Submitted 2 weeks ago by bigFab@lemmy.world to memes@sopuli.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/25bc7f0b-3c38-4e0a-bc14-d0adbd5953e0.jpeg
don’t forget that downvotes mostly help with sorting. they don’t mean “this is wrong”. they mean the reader didn’t like it and it should be sorted further down or even start collapsed. it can just be a highly unpopular or disgusting truth ppl want to swipe under the rug. it can also be totally irrelevant or link/quote sites ppl don’t like and want to reduce traffic to or be forgotten (reddit, xitter, fb come to mind)
it’s just a quick feedback that can help the community.
Do you know what else helps with sorting? Upvotes.
Do you know what else helps with hiding spam? Reports.
If you have upvotes and you have reports, then you already have all of the information you need as a platform. Downvotes are unnecessary.
Plus, speaking of sorting, accounts that use downvotes get double the votes for sorting than accounts do that only use upvotes. Yet, the types of people who downvote a lot are…. well, they’re the assholes. So, you give assholes more control over the platform than good people by having downvotes.
So, downvotes are unnecessary and they give extra power to assholes, making the entire user experience worse.
“only upvotes” don’t help as much, because you get a gap where ppl don’t like it. you can only use ppl who like it to sort, which may be much less than ppl who dislike it.
also, once downvoted from many ppl, fewer ppl see the content and it gets less downvotes.
actually downvotes give less “power to aasholes”, because otherwise ppl can post their evil shit like on xitter and they and the algorithm assume silence=agreement, even though agreeing takes only one tap while disagreeing requires writing a comment. this emboldens the “assholes”. they get littke to no feedback ppl don’t like it. on top of it, there are ways/algos to sort by number of comments. so if ppl actually dislike it so much to write a comment, it pushes the bad post up on these rankings, shoving the horribke stuff in even more ppls faces.
With respect to Lemmy and Reddit (don’t have much experience with other social media platforms), it often just comes down to the audience.
Some users and some subs are just so fragile and so propagandized that any tiny bit of resistance or any comment slightly against the standard is met with down votes and negativity.
On Reddit, I think my most down voted comment that’s coming to mind was in an environmental sub. Someone mentioned that they didn’t see any “bugs” around their outdoor lights the night prior even though those lights would have been covered in bugs when that person was a kid.
I acknowledged that I am fully aware that insect populations are in collapse/decline. However, what the person was witnessing wasn’t a fair comparison because it was currently winter time where they lived (which was obvious from their other comments) and because modern LED lights don’t produce as much heat or ultraviolet light (both things are highly attractive to nocturnal insects) as previous technology.
I think I got something like -342 on my comment within a day or two.
It’s frustrating how many assumptions people make about your beliefs just because you are trying to make a purely fact-based correction. Like if I try to say something like “the victim was actually armed when they were shot by the police” (made up example) people just instantly assume I’m a fascist bootlicker when I’m really just trying to get the facts straight. It’s just that misinformation that goes against prevailing opinion gets instantly swatted down but misinformation that validates people’s opinions is tolerated way more than it should be.
We are in a purely vibes based media landscape. The left cares more about facts than does the right, but overall neither cares overly much about them.
I wish lemmy and piefed didn’t use downvotes.
As someone who down voted your comment, allow me to explain both why I think you are wrong and why I wasn’t going to waste time replying.
Firstly, the problem with not showing down votes is that the posts below would look the same
10k 🔺 100k 🔻 10k 🔺 0🔻
But we obviously know that 100k down votes is considerably worse than 0.
And secondly, why I didn’t comment? You didn’t ask a question, you haven’t haven’t said why you think your version is better to drive the conversation forward. You just made a comment. I disagree with it so I down voted it. if someone agrees, they up vote. Over time the ratio will show what the general opinion is.
I have more respect for you for explaining and taking the time to reply. I have even upvoted your comment, despite disagreeing with it.
For me, upvotes and downvotes should not be used as agree/disagree buttons. Instead, they should be about “brings interesting points to the table"/"this comment adds nothing”.
But that’s not how the majority of people view them. Realizing that, that’s why I don’t believe this system works, as it dicentivizes discussions and - in my opinion - helps creating echo chambers.
