening to male content. Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don’t even want to see in the first place. We understand some may not like some content of a particular post or community, but downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them in our instance and especially in other instances, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all. After some discussion amongst the moderators and admins,because of the reasons above, we’ve decided to disable downvotes at least for the time being. What do I do if I dislike a post? - We recommend those who would normally downvote a post they don’t like just, instead, block the user who created the post, or, if the community is a topic you dislike, block the community. That way, you no longer see those posts, but don’t effect those posts’ visibility to other members of the community and instance. - Additionally, you can view your “Subscribed” feed instead of “Local” so that you only see posts from the communities you are subscribed to. What do I do if a post doesn’t fit the community it’s posted in or is spam? - Please report the post, either the mods of the community or an instance admin will remove the post if necessary, as soon as possible. We have admins and mods online almost around the clock, so these types of posts should be removed quickly. Potential future post filtering on lemmy: - In the future it appears that lemmy may implement a tagging system similar to flairs on reddit. This request [https://github.com/Neshura87/Lemmy-RFC/blob/main/rfc.md] has piqued the interest of the lemmy devs, so keep an eye out sometime in the (maybe not so near) future for the implementation of that feature. As @[email protected] [https://lemmynsfw.com/u/yay] has said in the comments: >Downvotes should be used for posts you don’t like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don’t like. > >When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes. > >But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be. Please put any comments questions and concerns in the comments below, we are of course always open to community thoughts and feedback, and want to work with you to keep this instance an enjoyable and entertaining place to post and browse.
    • DerisionConsultingEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      It also means that you will only see the downvotes from your instance. So I would not be able to see your downvotes, because you are from kbin.social.

      If you are on a large instance, like lemmy.world, you’ll still see a lot of downvotes.

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
        172·
        1 year ago

        Like, I get being upset to some degree. I don’t fret about downvotes, but I do about reduces, since I want the content I bothered to post to at least be seen. But at the same time, that’s part of the risk of making subjective or controversial content (and unfortunately, to some people all NSFW content is controversial).

      • blindsight@beehaw.org
        53·
        1 year ago

        I don’t understand what you’re losing, tbh. I literally don’t understand the drama.

        Why would you want to downvote on a discussion forum? If it’s trolling, then report it and a mod can delete it. If you disagree, then reply and explain. Isn’t that why we’re here… To talk about and share content and ideas?

        • PugJesus@kbin.social
          10·
          1 year ago

          Not always worth the time to reply and explain. A downvote says “This isn’t content worth engaging with.” If some pro-genocide twat comes in and says “Aktually you have to understand that the genociders are in a very tough position…”, it may not be trolling or against the community rules, but it sure as shit isn’t worth being part of the discussion.

          • Friendship@kbin.social
            4·
            1 year ago

            Exactly this, the idea that every viewpoint deserves to be respected and given an equal share of attention is false. Racists, homophobes, ect don’t deserve to be given a platform to spread their views and down votes are one of the more effective tools a community has to limit those kinds of content.

          • blindsight@beehaw.org
            12·
            1 year ago

            I suppose it depends on how well mods respond to sea lioning.

            The problem with downvotes is that it encourages echo chambers, hiding any views that don’t conform to the consensus view. The Internet is prone to confirmation bias and downvotes exacerbate the problem.

            Unpopular views will still get “ratio-ed” without downvotes.

        • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          42·
          1 year ago

          If you disagree, then reply and explain

          A lot of people have trouble with this one I think, especially actually elaborating about it.

    • blindsight@beehaw.org
      125·
      1 year ago

      I’m on Beehaw, which doesn’t allow downvotes. If you downvote any of my comments on Beehaw I’ll literally never know unless I log in from another instance. Beehaw also won’t federate your downvotes to other instances, either, so only other users on the same instance will see them.

      It’s a pretty great system, imho. Downvotes haven’t been useful since Digg collapsed and Rediquette went out the window.

        • blindsight@beehaw.org
          11·
          1 year ago

          Felt weird typing it, too. It’s okay to talk about Rediquette on Lemmy as ancient history from 12 (?) years ago, right?

    • Deebster@beehaw.org
      51·
      1 year ago

      Downvotes are disabled on Beehaw, and I believe that downvotes from other instances don’t federate - i.e. they’re only visible on the instance the user downvoted from. If you’re on a massive instance and you view a popular community you’ll still get “useful” numbers of downvotes but otherwise it’ll mostly be upvotes.

      I think Lemmy does need a more nuanced downvote system (e.g. you need to select a reason or there’s a quota or something), but I’m not sure how it’d work with the wider fediverse.

      Edit: I should have scrolled more, two people had already written this comment).

  • FireTower@lemmy.world
    103·
    1 year ago

    It would be interesting to see how a larger instance functions without up or down votes. Similar to a traditional forum.

    • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.ee
      181·
      1 year ago

      You can. Your downvote are not federated though. That means your instance knows about them, but can’t send it to lemmynsfw.com since it doesn’t want to know. Consequently no other instance will know about your downvote since they ask lemmynsfw.com for who voted and who didn’t and not your instance.

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      101·
      1 year ago

      You will be able to downvote, but if the community in question is hosted on an instance that has disabled downvotes, your downvote won’t federate to anyone else. The only people who see it will be people on the same instance as you.

      For users of an instance that has disabled downvotes, their timelines silently drop all downvotes, so those users see the fediverse without the impact of any downvotes, irrelevant of where they came from or what other people see.