Downvotes = “I disagree” or “this is bad and you should feel bad”?
I think I’ve settled on the latter. Disagreement is maybe best communicated by the absence of an upvote? And downvotes work best when they signal something that is just off base, and while not reportable, is not appreciated at a broad cultural level.
I think voting based on quality of content (and NOT whether you agree with it) is the best approach for healthy discussions. If somebody is a low effort troll, then for sure downvote (and maybe even consider reporting).
OTOH, if somebody makes a well written and thoughtful post about why Totoro is the best Ghibli movie ever, and meanwhile you think Totoro is not even in their top 3, then I would still recommend NOT downvoting 😃
I see downvoting of comments for stuff that does not require mods, but is still people being assholes or something not belonging. I don’t vote enough on submissions to have an opinion there :D
I’ve upvoted comments that I disagreed with, but were well written an contributed to a good discussion. I only downvote for very low quality, spam or hateful comments.
The problem is that there’s no way to enforce this in practice. All of these conversations about voting culture, with examples and pontificating always just come off as “everyone who drives slower than me is a grandpa, everyone who drives faster than me is a lunatic.”
Downvotes will always be an “I disagree” button no matter what anyone wants or thinks.
Hmm, that is a good point. I really wish Beehaw would refederate with SJW so we could benefit from their activity and experience more. I don’t agree with every decision they make but they certainly have insightful takes at times
Eh I still like downvotes and find myself just not enjoying beehaw as much without them. I mostly just don’t get the moral panic over having a disagree button more than anything.
Moral panic? What? It’s about healthy community dialogue and slightly how downvotes impacts the psyche.
If someone tells you why they dislike something you like, you’re not doing anyone a favor by downvoting it.
You are ignoring how trolls operate in reality though. THey explicitly use “just having an opinion” as cover for shitting up a forum. Look up “sealioning.”
But again, this is my opinion. People are far too concerned about the downvote button. And the fact that the above, completely respectful but seemingly controversial opinion already has downvotes kind of proves my point.
It would be useful if people actually used it to burrow trolls, sealions and irrelevant comments as intended, but as I’ve seen people can’t be trusted with that because as you say: It becomes a “disagree” instead, that targets everything that people disagree with. It gets inane on political topics where useless comments for the right tribe gets immensely upvoted. “Covfefe” Yes, very informative. There could be alternate vote for agreement, funny, or troll mark.
Most people on Lemmy right now are not using them in that way. As we grow, misuse of downvotes will almost certainly become more common, but right now people are self-policing their behavior for the most part
Those of us on kbin can see who up/downvotes. I've noticed, anecdotally, that once this became more wildly known, there have been fewer downvotes that mean "I disagree", with them mostly being used on troll posts or obviously bigoted posts.
I’m also wary of potential downsides though. I think in smaller communities it could be a problem because people might start fights with each other when they check who downvoted them. But I’m not sure, at least now we have a good test environment on kbin, and so far it seems to be beneficial based on what you’re saying.
I think it's overall good. A vote is no longer an anonymous action-- it's personal, just like leaving a comment supporting or disagreeing would be. While I don't think it would ever be appropriate to harass a person because they up/down voted something, I do think people should have to make the mental calculation about whether they're willing to have any specific up or down vote available for anyone to see.
Totally agree. I’m just trying to brainstorm possible issues that may crop up in the future. Many times, the solution to a problem simply introduces a different problem.
Although as I’m considering it, the ease of making alts on this platform mitigates any potential issues, because the whole thing can be sidestepped by downvoting with an alt.
Overall, probably couldn’t hurt to bring that functionality to Lemmy and see how it goes.
I think it's done more good than harm and don't want to see them anonymized again... but I do have to say I've found myself withholding a downvote that I think was completely justifiable and deserved because I didn't want to be the first and only one and get shit for it.
I guarantee it won’t be long before communities begin using this information.
Remember on Reddit how many subs would prematurely ban any accounts that participated in subs they disliked? That was entirely driven by the users, not the platform. Imagine if they had your voting information too.
I predict we’ll start seeing throwaway accounts for voting, to disassociate your voting records from your posting persona.
Agreed. The function of the down vote is to deprioritize that post/comment. People should use the down vote when they want to deprioritize that post/comment.
Its both. It will never, not be both. This idea that there should be some rule that we have to up vote things that we disagree with because it’s well written is cope from people that needs to go outside.
