• @mrmanager@lemmy.today
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    61 year ago

    People still are arguing for downvotes here on Lemmy. I think they are poison to a good community. They are not helping to moderate - they are silencing opinions and creating echo chambers.

    • Overzeetop
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      91 year ago

      I was a bit baffled by your post because it seemed odd, but it’s the second time today I’ve encountered someone mentioning it. It appears that lemmy.today is a no-dv instance; I presume it’s a server switch option. The rest of the instances I’m on all have up/down voting, and kbin, of course, has boost/up/down. Not that there’s anything wrong with it but, just so you know, it’s a feature of your instance and not lemmy-wide.

    • @blueskiesoc@lemmy.world
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      81 year ago

      My philosophy on downvotes:

      If I don’t agree with someone here, I upvote anyway. Not because I’m a Pollyanna, but because I’m happy they’re here and supporting Lemmy by posting and commenting. I really want Lemmy to stay up and stable for a long time and provide what Reddit used to provide for the wider community. Reddit still does, but hopefully we can too. I’m talking about political and health issues.

      If it’s a mean comment, I do nothing and move on.

      If something is just messed up, that’s a message for the mods. I’ve messaged once so far. Someone posted information about a person (image and real-life contact info) and said they were performing cosmetic surgery on puppies. The image was of the person flipping the bird, so it was clearly made as a hit piece. Mods got rid of it within a day.

      • TheSaneWriter
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        71 year ago

        I follow a similar philosophy, except I do downvote the mean but not rule breaking content. While it’s not bad enough to justify removal, I do still want to discourage people being mean on this platform. For most disagreeable opinions, I’ll either move on or reply with my point of view.

      • @Elkaki123@vlemmy.net
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        71 year ago

        For me while scrolling through a threat I upvote those that I agree with and leave alone those that I disagree, unless it’s done in an asshole kind of way which I kind of despise.

        But if I make a post I do tend to upvote everyone which I kind of justify as “rewarding” people for interacting with me.

      • @varzaman@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        As Reddit has proven, this is not how the masses use downvotes. I have seen unpopular, but harmless opinions be downvoted.

        I have seen people getting downvoted heavily by saying they don’t like x game. That creates echo chambers.

        • @jemorgan@lemm.ee
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          21 year ago

          Yeah the issue is that the upvote/downvote binary is used for more than just (good contribution)/(bad contribution).

          Back when Reddit was small enough to have community values, reddiquette was taken semi-seriously. But with the push for more users over the past 5-7 years, that’s all gone out the window.

          I’ve thought a bit about how that issue could be fixed in a way that still allows content to be rated by usefulness democratically, and I’m pretty convinced that for that to happen, there would need to be an upvote/downvote and an agree/disagree.

          Order content by vote delta, but display the agree/disagree counts on the content.

          Would be interesting to be able to see content that makes good arguments but that is largely disagreed with instead of having that content disappear at the bottom of the page.

          • @Num10ck@lemmy.world
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            11 year ago

            various reaction choices seems to be a better communicator… like on linkedin. i’d rather flag something as interesting or funny or ugh…

            • @jemorgan@lemm.ee
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              21 year ago

              Yeah, and that would give people an outlet for when they want to express how they feel about some content without having to muddy the default prioritize/deprioritize-based sorting.

      • @Jumpinship@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Different people see the meaning of downvote in a different way. I don’t always use it negatively. I think of it now as voting in general terms. Sometimes I do use it because I strongly dislike the comment. I guess maybe we need 2 different downvote options lol

        • @blueskiesoc@lemmy.world
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          11 year ago

          Like two different car horns.

          One for, “Hey, I’m over here. Don’t hit me.” And one for, “HEY, I’M OVER HERE! DON’T HIT ME!”

    • TheSaneWriter
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      21 year ago

      I think they theoretically can be used well, and I’ve tried to be more reserved in how I use them here on Lemmy, but I agree often times they can become culturally toxic. I’m glad Lemmy has a better culture so far, we’re really building something great here I think.