no, sometimes people suck and deserve to have their sentiment downvoted - at least on a site where voting has to exist
on proper forums where there is no voting, there are better ways to discourage behavior, like just ignoring the user / posts. but if the buttons are there you want to click them
I personally feel like restricting downvotes is cutting off a vital voice that people may have so that’s why in my instance I have them enabled. If there’s something that the community disagrees with I feel like the community should be able to vote on that rather than only allowing upvotes and not allowing everyone to voice their proper opinion on something.
Absolutely not. It is misleading like on YouTube. Before they removed downvotes everyone could see if a video is useful or not. “Best tips and tricks for car repair” … 15341 upvotes? Nice! Maybe it’s helpfu–… 98412 downvotes? Maybe not THAT helpful.
it’s so nice being able to see actual downvote count again instead of total score as well. glad lemmy has no motivation to remove that at the moment [what was reddit’s reason? spam prevention? not worth it]
No. Downvotes can help drive engagement as more people try to understand what was said.
People being downvoted doesnt necessarily mean it is hateful, it could just be incorrect or morally objectionable… it’s important that discourse is there, too.
But that’s the thing innit, it’s supposed to be a visibility vote, not an “I agree/disagree” vote, but people keep using it as that. Maybe we need more buttons.
Even as a visibility vote it’s somewhat flawed. If you downvote everything that’s wrong, then many people will miss out on corrections to commonly held misconceptions.
imo we should 100% keep downvotes, how else would we shame bigoted opinions?
I personally enjoy having the downvotes and seeing them too, but I think it‘s neat communities on here have that option anyway.
eh, 12/10 is more informative than 2
I far prefer it to be transparent. But its good that instances can make the decision for themselves.
I saw my first anti-trans meme on lemmy.ml today. It was a screenshot from a Babylon Bee article.
On Reddit, I didn’t like how much things would get downvoted if the sub didn’t want to hear them. It really strengthened the hive mind. At the same time, it was an organic way of rejecting garbage like anti trans memes.
I feel mixed about whether or not they add to a community. I’m not worried about bullying, but I am worried about how they shut down ideas, and encourage everyone to think the same way.
I like it today. Depends on how judicious mods are with bans. If there’s a genuine threat of being banned for not be(e)ing nice, it may not matter. That said, I think that if these communities ever reach the size of something like Reddit, downvotes may actually have a place.
What do downvotes do in Lemmy? If it’s like Slashdot was, where it hides by default if it goes to 0, but you can choose to view those posts, or maybe better like reddit did where you could see there is a post but it doesn’t take up room or make you see it, I like it. Kind of a community moderation. Although, perhaps you should have to be joined to that community to downvote stuff? Not sure if that’s technically possible on the fediverse - I don’t mean joined to the instance, but the actual community.
I have very rarely seen a post downvoted that I didn’t think “deserved it”, but maybe it’s a big problem I’m not aware of. I’d also prefer breaking out “I don’t like or agree with this” / “I like or agree with this” from “this adds to the conversation” and “this takes away from the conversation”.
I’m not a fan personally, I’ve never really cared about old Reddit cliches like “the hivemind” or “downvotes = disagreement”. I just really liked being able to tell bad content to fuck off without getting into a flame war. Beehaw’s moderation against hate speech is why I’m still with it despite the no downvote settings
I’m split.
Pro: One thing I see on bigger reddit communities, is someone posting something that sounds right and getting tons of upvotes. Later someone proves then wrong. This is not a reportable offense, what option is there to reduce exposure, but downvote?
Also, things that don’t fit in a community, like making jokes in a serious community. Banning jokes sucks for mods, but people will still upvote them, for example because they don’t realize where they are. This will change the culture of a community with no way to combat it.
Con: people downvote because they don’t like some opinion. No need to attack someone, be wrong, just have opinions that someone dislikes. This reduces knowledge and is disgusting, but way too many people are into Idiocracy.
People downvote because they don’t understand a comment and feel like making up for their lack of intelligence by making up a new meaning they can comfortably downvote.
I’m also split. I liked downvotes because it hid a lot of negativity from my screen. On the other hand, if I randomly got a comment that got more than one downvote it had a pretty big psychological effect on me, making me doubt my opinions or my choice of words.
I like that profile view in lemmy does not show the total “score”. So when someone downvotes your comment, they downvote just that, the comment, not you. Which I think is good for mental health.
Speaking for myself, I feel that possibility of getting downvotes makes me more careful to not invoke negative emotions in others and instead keep more positive tone. In the long run that may be good for everyone’s mental health as well!
If there’s an election but you only able to vote on one party, is it a democracy?
That’s how digg.com ended, removed mods and downvotes, and users left.I can post something that I think it’s funny or interesting, but other don’t, it’s their opinion to vote what it’s of their interest