Comments get downvoted because it failed to convince people to agree with the comment and that makes it a bad comment.
But as an intelligent person, you can also discriminate between something that doesn’t convince you personally, and something that is completely without value or irrelevant.
When you refrain from downvoting in the former instance, you contribute to a more healthy discussion. Not every person that I disagree with is a bad person; similarly, not every comment that I disagree with is a bad comment.
Would you like to make an example of a good comment that you disagree with? Because in my world comments that I disagree with are bad comments. If they were good comments I would agree with them. I am not some teacher grading essays and giving points for good structure.
I am not some teacher grading essays and giving points for good structure.
That’s exactly my point. You are not the ultimate judge of what is good and what is bad. I’m not telling you to upvote things you disagree with, I’m simply telling you to not downvote unless it’s clearly not relevant.
All of your comments on this thread are good comments that I disagree with. Sometimes, disagreement leads to growth.
Yes, it really bugs me when I get downvotes but not one single comment articulating what they are not liking or what they disagree with. I could not care less about the score, I’m here for discussion and also debate. I often find when I ask “why the downvotes” it’s because people misinterpreted what I wrote (my fault, I need to be clear) or I used info they didn’t have (something I know because of an area of interest that I think it’s common knowledge in that group). Both can “fixed” by discussion.
Same man. But you hit the nail on the head, regardless of how you upvote or downvote, its usually even better to just make a comment and explain your thoughts, respectfully of course.
I agree with the above convo you've been having, but your comment made me think, so I'll play a little devils advocate here: do we want 1000 "I agree." comments following each other comment? Not really. There needs to be a simple way to say "I like this but don't have anything to add". An upvote accomplishes this.
As for downvotes, yes they need to be more than "I disagree". Something akin to "I don't think this contributes". I liked someone's suggestion that we need more than the binary up and down. Maybe a "troll" vote too.
I caught the joke :) I mentioned playing devils advocate cus I don't want to actually attack you or anything, I just saw an interesting opposing viewpoint that I hadn't heard expressed yet. I think your closer to the best solution in general tho
You’re taking things way to personally on the internet if you worry about down votes. It’s not people’s job to explain everything to you. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t, learn to move on from downvotes.
Goes too far. That a social media comment is the limit of what is possible as far as persuasion and learning goes, especially on difficult or controversial topics, is plainly wrong. Mind shifts can be hard work. And so there’s plenty of space in which a comment can be making a worthwhile point, politely and clearly, without it ever being able to be persuasive, just by the nature of the audience and topic.
There’s also low-effort/value comments that agree with your worldview but are bad contribution to the debate. Especially on controversial topics.
I’m sure there will always be lots of updates for things that shit on the opposition, especially when the majority thinks the opposition is morally and intellectually corrupt, but I’d rather those posts/comments be demoted (or e.g. relegated to a shitposting community) so healthy discussion can happen. And the truth can be seen more fairly.
As a side note: some of Reddit’s majority opinions which I broadly agree with, I found myself shifting away from, because most of its supporting posts are stupid arguments. And some of the opponents I’ve gained sympathy for, because whenever I check the source for hate against them, it’s ill-founded. I tried not to take much opinion from Reddit anyway, but I love it when good debate frames the truth more clearly.
I think this is very close to the most solid answer possible. Like
This is Bad content
I agree completely with this bit. Downvotes are inherently subjective, as is the concept of Bad content. But to make a choice of what to downvote, someone has to identify something worth deeming downvotable, and screw it, that’s a good way to deacribe what the majority of what falls under that umbrella.
The next bit is where I’d make a correction.
which I want others to see less of
You can’t unsee that bad content, it’s too late. And you can’t guarantee that downvoting will dissuade its continued presence. The only correlation between the two involves an expected emotional attachment between the posters of the bad content and their scoring outcome, and that’s not always here nor there. Bad content posters can be persistent.
But downvoting it has an immediate effect on the visibility of the Bad content for other people. It also labels that content. Doing so, puts it away from other people’s eyes, and tells others that someone thinks it should be put away. Maybe they’ll come to agree or disagree with that downvote, maybe it’ll lead to you seeing less content. Also no guarantee. But that immediate effect, the visibility and the score, can not be taken away.
