I don’t have much experience with that community, but from the little I’ve seen, agreed. It’s not good.
A good forum design will only get you so far, the rest is up to the moderators. If you let bad actors in, it doesn’t matter how you designed your forum, they will poison the well.
The best communities I’ve been in are in independent old-style forums. One of them is Tildes. Most of these don’t feature downvotes (or upvotes for that matter) and are honestly the better places to have discussions IMO.
fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
Blahaj has then disabled too, and I’m sure there’s more.
I actually engage in more disagreements now because I don’t have the easy down button. I’m pretty anti downvote now tbh.
I wouldn’t imply that the unhealthyness of hexbear is due to the disabled downvoting though, and I’m sure you aren’t either, but just to be clear.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 5 hours ago
No, I’m implying the reverse: disabling downvoting is a symptom of the unhealthy mentality of the people running that server. Disabling downvoting appeals to authoritarians - that is, the type of people who are interested in silencing dissent (QED).
fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
Oh, so you are actually implying that blahaj has an unhealthy mentality too since we don’t have downvoting?
Bruh.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 5 hours ago
Enforced toxic positivity is unhealthy, yes.
It’s not the cause, it’s a symptom of a larger problem.
What would I need an “out” for?