A good example of a forum that uses only upvotes is Tildes. You need an invite to participate, but you can lurk and see what people do over there. Popular opinions still get to the top and get highlighted (resolving the issue of most helpful comments appearing first), and less popular opinions still appear down below. But here’s the thing: in my experience in that forum, those less popular opinions are engaged with, far more than what I see in Reddit, piefed or lemmy. Why? Because you can’t downvote them. There’s no button for that. If you want to express disagreement, you actually have to do that.
Because otherwise, using my comment as example: - what did people disagree with? 1. The suggestion that the downvote button shouldn’t exist? 2. The suggestion that neither of them should exist? 3. Me calling 4chan community trash? 4. All of the above?
No discussion is added, no new insights appear, nothing. Without your comment, this comment that I’m writing now wouldn’t exist either.
Thus my point, we are discussing and bringing new ideas to the table.
10k 🔺 100k 🔻
10k 🔺 0🔻
You forgot that it often looks like:
-90k🔻
In some cases I might prefer the 10k/-100k one to be honest.
As another downvoter I will also take the time to explain:
I will basically always happily downvote people whining about downvotes. Especially if the whining is preemptive.
If I were going to turn every downvote into a conversation I’d be at this all day. And it would further encourage bad behavior because any engagement is good engagement right?: If you can pull someone into a quagmire of discussion then ragebait comments and posts would be the order of the day.
The downvote button is a quick shortcut to let people know their comment is “bad”, with a lot less risk of raising attention to the level where someone might dig through post/comment history or worse doxx/swat someone.
Does that mean that downvoting is perfect? Of course not. I would say that probably downvotes should be weighted much lower than 1:1 with upvotes, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it makes sense to ignore them completely or maybe just a tiebreaker. Might also be important to distinguish comment-downvotes from post-downvotes, but I’ll gladly leave it to the software designers to worry about all that.
I will basically always happily downvote people whining about downvotes. Especially if the whining is preemptive.
Considering the point of the comment - and the post being about downvotes - my edit was meant to illustrate the point, not to whine.
Regardless, about another thing that I feel is more relevant:
If I were going to turn every downvote into a conversation I’d be at this all day. And it would further encourage bad behavior because any engagement is good engagement right?: If you can pull someone into a quagmire of discussion then ragebait comments and posts would be the order of the day.
To me this is not… A healthy way to interact with forums. You don’t have to engage with every post or comment you come across, be it with commenting or voting. You’re “allowed” to be neutral, to not know, to not have an opinion, or to simply not want to engage.
And if you feel that someone is pulling you into a pointless argument, you can just walk away. Having the last word != being right, as a lot of people misunderstand.
And if people posting ragebaits becomes an issue, downvoting or replying to them won’t solve anything. The problem would need to be fixed on a more fundamental level, but that’s another can of worms that mods need to figure out on their own communities. As for me, I simply walked away, as I did with Reddit and others
You remember when Youtube neutered their downvote button? It’s still there but effectively useless? Now we can’t warn other users of AI slop, scams, or the other terribleness the web is full of.
But sure let’s do that to Lemmy.
Disliking must be highly addictive 😂
i downvoted you bc i disagree with your stance on the existence of the downvote button. i think its a helpful tool for the quality of the site and user experience. i have no idea who you are, i haven even read your username.
If they got rid of downvotes then what are we supposed to do when tankies post their slop?
Ignore, block, report. Maybe leave a comment so others that join have an anchor to read.
Idk, it’s not the end of the world.
Dogpile on them
Reply explaining why their view is terrible so that then they can complain that they are getting dogpiled for having a opinion and not everyone needs to reply.
The average internet user unfortunately is a dumb person and if they come across something they do not understand, they downvote :/ it is that mentality, the bits and the propaganda which led me away from Reddit. Sad to see it here so soon
Weird. Is it because I’m on the Voyager app I don’t see downvote options? Or the community my account is on?
It’s a setting, defaulted off I think.
Might be the community. Voyager here shows downvote buttons (in my lemmy.world account)
You can still click the ‘…’ for the downvote option
There are some communities which have downvotes disabled, blahaj is one of them. I don’t know how many downvotes you have and I don’t care anymore. It’s way more interesting to engage. Also, since I’m on blahaj I comment and upvote much more. Downvotes kill discussion.
