By default, Lemmy allows downvotes globally. However, when a server disables downvoting, it is similar to using a feature that is usually reserved for enterprises and very small, non-federated communities.
If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.
Downvotes are integral to keeping communities safe and clean. Bad faith posts and people just being assholes are downvoted to the bottom significantly faster than mods can remove them.
they’re disabled on hexbear.net, take a wild guess why
spoiler
it’s to protect their circlejerk
Originated and enabled well before there were other active Lemmy instances or possibly even federation of any sort. It was put in place to stop anti-trans harassment.
Plus AFAIK it’s only truly applicable within Hexbear itself. The main effect it has is that a Hexbear user can’t downvote anything on any instance with their account.
I’d downvote this post if I could.
I would downvote this comment if I could, but sadly my instance disable downvotes also. (◕‿◕)
I did it! Maybe i should start a special downvoting service for the poor downtrodden commenters whos got no DV of their own
I gotchoo
The problem with downvotes in LemmyNSFW was very specific to that instance and its sexual nature. It boils down to the typical user doing the following:
- people use downvotes to signal “I don’t want to see this”
- most people want to see naked women, not naked men
- the instance is supposed to be inclusive towards people who want to see either
As a result, content geared towards gay+bi men, hetero+bi women, and plenty non-binary people was consistently downvoted - and it was discouraging genuine OC for those demographics.
It was totally a band-aid measure, mind you. But it kind of worked?
An actual solution for that issue would be to require people to tag their content, and allow posters to pick what they want to see based on those tags. But for that you’d need further improvement of the software.
An actual solution for that issue would be to require people to tag their content, and allow posters to pick what they want to see based on those tags. But for that you’d need further improvement of the software.
I would argue the actual solution is to curate your feed by subscribing to communities you enjoy and “unsubscribing” from the ones. You can even create your home (or whatever the subscribed feed is called) feed for your “finer” taste and then block communities you don’t want to see in the “All” feed.
That’s how I’ve set up my Lemmy. I have my home feed for niche communities that generally don’t end up in the all feed, and for general news I have the All feed where I’ve selectively blocked out communities I really don’t care about. Ideally I would like to set up multiple feed because there are some communities that are so small they don’t end up in my home feed either. I would need a separate feed for the extra niche communities so I could participate in them and help them grow larger.
While a tag system could achieve something similar I feel like tags would probably be more annoying to use because you’ll be at the mercy of whomever sets the tag. If you look at how people use tags on Steam the tags can easily overreach. I had blocked sexual content tag on Steam to get rid of sex games, and it blocked Baldur’s Gate 3. Technically Baldur’s gate 3 contains sexual content but there’s a world of difference between an RPG with sexual content and an actual porn game. I think Valve added some other way to filter out adult games so now I use that and I don’t even bother with tags.
Frankly I also browse by “Subscribed”. However that is not an actual solution for the problem, unless you have a sensible way to encourage/force other people to do it.
Multiple feeds (a la multireddits) is a great idea that pops up often. I hope that the devs are at least considering it.
While a tag system could achieve something similar I feel like tags would probably be more annoying to use because you’ll be at the mercy of whomever sets the tag.
The solution doesn’t need to be perfect to be useful. So even if posts within a grey area get tagged in a way that reaches a wider audience than they’re supposed to, it’s fine.
Frankly I also browse by “Subscribed”. However that is not an actual solution for the problem, unless you have a sensible way to encourage/force other people to do it.
What do you mean? People already post things in the correct community and moderators make sure wrong posts get removed. My suggestion is that people should make use of that by curating what communities are they see or don’t want to see. There’s no need to encourage/force other people to do anything, they’re already doing it.
The solution doesn’t need to be perfect to be useful. So even if posts within a grey area get tagged in a way that reaches a wider audience than they’re supposed to, it’s fine.
First of all, wouldn’t the tag system need other people to be encouraged/forced to do it? Secondly, if the tagged grey area posts reach a wider audience then it doesn’t solve the problem because the problem is that people don’t want to see specific posts in their feed. Posts in the grey area can contain posts people don’t want to see. If the unwanted posts still end up in their feeds then the problem isn’t solved. The tags should be used to exclude posts not be used to include posts.
