An original poster asks a question or attempts to create a thread to compile information about a topic, and there is always some clown or asshole who cannot resist posting a snide remark. If the snide remark is clever or captures the sentiment of many, it gets a flood of up votes and rises to the top, bringing with it a tree of replies to the snide remark. Useful constructive answers get buried because they are boring to the wider audience who just likes to see a good roasting. I think there are more kids in the threadiverse than we expect.

So content that’s nearly garbage dominates the thread and drowns out the thread’s purpose, disservicing the OP and all those who want the same answer or collaboration. It’s a design failure of Lemmy to be blind to this very basic characteristic of human nature.

Censorship is unreasonable in this situation. But so is the status quo. Nothing wrong with a bunch of clowns having fun, but that fun should happen non-disruptively on the sidelines and out of the way. The OP has a mission and purpose. The OP should be able to click a red fish that flags a post as a red herring. From there, that tree should be pushed out of the way somehow… to a sidebar or folded, or a subthread of sorts… call it the clown room. Critics who just want to bitch or push contempt should still have a voice. Make it so they have to click a “criticism” button to then step into a space with unwanted criticism.

There is wanted criticism and unwanted criticism. An OP might say “Roast me…” or “what’s wrong with this approach?” If the OP intends for the discussion to be controversial, then the OP obviously has no interest in the flagging anything. But if the OP has a mission to accomplish, they should have a control.

Another way to look at this is the fedi could use a stackexchange replacement. Stackexchange never has garbage getting high ranks. I’ve never had an acct there so I don’t know how they manage it, but it seems Lemmy could learn from that.