Honestly, reading comments around, remove display of up/down votes entirely, but keep the system and instead add two tags “Popular” and “Unpopular”, both working on certain tresholds to both amount of votes and ratio of votes. Keep positioning mechanics with using votes to position content, but apply them only to tagged elements.
This way we enable discussion on most topics without problems and incentivise actually talking about topics, while still keeping the means to flag both bad will content and content most valued by community.
With Lemmy I’d say having minimum 50 votes total for comment and 100 for post sound good for total vote treshold, while having 75% of upvotes/downotes sounds good as a ratio treshold. But I am not sure on these, as I am honestly freeballin it right now.
I agree with you. Internet forums were better before likes/etc.
Before you had to state an opinion to engage any idea. Which drives conversations. You had to stake your reputation via alias. Which is why forums build such strong communities.
There were certainly downsides and old style forums don’t scale well for modern user levels.
But I think the defaultism of likes/voting lowers the bar of participation and in doing so also fundamentally lowers the quality of any conclusions derived therein.
Yeah, something that is becoming very clear in these replies is that people got used to Reddit way of things.
Perhaps it’s one of those things that you have to experience for yourself.
Enforced toxic positivity does not produce better conversations or better communities. It basically just turns a discussion forum into Disneyland, where everyone is happy all the time, because there’s no other option. It’s the kind of yes-man thinking you get in corporate meetings that produce really bad ideas because “don’t be negative! there are no bad ideas here!”
It basically just turns a discussion forum into Disneyland, where everyone is happy all the time, because there’s no other option
In my experience, that’s not what happens
You don’t have to like facts for them to be facts.
Careful son, you’re perilously close to saying “feelings”
I haven’t seen it that bad on this platform, but on reddit it’s so awful that I have to always check downvoted comments for the 50/50 chance that the comment is entirely reasonable and provides genuinely beneficial information, rather than being completely insane.
It’s also just really sad that people would often ask questions and then downvote an answer not for being wrong, but because it was something they didn’t want to hear. Then immediately after respond with, “You have so many downvotes, you must be wrong.” One of the old legal subreddits from around five years ago was infamous for this. Why yes, go ahead and trust the unverified user who didn’t link to any code. I’m sure they are absolutely correct.
The panels are out of sequence. The accusation goes after the Wikipedia post.
Has to be. Just got -10 downvoted on a post that wasn’t even that active
Nah dude, I just looked at the comment you were talking about. You were bagging on someone else for a minor grammar mistake that everyone else understood just fine. You got down voted because you were being a pedantic dick, then did the thing that always guarantees down votes: editing your comment to call everyone idiots for down voting you.
We’re squarely in our “good vibes only” era as a species.
Remember now, every Lemmy user who is reading this currently is guilty of this. If you’re on Lemmy you’ve done this before
Let me check.
I have got some alternative facts that say otherwise.
Source? Trust me bro I made it up!
dislikes are certain when dealing with all the unreasonables. The tankies, the vegans and grammar nazis spring to mind. These groups will brigade in to stomp on any one who hurts their fragile feels. I enjoy a large number of dislikes just as much as a large number of likes. I know I’ve put my finger on the center of the subject either way.
sauce
Wikipedia
ISHYGDDT
1 bajillion likes
u
Downvote. Back.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
If it was here on Lemmy, there’s a good chance many of the downvotes are the same person on multiple accounts engaging in vote manipulation. Probably true on Reddit, too, but much harder to confirm since none of that stuff is public.
bigFab@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I can’t believe that shit is a thing. I mean, don’t these ppl know about having a job, a favorite PC-game or at the very least smoking weed?
Broadfern@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Touching grass (all interpretations)
OpenStars@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
(checks notes, statistically analyzing frequency patterns, outsourcing to consulting firm) Apparently not!
BillyClark@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I complained about this downvoting behavior in the past (on a different account), pointing out specific accounts, and the admins and mods don’t care. They told me not to complain, instead.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
I wouldn’t put it past some instance admins to be the ones engaging in the vote manipulation themselves. There’s plenty of dickhead admins that spun up their own instances because their views aren’t welcome elsewhere and they can more easily control an echo chamber.
Rhoeri@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
If it was on .world no, they don’t care.
fartographer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Also, downvotes are fun to collect! All of you’re grandmother’s r poopieheads!