Lemmy NSFW @lemmynsfw.com lemmyposter212 @lemmynsfw.com 3w ago

An update on downvotes

Downvotes can be a useful tool to shape a community, but one of the main issues brought up in the post I made is when several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in. Which I want to emphasize is NOT the correct way for downvotes to be used.

First id like to start off with an apology to those who are upset about them being enabled. It may seem very clear to you that downvotes weren't wanted, but as an admin I get complaints for basically every decision made on this site, so what the “right” choice is, is sometimes hard to determine.

I’ve been getting complaints about downvotes being disabled for awhile now, so it wasn’t clear to me. Even now, the opinion is still very split. Which is why I enabled them quietly to see if it would cause any issues. It did, so I made the initial post to see if people think the issues created by downvotes outweigh the benefits, and what peoples’ other opinions about them are.

This is my opinion based on what I’ve read and the results of the poll:

I think at a later time when lemmynsfw is larger, downvotes may be viable, especially if lemmy implements a custom home feed so that not everyone sees the same posts. This would help mitigate the issue of people not in communities downvoting posts. But as it stands I think the best option is disabling them again. Frequent posters, which are kind of needed for this site to survive, don’t seem to like them, and the poll is split almost 50/50. I have to try to balance enjoyability of posting and enjoyability of consuming content on the site, and it just seems like downvotes really hurts posters and only marginally helps consumers.

So with all that said, downvotes have been disabled again. Sorry for all the confusion and back and forth.

71 comments

Thanks for being open and honest with the community. I'll admit I'm disappointed by the decision. But you did the right thing by communicating and letting the community help shape the decision.
I voted to enable downvotes due to an increase in bad faith comments and posts in some communities, and removing downvotes allows trolls and sealions to artificially appear neutral when in fact they are rightfully buried. It also discourages commenters when those bad-faith debates eat up comment sections.

That said, I completely understand the rationale above and it convinced me that I voted the wrong way. Makes total sense that most people misuse downvotes, and I agree with disabling for now.
After I participated in the other thread, I thought of a couple more scenarios where downvoting is useful:

"this post is low effort"

Downvoting is a useful feedback tool to say hey OP, I have given your post an amount of my time that your low effort post did not earn. Try harder next time.

"we don't need yet another community for this topic"

If a person creates a new community for a topic that already has one (or more), to get around the community blocks that users have already put up, that's functionally very similar to ban evasion. I'm tired of blocking repeat communities. If I see a person make a new community for a topic that is practically identical to one that exists, a downvote is warranted.

I'm not telling you my opinion should overrule the other arguments here, but it's better to have all sides present so it's not just an echo chamber.
- thanks for your input
Thanks for involving the community in the decision.

It's nice to see active admins on our instance.
Isn't voting a way to participate? Is there a way to semi-lock the community instead so random drifters don't come in a vote bomb?
- Unfortunately no
  
  Thank you for dedicating your time and trouble to this platform lemmyposter212. I'm sure the shit and abuse you get every day makes it all worthwhile.
  
  Perhaps in the future, consideration for a feature that allows the Mod of the community to opt in or out of allowing downvoting might be considered, specific to just that community. This would take the debate out of the Admins hands, give new posters a chance to get started without being bashed, and provide an outlet for those who just need to downvote something.
  
  Cheers
I've been blocking communities for around 300+ so far. The communities that I'm not interested. I've been doing this since day 1 and still keep checking new communities every day. For either subscribe or block.

I just want for people here having fun without getting downvotes so much because they're not interested in such content per se.
- There is logic in Madness.
Thank you for leaving them disabled. I think that it’s ultimately the correct choice to foster growth on this platform for now
You could ask the devs to add a new admin feature that controls down votes per community with the option to (1) disable for the whole community or (2) enable for subscribers only or (3) enable for everyone.
- This is definitely something I've been considering, we've talked about different solutions like that
  
  Or, frankly is you care so much, try to implement disabling downvotes only on the local filter which puts the top recent posts from among all communities of the instance. A real solution to the problem you have, however hard to implement… however putting downvotes again will only attract people who are here for the votes and tend to be toxic, won't they? Why do the current posters still post, why is the general quality better than reddit, and why is the state of this instance relatively pristine in terms of acceptance. Why do you currently see comments that many have made this instance's account their main account. But that is not my problem🤷 it seems downvotes will eventually come here and those problems will, as well.
- My ability to downvote posts in a community should not depend on the mod of that community being ok with it. "This is my community, and I don't want downvotes" would only be an acceptable attitude if seeing the community at all was opt-in, but it's not. Everyone sees everything unless they've already blocked the community or user.
  
