As both a commenter and poster.
I prefer to see both up and down votes because there are a lot of situations where someone gets voted up fast with something that is not true, and someone who corrects them afterwards. The correction will end up with some upvotes and the original post will get some down votes, but all the people who voted for them early on aren’t likely to come back and change their votes.
and as such, it’s sort of just an extra layer of information on top of the conversation, where things like body language and tone of voice are absent
I don’t want to see “votes” because the result is that you or someone else says something controversial and have to see the sanity rotting negative number.
I do however want to see a metric to see that an item is being engaged with though. Not sure what that should be.
This isn’t an unpopular opinion it’s a contentious one.
Vote counts are literally the function of Lemmy. Otherwise you might as well go to any news aggregate.
What does a “better” experience mean to you? Want to make sure we’re talking the same language here
More enjoyable.
I have no use for a person’s aggregate vote count, but when I go into a large thread on a big news item, I’ve found it very useful to sort by top. When there are hundreds of comments, being able to grab the ones that resonated with most people, or provided the most useful perspective, is a great feature.
It is important to remember that the most votes often goes to the earliest popular opinion just because it will be seen by more people the earlier it is posted. Still meets your criteria for resonating with the most people, but there can be some great insights or even the most useful perspective that was not brought to the top because the poster wasn’t around when the thread was first posted.
Oh, sure, I get it. And if I’m going to spend the evening scrolling Lemmy, I’m probably going to scan the whole thread. But if my time is limited and I want to get the high points, sorting a big thread by top is better than any other way for me.
I agree, you’re literally explaining the use case for a vote. It can be gamed sure but it cuts out a lot of the noise it also allows for other sorts like looking for unpopular or controversial comments.
Which is the point of this community
Which makes the OP so very meta
I can only discern popularity by everyone’s comment contributions. And I like it that way.
So why not just go to the comments section of newsweek or some other such site?
I’m assuming newsweek doesn’t have super niche nerd or shitposting columns. I could be wrong, though?
I suspect we use this platform differently. I’ve personally blocked nearly all political and domestic news communities on Lemmy.
Have you tried ifunny or imgur?
You can still sort by top after hiding the vote counts.
Okay, but how does that help anything?
when I go into a large thread on a big news item, I’ve found it very useful to sort by top.
Quote by you. So you can still see the top rated comments on top, you just don’t see the numbers behind the sorting.
“… for me”. FIFY.
Some people seem to need them. Variety is the spice of life.
Actually unpopular opinion: it’s a better experience when you can see vote counts. Not only that, but when you are able to see exactly who is upvoting and downvoting because then you can vet for bad faith actors fucking with the vote counts - which is particularly useful when looking at political content.
edit: obscuring vote counts on the Fediverse reminds me a lot of when Reddit initially started to “fuzz” their vote counts sometime around 2016 (maybe even earlier). The decision was made with the somewhat ambiguous explanation of “it will help combat spam” but it was just one of many small choices they made that started their downward slide. Similarly, in the Fediverse, obscuring votes and vote counts is probably made with good intentions, but I only see it as the start of a bad thing.
it’s a good point, but it doesn’t seem like voting is as dominant a factor on this platform as on some others
