Question I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on possibly making votes public. This has been discussed in a lot of other issues, but here's a dedicated one for discussion. Positives Could help figh...
Probably better to post in the github issue rather than replying here.
It is baffling to me how many people want to copy Reddit voting system, including hiding voting history, despite having left Reddit. The entire voting system over there is a huge part of the toxicity problem.
Downvotes should be removed, all votes public. Accountability changes peoples’ behavior and I can tell you that before kbin.social went down you could definitely see the difference.
This is clearly an unpopular opinion and I will be downvoted like crazy for it, but it is so exhausting watching forum after forum make the exact same mistakes.
Without downvotes, you get Twitter where even obvious rage bait drowns out everything. Downvotes aren’t perfect, but they’re much better than not having them.
Microblogs and threaded forums are completely different platforms with completely different issues
Additionally, there is no underlying algorithm deciding content on your behalf here like there is on Twitter. And we all know those algorithms favor rage bait. Not having down votes doesn’t change that in the slightest. If anything informs the algorithm more. They don’t care about what you like or dislike, they just want engagement at all costs.
Downvotes can be useful in certain contexts, like when you visit a thread and are looking for factual information, such as the answer to a tech question. I don’t want to accidentally follow someone’s bad advice because the bad advice didn’t have any downvotes nor any responses as to why it was wrong.
It’s not perfect, but voting is a quick, often effective method of fact checking.
You can’t have accountability and anonymity. There are people that post, not just upvote, garbage all day long. There’s also plenty of occasions where people have been shamed for past posts in completely unrelated threads. I don’t disagree with those things being public, otherwise we might as well use Pastebin, but we don’t need one more way to judge people. It’s also the simplest of acts. I’ve upvoted right-wing posts before but not because I agree but because they were making valid points and not resorting to personal attacks or demagoguery.
The problem with seeing people’s votes is you don’t have context for why they voted that way. Did they upvote because they agreed, or because they thought it was an engaging counterpoint in an interesting discussion? Maybe they just thought it was funny or wanted the thread it was part of to be more visible. Someone looking at your votes could choose whatever perception they want if they decide to go after you for it.
What did it do to YouTube? I remember there being a huge uproar over it…but I don’t use it much but totally forgot that this even happened as it has made no difference for my light use.
I’ve been looking for someone to touch on this. I didn’t like youtube getting rid of the downvotes but…what did it change? The only incidents I can think of is when there’s vote bombing on a really bad video. Lemmynsfw got rid of downvotes and they’re better for it. The only exception I can think of is a technical video that is just factually wrong but then there’s always a comment highlighting that with upvotes. Seems like the only thing we lost was sensational downvoting and the thrill of jumping on a like-minded group dislike.
I partially agree with you, the voting system as a whole should be removed in my opinion or upvotes publicized but down vote should not. It’s far too easy for down vote which is used commonly as in off topic or disagree to be taken the wrong way and cause targeted harassment. Making the whole thing public as a whole is just going to make dissants refuse to give their opinion strengthening echo chamber issues
Exactly, if you see troll, just block him and declare “damnatio memoriae”. It works exactly like this in fms usenet like forum for old freenet / hyphanet. You can even subscribe block / allow lists ( -100 to 100 weight lists ). In my opinion, it’s very good mechanism. One of the best I ever saw
It is baffling to me how many people want to copy Reddit voting system, including hiding voting history, despite having left Reddit. The entire voting system over there is a huge part of the toxicity problem.
Downvotes should be removed, all votes public. Accountability changes peoples’ behavior and I can tell you that before kbin.social went down you could definitely see the difference.
This is clearly an unpopular opinion and I will be downvoted like crazy for it, but it is so exhausting watching forum after forum make the exact same mistakes.
Without downvotes, you get Twitter where even obvious rage bait drowns out everything. Downvotes aren’t perfect, but they’re much better than not having them.
Microblogs and threaded forums are completely different platforms with completely different issues
Additionally, there is no underlying algorithm deciding content on your behalf here like there is on Twitter. And we all know those algorithms favor rage bait. Not having down votes doesn’t change that in the slightest. If anything informs the algorithm more. They don’t care about what you like or dislike, they just want engagement at all costs.
Downvotes can be useful in certain contexts, like when you visit a thread and are looking for factual information, such as the answer to a tech question. I don’t want to accidentally follow someone’s bad advice because the bad advice didn’t have any downvotes nor any responses as to why it was wrong.
It’s not perfect, but voting is a quick, often effective method of fact checking.
You can’t have accountability and anonymity. There are people that post, not just upvote, garbage all day long. There’s also plenty of occasions where people have been shamed for past posts in completely unrelated threads. I don’t disagree with those things being public, otherwise we might as well use Pastebin, but we don’t need one more way to judge people. It’s also the simplest of acts. I’ve upvoted right-wing posts before but not because I agree but because they were making valid points and not resorting to personal attacks or demagoguery.
I’m against making votes visible. I don’t want to make myself a target because I don’t vote with the hivemenind.
Automatically removing downvoted posts is a bad idea, because you basically can censor any post when you have a couple of people.
I didn’t switch from reddit because of the voting system, I switched because my app stopped functioning.
We don’t have to be contrarian.
The problem with seeing people’s votes is you don’t have context for why they voted that way. Did they upvote because they agreed, or because they thought it was an engaging counterpoint in an interesting discussion? Maybe they just thought it was funny or wanted the thread it was part of to be more visible. Someone looking at your votes could choose whatever perception they want if they decide to go after you for it.
How is that any different than what we see currently? We have no clue why people vote on our posts and comments one way or another
Removing down votes is a terrible idea. Look what that did to YouTube
What did it do to YouTube? I remember there being a huge uproar over it…but I don’t use it much but totally forgot that this even happened as it has made no difference for my light use.
I’ve been looking for someone to touch on this. I didn’t like youtube getting rid of the downvotes but…what did it change? The only incidents I can think of is when there’s vote bombing on a really bad video. Lemmynsfw got rid of downvotes and they’re better for it. The only exception I can think of is a technical video that is just factually wrong but then there’s always a comment highlighting that with upvotes. Seems like the only thing we lost was sensational downvoting and the thrill of jumping on a like-minded group dislike.
I partially agree with you, the voting system as a whole should be removed in my opinion or upvotes publicized but down vote should not. It’s far too easy for down vote which is used commonly as in off topic or disagree to be taken the wrong way and cause targeted harassment. Making the whole thing public as a whole is just going to make dissants refuse to give their opinion strengthening echo chamber issues
Exactly, if you see troll, just block him and declare “damnatio memoriae”. It works exactly like this in fms usenet like forum for old freenet / hyphanet. You can even subscribe block / allow lists ( -100 to 100 weight lists ). In my opinion, it’s very good mechanism. One of the best I ever saw