As part of a comment chain here a couple of users have expressed that they would like the downvote button back!
Background:
I think it was one of those things that was either the Default option, or when creating the server I looked at a few of the other instances and saw they were all leaving downvotes disabled, and left it like that too.
This was my initial thought process and in the spirit of making a community, only voting up seemed on the surface to be a nicer option.
Thoughts on federation & voting
As I’ve been on the fediverse for a while and was not a huge reddit user. So the concepts of resharing and liking a post was enough for everyone to get along and relevant to me. There was no concept of voting, you received a like if someone enjoyed your “toot”, and if someone really liked it enough they’d reshare it to all their followers.
Obviously this use-case is redundant in the Community-verse style where, one is you follow people, the other is communities.
If you didn’t like a post, you clicked hide or just let it be. And after 5-10 minutes it is probably gone from your feed. This concept of hiding posts, and “spoiler” (content warnings), is not actively used by Lemmy communities.
For example, did you know that you could even make a spoiler? (Click this line to expand it)
Yeah this is what it looks like. Not very intuitive, but something people could/should be doing! And the formatting after this spoiler sucks so hard, no matter how many spaces I put after, it puts the next paragraph on the immediate next like. Which makes it hard to even read a spoiler in text. 🙁
A user does not have the ability to hide posts or block instances, only communities and users. Blocking a user for 1 bad comment seems like overkill, especially on Reddthat. If it’s really that bad, you should be clicking the report button as well as the block button. So I can enact on banning that user from interacting with us again. (Especially if that one comment was enough for you to report/block them!)
So what could the downvote do?
As described by one of our users (thanks!)
- it makes it feel like your vote counts more, as not doing anything with a bad/unfit post sometimes doesn’t feel like enough
- seeing a post or comment downvoted to oblivion shows the opinion of the community better than it just having no upvotes, as that can also be seen as the thing not being seen
- not having the option to downvote could skew peoples judgement on some bad posts, as any post’ll get upvotes regardless of how bad it is, and downvotes would balance that a lot better.
What it can provide is an option to self-moderate in some regard but I think Lemmy misses a way to benefit from that outcome. Sure a post or comment could be downvoted but without a way to filter based on that, it would still be seen. The value of a downvote is enriched when you can sort by “highest” or have the ability to hide content that does not meet a required vote number.
Currently Lemmy only has “Top Day/Week/etc” which would fit that criteria, all other “regular” post sorting options would not account for that.
Federation with Downvotes
With federation, if an instance has downvotes disabled, we do not accept any downvote that is received from another instance, nor allow our users to downvote on other instances which have it enabled.
What are our thoughts?
What is everyone else’s thoughts? Should we enable the downvote button, or leave it as it is?
Downvotes ensure reaction-bait posts don’t dominate the platform. Look through LinkedIn, FaceBook or Twitter: it’s all garbage because any engagement is a “positive” metric. If there’s a desire to differentiate Reddthat from Reddit then at the very least take the YouTube approach and conceal the score while taking it into account for sorting algorithms
Or more bluntly: what is cancer if not unchecked growth?
Hmmmmmmm, that would need some dev work for lemmy-ui but wouldn’t be that hard. I think we could definitely hide the score but that is a definite “stretch goal”.
Thanks for the good ideas!
I see the downvote button as serving at least one essential purpose: it sends bad content into obscurity quickly, where it won’t be seen and won’t generate further engagement. This matters becasue engagement on bad content tends to also be bad: arguments that are either vicious or go in circles, dogpiling, etc.
Have you ever seen threads that seem to never die on traditional forums, where people keep joining in an argument that goes nowhere becasue the thread is always visible, and the thread is always visible becasue people keep joining in? That’s one of the major downsides of sorting by engagement. Reddit-likes not only don’t do that, but with downvoting can do the opposite of that.
I’ve also observed that downvoting tends to be a substitute for making an angry reply - not just becasue it makes the content less visible, but also becasue it serves as an outlet for the human desire to to something to solve the “problem” that the bad content represents for the community.
Getting downvoted sucks, but I’d rather see that than a dogpile any day.
Also, it helps provide a bit of a temperature gauge as to the popularity of some viewpoints. I’ve come across discussions where I’m not well informed enough to make an opinion, so am reading the various comments from others. The downvote count most certainly gives me a glimpse into the popularity of some POV’s.
In today’s world, having access to information is not enough. You need to also have access into how relevant and accepted some information is. Otherwise, how will you discern between useful information and horseshit?
When I see posts with heavy negative feedback, I can see that the post is too short sighted, or too rude, or too contrary to the discussion to be accepted with open arms. Especially for the generations who are growing up online.