  downvotes aren't meant to be used as "I don't like this entire community's posts" if you don't like a community, then block it, rather than downvoting a post that is in an appropriate community that the people subscribed to that community will like
- speaking of ideas: what about being able to allow downvotes in the comment section?
  
  if the twentieth idiot is asking the same stupid question in a community of lets say 100 active people, having the ability to downvote each instance of it, except the very first one, and then focussing ones argumentative powers there, for many to see is much more productive. since all the downvoted repeat-comments would at some point get hidden and not get a "false positive reaction" fron all the other "idiots"
  
  Additionaly the downvoting of bad comments is a) not something someone would do from the Feed and
  b) not something incredibly tiring to good posters
  
  I was about to ask what exactly is the problem—is it the asking of the question or the spamming of the question? And if it is the spamming of the question, isn't that already covered in 'spam'? This seems very oddly specific.
  
  That was what I wanted to ask—but then it got into stuff which begged the question from me subconsciously, what constitutes an idiot anyway… in this particular situation. And that was before we got into 'false positive reaction'.
  
  I don't know… I merely trusted people to think on their own, and the ones who by chance refuse to think on their own get their dues too, while others wouldn't be swayed due to thinking on their own. It seemed that simple to me… perhaps that doesn't suffice for most? Interesting…
I want to thank you lemmyposter212 for this fair minded decision. I know that we'll probably revisit this subject in a number of months and then maybe the decision will be different and I shall probably bow out gracefully at that point rather than mount a protest.

I also want to thank the other posters and commenters who showed up to support each other, particularly @lnsfw3@lemmynsfw.com @Rtc@lemmynsfw.com @Clevererhans@lemmynsfw.com @NodachiDicc@lemmynsfw.com and @b9999998@lemmynsfw.com Edit: also @Samdell@lemmynsfw.com

But for right now I have another problem which is how to go about restoring the posts I blanked out. What I intend to do is to go through and try to match the titles to their original picture and then I shall make a weekly digest post of the ones that have been restored so that the people who haven't seen them before can enjoy them.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
- I'm glad you're sticking around. You post good stuff.
  
  Thanks for those kind words, you've been commenting on my posts for a while now and it's those small acts of appreciation for what I do that make the difference.
Really disappointing decision. I'm tired of blocking so many niche (to say the least) communities polluting the local feed.
- You're quite literally proving their point. You're not meant to downvote things you don't like to see. Your argument is also completely flawed. A block is a one time thing per community. So how are you tired of this? Without a block you'd be downvoting every single post that comes up from said community, which is constant work, which you somehow would not be tired of? Unless of course it is your goal to bully away the people from said community so they don't post anymore at all, which again, just proves the point of downvotes being a tool for harassment. Maybe take some time to self reflect on your own behavior.
  
  Well yes and no. Your are meant to downvote things you don't like to see, that's the whole point of voting.
  
  If people stuck to existing communities, that would be one thing. I block a community for topic x, then a user makes a new community for topic x, so my block doesn't hide it. Now I have to block the new community.
  
  This happens every day. Every day I ask myself didn't I already block that community? The answer is no. It's a new community about a thing I've already blocked a dozen times. A person who creates a new community only marginally different than an existing one deserves downvotes for doing so. Otherwise you're just enabling spam trolls to overtake everyone's feeds.
- downvotes aren't meant to be used as "I don't like this entire community's posts" if you don't like a community, then block it, rather than downvoting a post that is in an appropriate community that the people subscribed to that community will like
  
  I'm not downvoting a community but posts. AI community posts are not something I want to see and polute my feed. I block and/or downvote. Lately blocking has been very tiring.
- 2 additional AI communities blocked since yesterday. What will happen when they will flood the instance?
  
  Thankfully it's easier to block a user than it is to create an account.
  
  You could join the communities you're interested in, and then browse those. Then you'll just get the stuff you like, and you won't need to block.
Not that I have a solution but engoraging people to use "blocks" and "filters" is the way to go I think.

I'd like to create a homepage but Lemmy moves too slowly for that, so I do find myself on "all" a lot. So blocking users/communities/instances and filtering keywords are how I craft a positive experience here.

