I used to downvote fairly often on Reddit as a sign to disagree or to push down really disgusting bigoted comments. And to be honest, it became a habit to just downvote without replying. However, now that I’m on lemmy and not Reddit I’ve been actively trying to not instantly downvote things and instead move on or take the time to reply. Has anyone else been trying to do this?
I dislike using downvote as a disagree button. Makes me feel like I’m discouraging people from sharing an opinion that’s different than mine. Even if they are wrong (in good faith) I think I’d rather they feel it is a safe place to be wrong and just own the mistake with an edit or a reply. I know it makes me feel bad (I know I should have thicker skin) when I’m downvoted for having an opinion so I don’t want to make others feel that way.
I agree about not using it just to disagree with an opinion, but I do think the ability to downvote is very important. It just needs to be clear that it’s supposed to be used to reduce the impact of stuff this is either harmful or just distracts from the conversation.
If I’m in a thread talking about what the best flavor of milkshake is, I will absolutely upvote someone claiming that chocolate is the best even though they are “objectively” wrong. They are however engaging with the conversation. On the other hand, someone who comes in saying that they hate milkshakes and prefer lemonade, while they’re not exactly wrong in having that opinion, it would be worthy of a downvote because they’re in the wrong place for that comment.
And then there’s the bots/people that if they lost the ability to ever talk again, the world would be a better place. Never feel sorry for downvoting them.
You have a point. I did find myself downvoting much of what I disagreed with on Reddit. I wouldn’t mind seeing everyone break that habit here. Maybe that should be stickied in some official welcome to Lemmy etiquette post.
I intentionally joined an instance that doesn’t allow it. I do it kind of compulsively on other sites but really don’t feel good about it. Plus I always found it hurtful when people did it to me just because I didn’t know something or had a polite disagreement. Downvoting reminds me of the 6 Million Merits episode of Black Mirror (if that’s what it’s called). Now when I try to downvote Lemmy says nope can’t do that and I feel happy and relieved!
Nope. Downvotes are there to be used, so I use them.
do bees be?
Yeah it wasn’t made for disagreement, it was meant for a crowd control form of moderation. That’s why they had the karma index and allow for subreddits to impose karma restrictions. (I guess there could be an argument about it being a form of social credit system if it were, which let’s be honest it became that anyway, whether or not it was intended to be that way from the beginning)
“Discussions became binary”. And yet you subscribe to the binary of “hateful vs. non-hateful opinion” as if it’s clearly identifiable.
well, I am fairly sure that, legally speaking, there is a requirement for organizations to identify that by many jurisdictions.
Regardless, there is a difference in that I am not interested in being the judge. I don’t downvote at all.But you can have that gotcha. one point for you!
I’m not much of a downvoter, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you downvoting a lot.
Downvotes are a key feature of this kind of thing, and lots of people have argued lack of a “I vote to suppress this content” feature in facebook is why it’s such a haven for conspiracy theories and crazy nonsense.
A good feedback and control system needs actuators in both directions. The downvote button is a valuable tool and I am totally happy to hear about you using it a lot.
If you don’t mind my asking, why are you trying to make this change? What do you think might be wrong with it, for you?
For any weird, bigoted stuff, lots of downvotes and no replies is hopefully the message an OP needs to receive to get the hint that they should by plying their recruitment attempts elsewhere. Engaging them is probably the worst thing to do.
I’ve had to remember that there’s automatic hiding though, and do that manually.
Definitely agree with that, I very much so still downvote bigoted comments and posts though I think I’ve only encountered two comments like that so far. Lemmy mods and admins are doing a great job.
I was Reading a post earlier tonight where someone shared an anti Covid view point and dropped the whole big Pharma/government groupthink garbage.
Every comment was telling them they would not be accepted here with those views.
I checked a few hours later and the conspiracists comment was gone, but it did have the largest number of downvotes I’ve come across yet at 150ish.
An echo chamber we need not be, but conspiracy garbage we need not at all.
I just miss when conspiracies were fun and not essentially a threat to one’s livelihood.
From everything I’ve seen, conspiracy theories were rarely harmless. They almost always were rooted in antisemitism.
As time goes on I’ve been using the down vote more freely. Generally for anything I find low quality. I used to be more restrained with it but now I see it more as another tool that I have to shape the kind of content that gets promoted in the communities I interact with. It’s the only option beyond withholding an upvote to keep low effort posts, trolling, and bigotry out of your communities other than reporting, which shouldn’t do anything unless a post breaks the rules.