There needs to be a way to learn what societies accept, merely tolerate, or condemn. Downvotes are not the end all and be all, but they most certainly are better than just the “happy happy joy joy,” of blind approval upvotes alone.
The ability to up and downvote is critical to lowering influence by knowledgeable against incorrect information. I know this is a touchy subject and can be abused, on the other hand there will be no proactive way to balance the system by the users.
Secondarily one thing reddit has done right is using analysis of up and down voting patterns to help do more automatic moderation. Obviously it has not been as effective as it grew exponentially and the bad elements became better, but it is still a good metric to monitor. HIGHLY recommend leaving it.
Not to mention it gives a sense of control and ownership to the user base.
I am a bit torn on the subject. On one side, downvotes are part of community-moderation, where content users don’t like or want is pushed down and moderators don’t even have to do much there.
On the other hand, it encourages hive mind behavior. You can see this commonly in comment threads on reddit, where if it’s a “I disagree with you” translates to downvotes, even if the person presents a sound argument worth responding to.
You can simply just not upvote a post, and that is sort of like down voting it. I feel like maybe keeping downvotes off is better for this reason. But I’m torn.
I think the need for downvotes will become more crucial the more Lemmy grows, but waiting to make this change later will annoy people more (since we all know how people usually hate change).
The inclusion of downvotes have always been a double-edged sword. Remove them and the bad gets mixed in with the good. Add them and you introduce brigading and hive-minds. However, I still think the addition of downvotes outweigh the negatives. Not having a downvote means the only way for “bad” things to “move down” is for other posts/comments to be voted up so that might just force people to vote-up mediocre posts just to subdue the bad stuff - it would feel like a sub-par workaround. And worse than that, Lemmy will be littered with some really “bad” stuff that will undoubtedly have some upvotes. All you need to do is look at YouTube (without the “return dislikes” extension) and you’ll see how bad it can get.
Throughout this feedback two things have stood out to me:
- The tools at mods and admins disposal are not fit for managing large volumes of small issues.
- Downvotes can help individuals in communities help with moderation without being a moderator.
“bad” things to “move down”
I need to investigate how Lemmy’s hot algorithm/sorting works for comments and posts, because I think this is the biggest reason that we would enable down votes but I have a reason outside of the Top sorting, it would not have the effect everyone things it will have.
If down voting bad comments, incorrect posts, and posts that break community rules work as we all expect them too I think that would sway the community for enabling them. If it doesn’t work as we expect it to then it doesn’t make a solid case.
Thankyou for the good references of other big platforms that have since removed the down vote. It will definitely play into what we decide
Downvoting is a method of moderation. If a community chooses not to allow downvotes, it had better have plenty of attentive and levelheaded moderators to make up for it. The power of downvoting as moderation scales with the activity and population, making it an indespensible tool the larger a community gets.
Still, whether or not to have downvoting should be the choice of the community. Reddthat ought to be able to make the choice not to have it, if they are willing to put in the work of manual moderation. However, disabling users from downvoting in other instances’ communities means taking away that choice from those communities. As things are, I (a Reddthat user) cannot become a fully contributing member of a large community elsewhere, if that community relies on downvotes to help moderate.
Downvoting can be abused, but then again so can upvoting. If I choose to make a community on Reddthat, I’ll say that I would prefer to be allowed to use downvoting to help moderate. My feelings are much stronger when it comes to downvoting on outside instances: if Reddthat prevents users from participating in outside communities, those users will have no choice but to find another home for their Lemmy account. And since users can only create communities on their home instance, that bodes unwell for the growth of Reddthat.
I think we should leave it as it is. I dislike the downvote button because in my experience it leads to many valuable opinions and content disappearing or not being posted in the first place, because users rather not be downvoted. We all have different opinions about all kinds of topics, lets have a little bit of tolerance and respect for each other and not downvote.
EDIT: Ironically, I would have never given you feedback on Reddit in a thread like this, because it seems like in this comment section there are a lot of people with opposing opinion to mine - which would probably lead to this comment being downvoted to hell on Reddit.
In my experience (midsize to smaller subreddits mostly) downvotes were fairly effective at identifying and weeding out comments and posts that were off-topic, mean-spirited, promotional, or just incoherent. Reports I personally try to save for clear violation of the instance rules, but downvotes can be a softer way to filter out low quality content. With that being said, at the current community size I haven’t really felt any reason to downvote anything, but as the community grows I think it will be useful.
Reports in Lemmy are weird to me and it’s something Lemmy as a whole probably needs to address.
I’m sure there is logic but I can’t make heads or tails on it.