I mean that what you call “the solution” (to curate one’s feed) already exists and did not solve the problem for the platform as a whole, as attested by the OP. Because regardless of what you or me think that people “should” do, they’re still browsing by “All” (that’s fine) and then downvoting content geared towards other audiences (that is not fine).
And it is not just porn; you see the exact same issue with content in other languages. Same deal: the resource exists (you can set up the language of your content, as well as the ones that you want to see) and people still don’t use it.
You’re suggesting that people should make use of that resource, but our suggestions mean nothing if people won’t follow them. We do need a way to at least encourage the usage of those resources, and discourage this idiotic “this content is not made for ME! ME! ME!, how do they dare? Downvoting time!” tendency.
Secondly, if the tagged grey area posts reach a wider audience then it doesn’t solve the problem because the problem is that people don’t want to see specific posts in their feed.
It might not solve the problem but it does alleviate it. There’s a big difference between seeing 10% or 50% of irrelevant content.
The sellers were also a big part of the problem, people were downvoting and reporting them constantly, which was turning them away… Which… I mean it’s fucking Lemmy, such response against sellers should have been expected.
And they are still a problem, you can see them being very aggressive with their multiple posts (I call that spamming).I think the other part of the problem is that a lot of people came expecting some sort of safe space/echo chamber where they could control everything from their instance, but the fediverse is way too open and diverse to achieve that (specially Lemmy with at least 3 big troll instances).
As a huge doomer, I don’t think tags would have worked because we are talking about people who went out of their way to troll that content, not normal users who might downvote or not and then block the community or user. I don’t know if removing the downvotes actually discouraged those trolls or if they are still going at it, but I am sure it didn’t help to increase the quality of the content.
Sellers being also part of the problem is a fair point. But it isn’t just about Lemmy being Lemmy; it’s that unless a community disallows sellers, amateurs eventually leave.
This would probably need a different approach, like different comms for sellers vs. amateurs. Or, if the tag system were to be implemented, forcing people to tag their content accordingly.
About sexuality: the reason why I think that tags would’ve worked is that, once legitimate-but-shortsighted users stop downvoting things based on their sexuality, the trolls stick out like a sore thumb. And then you can simply kick the trolls out.
Sellers being also part of the problem is a fair point. But it isn’t just about Lemmy being Lemmy; it’s that unless a community disallows sellers, amateurs eventually leave.
I usually browse top 12 hours or scaled and I haven’t seen an actual amateur post in a long time, so I think you must be right.
This would probably need a different approach, like different comms for sellers vs. amateurs. Or, if the tag system were to be implemented, forcing people to tag their content accordingly.
I think the sellers would get upset of not being able to mix their spam outside their comms, but I agree.
Altough I don’t have hopes for a tag system for a while, being careful of the tags not overlapping accross instances sounds like a pain.About sexuality: the reason why I think that tags would’ve worked is that, once legitimate-but-shortsighted users stop downvoting things based on their sexuality, the trolls stick out like a sore thumb. And then you can simply kick the trolls out.
At this point, I think everyone has blocked whatever they don’t like (based on sexuality), so if that hasn’t worked enough to stop the massive downvotes I doubt a tag system would work for that (since they don’t only come from one instance and sometimes they create instances for that purpose).
Sounds like they should have more LGBT
subreddits(communities? Is that the term?)They do, but once you hop into the “local” view you see all of those posts. And the users, instead of blocking those communities as “content that is not relevant for me, but might be for someone else”, simply downvote the posts as a knee-jerk reaction.
(Yup, communities. I typically shorten it to comms.)
Same happens to the Christianity community, unfortunately.
Christians trying to make themselves into victims at every chance they can get?
Yup, it’s Flax
Are you seriously too moronic to see how your toxicity towards one group of people is no different to other peoples toxicity to other people.
Imagine how u would feel if i said “Palestinians trying to make themselves the victims at every chance they get?” Im guessing that would rightly piss you off? Equallity requires the equal treatment of all groups especially the ones you dont like. If u want a good reason for this there are 6million numbered historical examples.
😎 Jesus loves you
I know, he pines over me every day as I sit in the prince of darkness’ Camp instead
Satan is wayyyyyy cooler to be in the religion of
If you enjoy child rape and every single evil, since you worship the embodiment of evil, then sure, go ahead.
It’s simpler just to say “androphiles”
Porn should definitely be separated into categories, because there is a lot of content that a lot of people don’t want to see.