I’ve never changed my voting habits. I downvote trolls, hate, spam, and irrelevant content. I never downvote out of disagreement, nor do I use the upvote as an agreement button. I will upvote people I disagree with/am debating with if I believe they are promoting relevant discussion. That is how voting is intended to be used.
I don’t downvote if I disagree but I can’t help but upvotes in agreement. Positive reinforcement is my thing.
Same. For me, upvote = adding something to the conversation. That’s why I upvote most comments I come across, and rarely downvote people.
They should make it so that replying to a comment automatically disables your ability to downvote it.
Would simultaneously prevent people trading downvotes while they argue back and forth, and encourage people to simply ignore trolls and move on without replying.
If a post contains incorrect information that could be dangerous, you should be able to reply to it and also downvote it so that the incorrect information becomes less visible. For example, if someone said you should pinch your nose and lean your head back when you get a nosebleed. You should be able to correct them and still downvote to make the incorrect information less visible.
Wouldn’t the correction be sufficient? Other users could read it and decide to downvote
Same for me, my only difficulty is discerning whether the commenter is promoting relevant discussion or doing some variant of gishgallop or sealioning.
Why do you think I joined the instance I did?
Downvoting is useful for pushing irrelevant/spam comments down but it is definitely overused.
It’s not used for pushing irrelevant or spammy content. It’s used to show you don’t agree and push that content away from sight. At least be honest about that if you support using downvotes.
People act like they are making the thread better in some way by cleaning trash. But that’s not what happens. You are just making sure opinions you don’t agree with are at the bottom of the thread. Nothing noble about that. Feels good, sure.
You’re phrasing it in a way that is actively harmful. It’s like you’re trying to make downvotes worse than they are.
They’re absolutely useful, but not for just opinions you don’t like.
Yup, I saw vote manipulation way too much on Reddit. 3-5 down votes on a dissenting opinion right after it’s posted usually tanks even the most well reasoned comment. Accounts like Unidan fly under the radar for so long.
I usually downvote not because I disagree but because I think the comment is low effort or written in bad faith.
Honestly, for a while on Reddit, downvote was the only action other than posting comments that I engaged with on Reddit, mostly because I never felt strongly enough to upvote or block or save. And then I went in and seriously prunes Subreddits and basically cut all the Subreddits that I would ever downvote in and the ones that were negativity based like all the Subreddits dedicated to showcasing trashy, racist or otherwise shitty people. Also, any subs generally based in being down on something, even if it was something that everyone should be down on. Also nixed subs like latestagecapitalism because while I broadly agreed with the sentiment, they very vitriolic about everything. Reddit really improved for me since then. Highly recommended, I then spent a lot more time upvoting and commenting. Obviously don’t have that problem on Lemmy.
That’s a great step if it’s something worth replying to. Not everything is.
HackerNews has an interesting approach: You can’t downvote comments unless you reach a certain amount of “Karma”, and you can’t downvote posts at all, you can “flag” them, meaning you think they don’t belong here. Flagging doesn’t affect the vote count, but massive flagging does make the post appear lower in the feed, and alerts mods.
This, alongside the tight moderation and zero-tolerance towards flame wars in the comments makes HackerNews one of the best places on the internet imho.
Completely agree on all points.
An additional one I’d argue is a huge part of HN’s success is their employment of a full-time moderator, dang, who does a great job.
if you don’t have downvote, you don’t have a tool to negatively select some content other than reporting. this way, if mods are overworked, which is always, you don’t see difference between content that is irrelevant to most people and content that is actively harmful
I bet that 99% of comments that are downvoted are not breaking any rules at all, and a mod would do nothing.
I don’t know why people keep thinking downvoting is helping the mods… It really isn’t about anything other than pushing down opinions you don’t agree with. That’s how downvoting is used, upvoting is the opposite of that.
consider the following: technical question gets posted. you get two answers, one wrong but posted quickly, and another correct and more elaborate, but posted much later. the first one will get more upvotes just because it appears first, and the other gets less attention as a result. one way you can counteract this is by introducing downvotes, it’s not perfect solution, but it kinda works
up/down voting is simply a way to help comments you think are good, or agree with, become more/less dominant in the thread.
In some cases, comments are useful to explain why - but often that’s just not the case.