A user on our server can report a post in a federated community (one that’s home server is not ours) from a user on another different server, but I see the report?
And then if I, as the reddthat instance admin ban that user because of spam, does that block them from the instance or completely disable their account?A few unknowns with reporting that makes downvotes more appealing
My understanding is: as admin of this server, you would have the ability to block that specific post, and/or user from this server. The report to you relates to its propagation to users feeds on this server, and to feeds of accounts on this server.
If you ban the user, it will ban them from propagating posts and comments here, but will not affect their use of other servers, including their home server. Banning the user will result in reddthat users loading posts to this instance from other instances through federation being unable to see the banned users comments in foreign instance posts, possibly resulting in comment chains that do not make sense as users of other servers will be replying to the banned user, but reddthat users will not have context.
I have not tested personally, but that seems to be the consensus of what I have seen. Hope that makes sense.
I rarely downvote unless someone is being a literal idiot, and I like to see those comments being down and hidden with downvotes instead of letting them stand out like a normal comment. But that’s for the really stupid comments.
There still are other valid scenarios like disagreeing on an opinion, helps to see where the majority are. (Imagine people not wanting downvotes so they downvote this post. haha)
Personally I’d advocate for downvotes to be there but it’s also not the end of the world to not have them.
I downvoted on reddit pretty rarely, so honestly I don’t miss the button much - probably wouldn’t use it a lot anyway. Having said that, if other people consider it valuable, I’m not opposed to it - in general I believe that more choice is almost always a good thing as long as I’d doesn’t force people to make choices they don’t want to make.
With how small Lemmy is, I browse by “all” not just posts to this instance.
So not having downvotes here isn’t a big deal. But in a lot of other instances where downvotes are allowed, I still can’t downvote because I signed up through here.
I haven’t seen anything on this instance worth downvoting, but I’ve already seen bigoted comments in other instances, and I’d like to downvote those so they’re not the top comments.
It’s not a big deal though, I can always just sign up under one of those that allows downvotes and abandon this login.
Thanks for the feedback, and the few reports!
If bigoted comments are the “top” comments then voting may help in that regard, but I think the sorting concepts of Hot/New/etc give users an option to rearrange the comments to the bottom/elsewhere.
It’s an interesting concept voting, especially when used for comments rather than posts. Ordering by Top on Reddit had the resulting effect where whomever comments first stays at the top of the post nearly all the time.
These are the issues that plague my thoughts, and that is something we could solve this time around. As I’ve said probably not in this thread, but fostering good communication and thoughtful discussions is something I really appreciate and enjoy.
As I’ve said probably not in this thread, but fostering good communication and thoughtful discussions is something I really appreciate and enjoy.
It’s definitely appreciated!
Especially with a new site most users (including myself) really don’t know much about.
I thought Lemmy just didn’t have downvotes until I saw comments in other instances at zero.
Sometimes, I just like to sort by controversial. Ignoring things you don’t like or disagree with is usually enough, other times it’s good to engage and challenge a different point of view, and sometimes a down vote is all the engagement you should give some people while showing solidarity with your community. I think we should have them and leave it to the communities to decide whether they want to implement it or not.
I think we should have them and leave it to the communities to decide whether they want to implement
That is a problem that we will have, communities do not have the ability to turn them on or off, it is only an instance level option (at this current time). So if we enable downvotes it enables it for all communities, for better or worse. Including access for those in other downvote enabled instances to downvote possibly into oblivion any post that exists on our communities.
This is a key fact that I keeps coming back to me and something that we cannot protect ourselves from. The moderation tools are just not there yet for mods or admins to deal with it.
This seems to be getting trickier and trickier.
Ah thanks for clarifying. Well all things being equal, I would miss sorting by controversial for the races I don’t have horses in and I’d hate for all of our popcorn to get stale.
I used Reddit a lot, so my first instinct is to enable downvotes. I used it when someone comes up with a really bad take that doesn’t hit the threshold for mod action, spam, or when incorrect information is being given out.
That being said, I’ve adjusted to not having a downvote button - either way is fine.
Thankyou for the feedback!
I’d rather not have downvotes. Reddit supposedly has them for non-constructive discussion. In practice, it inevitably becomes a disagree or unpopular opinion button.
This was part of my thought process for disabling them as well, if I remember correctly. Just because some one disagrees with a point of view doesn’t make it a valid reason for down voting someone into oblivion. Thanks for the feedback
I am in favour of having a downvote button, but I also able to understand arguments against.
However, I do think the positives outweigh the negatives.Thanks for the feedback! The positives of having a negative, outweighs the negatives of having a negative. A brain twister if I ever heard of one.