In either scenario, it’s a communication tool. It may relate to your wishes for content, but mechanically, its impact is felt by a third party.
I stick to the original “Reddiquette” which I wish more people stuck to or even fucking READ for a start.
Downvotes were meant for off-topic and spam nonsense. They were NEVER meant for disagreement. If you disagreed with someone you were encouraged to comment in response. It fostered a much better and interesting community with people of differeing views not afraid to voice their dissent.
You would literally get right and left-wingers having heated but civil debates with each other and neither would be getting heavily downvoted. Can you imagine that happening on Reddit nowadays?
When Diggers and the general populace jumped on Reddit downvotes just turned into a spiteful and underhanded way of saying “Fuck your opinion and I don’t feel like justifying it”.
This resulted in echo chambers where people were too afraid to voice their true opinions cos they’d get downvoted and at worst banned from the subreddit by over-zealous mods who’d forgotten what downvotes were for.
I have a personal theory that this accelerated the polarisation of politics across the English-speaking world. Maybe if Republicans* didn’t get so heavily downvoted they wouldn’t have turned to places like The_Donald and 8chan to vent in like-minded echo chambers. They could discuss things without getting villified and have their views challenged in a civil manner.
*NB. Shouldn’t matter but to be clear I’m a left wing Brit. I’m just using Donald Trump/Democrats as a will known divisive issue.
I LOVE Lemmy because it has the oldschool Reddit vibe where people will disagree and neither person is downvoting the other. They just have civil discussion. Much better!!
Personally I NEVER downvote unless it’s utterly meaningless, pointless or just downright spam. I recently added one more trigger for me to downvote though: Low effort bullshit like “This” or puns that add ntohing to the conversation except to garner upvotes for their ‘comedic’ value.
There’s difference in disagreeing in opionion and thinking someone is just wrong. In the latter case, I find it reasonable to suppress their comment using downvotes.
This right here. For a while after moving to Lemmy, people were using voting like this. Now it’s back to downvotes everywhere on things people disagree on.
That’s what a lot of us agreed it was for a long time ago, but most people use it as an “I don’t like this”, or “I disagree” button. Some people even use it as an “I don’t like you personally” button. There were a few times on Reddit when I got into an argument with someone and they went through my profile and downvoted everything they saw until they got bored.
Same, and also “this has already been said in this thread. You should have upvoted the existing comment.” Basically a tool to improve signal-to-noise ratio of the discussion.
Originally up- and down votes were intended to crowd source filtering and rating content in a community. So voting up for things you want to see more of and vote down spam or content that is unfit for the community. But people will tend to upvote things they agree with and downvote those they deem wrong - I also find myself doing something like that. I now try to follow these rules:
Upvote things I like (or agree with)
Don’t vote on things I don’t agree with or think are dumb
Downvote things that I feel really don’t belong here.
It helps that lemmy currently shows the number of up and down votes instead of just the score, it gives a bit more inhibition before downvoting stuff.
Disagreement is maybe best communicated by the absence of an upvote?
There is a quote “You can not not communicate” but on the internet you can. If I get no upvotes, I don’t know if no one has seen it or people actively ignored it and it’s a bad advice to feel disagreed on when no upvotes.
I personally feel frustrated when I get downvotes but no comments because I don’t know why I’m downvoted. Some instances here in the lemmyverse (like mine) don’t have downvotes enabled so I don’t even see downvotes.
I think it’s best to engage in a conversation if you disagree in a constructive way and downvote without comment if you feel this is beyond help.
If I want an article to be read by others, I give an upvote. I’ll downvote if I don’t want it. It has nothing to do with my side of the idea or the event. For example, a rape news was shared. My upvoting does not mean that I support the incident, it just means that it will come to the fore so others can see it.
Yep. I’ll up vote news of a hate crime or something, but downvote things that are directly hateful.
Context always matters and a lot of the big sites fail to understand the difference between talking about things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia and somone being those things.
It doesn’t have to be a button. Just let users see how many other users saw their comment. If a user scrolls into the comments section and stops on my comment for a second or two, that counts as a read.
Alternatively, tally up the total number of user-seconds spent viewing my comment. Or maybe an average. Just something that lets me know I’m not a ghost!
Course I have my own biases but. I don’t want to see people get downvoted for saying things I don’t like just because I don’t like it. Also anyone who downvotes honest questions is just being mean.
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