When EH was around I'd waste endless time trolling/downvoting them, which I now realise was time wasted. It didn't help me; made Lemmy more toxic; and gave bad actors the legitimacy and attention they want.

I think my comment in the poll was fairly comprehensive, so I'll leave it at that. Except to add good job LemmyNSFW admins you constantly handle controversy well. From instance bans, instance drama or this current downvote issue, no notes.
Why don't you disable upvotes too, then? Or at least hide the vote count--it is meaningless when it's one sided.
- I disagree. One-sided upvotes clearly have meaning - it means more people like a thing or think it has merit. Downvotes also have meaning. Disabling downvotes just says if you don't like something we don't care, just move on. I don't mind that at all.
  
  That's not a world I want to live in. Moving on. Good bye.
  
  It's only one sided though so it doesn't have the meaning you think it has, that's a major problem.
- many sites have this problem seem to have this problem, like Youtube. They go around disabling negative feedback and then have trouble with garbage. And it also seems to me that a dislike being an option makes the like much more meaningful.
... several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in

Could you elaborate what you mean by that? Does "participating" mean subscribing? Commenting? Posting?
Also what does "downvoting communities" mean? People go in and downvote every post?
- People go in and downvote every post?
  
  Yes. A common issue has consistently been that people will downvote all posts for a specific community or subject, whether that's something gay, a specific hentai, or a more niche fetish/kink that they don't personally find appealing rather than blocking it. These posts are usually relevant and quality submissions for the community that they're posted to, but end up with negative scores because of differing preferences.
  
  Exactly this yes
This is the right decision. I did not want to add an opinion and leave the majority decide, but the issue is downvotes are not used correctly.
You are doing (well not gods work) but still great work!

I Agree, it is basically impossible to make everyone happy.Personally I would like to have a possibility to display my discontent with something, in a more clear, immediate and concize way than a comment. Yet it is clear that Lemmy does not have the tools necessary to keep it being fun while people aren't playing along.
people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in. Which I want to emphasize is NOT the correct way for downvotes to be used.

Says who?

If you don't want people voting in a community, then maybe change the community to block voting by non-members. I don't know if this is technical option right now, and frankly I don't care. If that's what you want in your community, then that's for you to address. Not just come on here and act like Mr. Dictator and tell people how to use communities.

At a minimum what you're doing is ineffective, nut it's also adversarial. I didn't even read past this sentence, and I have no intention of going back and reading the rest. Why should I when you've shown how you view everyone else, as merely pawns to be told how to behave.

And why would I want to join a community when you're so condescending to people?

Sheesh.
- Holy victim complex, batman. The sentence to reacted so strongly to was the lightest criticism anyone could ever give on any subject.
- Are you ok?
- Of all the points you could pick, you pick the anti-bullying one. The point of local, which is the only place where this would apply, is where all the posts which gain a large number of votes in their own communities are put. It is a place where even everything nsfw, as long as it does not break sitewide rules, is also welcome. The only reason to downvote such a thing rather than browse subscriptions instead or ignore the post and move on, in practical terms, would be acting on going out of your way for making sure they don't exist. To tell those posters to just fuck off and go away, even when they didn't decide to put it outside the community.
  
  And this dude seriously argued that point under the argument of morality hahahahaha. Hahahaha hahahahahahahaha.
- Now this is podracing
- Downvoted, to show my support.
Just to say something in opposition to criticism expressed in other comments... No matter what you choose there will be upset people in comments, and as an admin you can make decisions you see fit here as you are the one doing most of the work. There will always be people upset with the decision, but so far I believe you are doing great job!
Are you saying entire communities can be downvoted? I didn't even realize that. But it seems entirely unnecessary because people can block communities they don't like.
- Not entirely communities, but people will see a post from a community on their feed that they don't like and downvote it. They 100% should block the community if they don't like it, but what we're seeing us they would just downvote the post.
  
  Maybe we need a Meh button that means, "I'm not interested in this type of material." Or as a confirmation on a downvote.
I think removing down votes was the correct decision. We need to let all community grow and curate your own feed. Sometimes I like to see what else is out there even if it isn't what I normally like.
I was personally on the fence anyway, but I really appreciate your work and explanation for decisions. You don't have to do that but it means a lot!
And ... the local feed is back to unusable while the overall quality in subscribed subs is down.

Unfortunately very predictable result.
- does people sharing their dicks for others and not you irritate you so much🤔

71 comments