This is a load of horse shit. If something gets downvoted cos its xyz and all xyz content gets downvoted but the xyz content is in a community of xyz. Then the net effect is zero.
Also i swear to god the admins are fucking with me by unblocking the people and communities ive blocked previously.
If u cant handle a couple downvotes then u probably shouldnt be making porn.
You choose what instance you use. If you don’t like the choice you made, choose again.
How about this: you can choose whether you want to disable downvotes in your Lemmy client, and everyone can live happily ever after.
Which server? Remote instance or your home instance?
What do you mean?
[…] However, when a server disables downvoting, […]
I’m asking about this sentence.
I am talking about any public Lemmy server.
It’s to encourage posting and comment by having a positive environment, especially on hobby community/instance. Lemmy is still small and post isn’t as many, and its full of people who is downvote happy and will downvote topic they don’t understand or care. Try build a community around that, i’m sure it won’t survive.
If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.
Let me flip it around:
If a user prefer to see downvotes, they can go to another instance that support that, the admin paying for the hosting shouldn’t need to listen to a few user.
It’s a setting, it’s a tool, let people building the community/instance adjust it how they want instead of dictating how they choose, isn’t that your point?
You can’t force people to be positive, they might still leave negative comments.
Lemmy is still small, so users don’t have the option to choose servers as they please. For instance, I’m looking for an instance where you don’t need an email to register (for privacy reasons) and where you can quickly create an account (I don’t have the patience to wait for days to get my account). Also, it should have a good number of federated servers working with it.
With these specific requirements, there are only a few servers available.
Why do you think not allowing dislikes is toxic positivity?
I mean, it’s more like “don’t be critic” rather than “you’re forced to like”. You can choose not like if you don’t want to.
Don’t mix things up. Don’t be allowed to dislike is not the same as being forced to like.
Toxic positivity is just like woke, it can be anything you want it to be!
For real though, not allowing down votes is not toxic positivity. You don’t go to an orgy and start yucking everyone’s yums. You’re not being told you can’t dislike things, you just aren’t allowed to vocalize it at no cost. And if you do decide to vocalize it in a comment, you may* be kicked out of the orgy because it’s a fucking orgy and that’s the rules. There’s literally no point to it except to shit on others, which you wouldn’t do at an IRL orgy**.
*There might be a room for sexual degradation **There might be a room for scat
Toxic positivity is telling someone their negative feelings (not opinions) are invalid. The existence of this term still doesn’t make people at an orgy assholes if they tell someone who’s bringing down the mood to go away. It’s literally a fucking party, don’t go there trying to make everyone worse. I could play devil’s advocate and say that the act of throwing a feel good only party is toxic positivity as it’s just as likely to enable escapism (from bad feelings) as it is to be totally neutral, but fuck that. Sometimes the cure to a bad mood is acknowledging it, and then escaping it.
It’s pretty ironic that your posts are being downvoted here.
Well i think caring about upvotes and downvotes at all is the sign of someone going through an exceptionally fucking lame part of their lives. Just stop giving a shit about something so… so… extravagantly useless and bam! Life improved.
Upvotes and downvotes are simply engagement markers that prove you made an impact on that many people. If you need to tell someone you don’t like them, ya can’t downvote them, tell em! Tell em how wrong they are! Get that bag baby! Now get up, get out there and get ta arguin with your words
After commenting for a while in this thread… I think I agree, we need to go back to the forums and actually engage as users, it’s too easy to upvote/downvote and move on, that would only mean the post was actually useless or forgettable and makes posting propaganda extremely easy since nobody calls you out on it.
This old doomer agrees with you.
I like being able to downvote using my main account, but on lemmynsfw it really needed to be removed. People were downvoting literally everything that didn’t fit into their fetishes, so anything that wasn’t straight and and vanilla would go into the negatives. Like, I’m not into mascs, but I still think they should be able to post to gonewild. Even posts in gay-specific subs were getting downvoted en masse.
I agree. I also think that combining votes into a single score is disingenuous. A post with 20 downvotes is perceived very different than a post with 60 upvotes and 80 downvotes. When you only show the combined score it gives the appearance of a singular opinion
If you simply forced the ordering to be by new/newest comment, votes in either direction would become irrelevant. But that also means that only the most active users will ever see a bulk of the content when it is relevant, or at all.
