this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2023
74 points (97.4% liked)
Lemmy
12518 readers
112 users here now
Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.
For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Could we also have a rule saying that downvotes should not be used for disagreements? Downvotes should be meant for off-topic, or factually incorrect content. Disagreements should be debated in the comments, respectfully of course.
While I personally never downvote anyone for disagreeing, I don't think it's possible, or desirable, to try to create rules around how people use their preference buttons.
But I def suggest going into your settings and hiding vote scores, as that's psychologically better for most people.
Maybe not rules, but I think it is desirable to change how people think about it through UX.
Currently the downvote button is equivalent to upvote, just a casual thing you can do. If it's meant to have a different meaning, it should look different.
I also don't think it's possible to actually end mean-spirited disagreement in internet comment sections, but it's a valuable thing to strive for as a value and emphasize, like you did in this post.
I think the same can be said for group-downvoting and stalking threads to downvote people based on what side they take without engaging with the substance of what is said. Minority viewpoints that add information are probably the most needed thing, and if anything I would say group downvoting is worse here than reddit on certain topics, unfortunately.
I think the attention spans are better here, and many/most things are better here but this is a sore spot.
no but you censor and go even back in history to remove traces of an approved and upvoted comment to give a certain portrait of a user.
why are you actually providing this instance, really?
Beehaw just removes the downvote button entirely, so there is a community for that.
I can get behind this, because upvotes/downvote serve a purpose of telling the website "more people should see this". But we don't need to know what needs to be seen less. Upvotes will, on their own, already tell us what's the top content and sort things out things. Late, Average and Middling posts aren't really going to be seen by most people and are fine with a lesser rating accuracy.
But what about de-constructive comments? What if something TRULY deserves to be seen less? Well, here's a stance I don't particularly believe everyone would get behind but has some merit: People should post their reasoning why their post was not very good as a response. As that not just generates discussion points, but also informs other onlookers of their rationale. And if a response gathers upvotes (ratio'd), then that signals a better message than a simple downvote ever would. Yeah, that means the only response to a troll is actually responding, and that may make a community appear less welcoming, but overall I don't know if that's a big issue in practice.
This is why I'm personally not a fan of removing downvotes. No one really has been able to answer why upvotes need no comment to back them up, but downvotes for some reason always need a justification.
Many trolling comments, or some comments we just disagree staunchly with, should be downvoted, and no one should be required to write an explanation for that.
The other reason, is that all the big tech companies (except for reddit), have removed the dislike button. To me that signals that they don't want it to be known that some positions are wildly unpopular.
On twitter the only indicator of "dislike" now, is being "ratio'd": having more comments than favorites, which of course they prefer because it drives up engagement, since no one can just downvote and move on. It also makes some reactionary positions (like being anti-trans for instance), seem much more popular than they really are.
I do understand and agree with the rest of the post. By all means, downvotes do have value with dealing with immature or agenda'd posters if that is problematic to a community.
But I did state why it can be fine and how there's a reason why upvotes require no reasoning while downvotes do - they have an immediate, positive effect on the usability of the site (everyone sees top posts), while downvotes have a less immediate one (only a subset scrolls to see bottom posts). Upvotes are just inherently more valuable to the community on the whole and shouldn't be put to equal questioning. Downvotes are more useful to contain undesirables.
On this note, there's somewhat of a tangential discussion to all of this, which is "should posts that go below a threshold (like -10 points) be hidden from users by default?". I personally would opt to keep posts visible to myself, because I want to know what was said that earned the shunning. But I can't think of a reason why a system that has downvotes shouldn't do that filtering, after all, it basically empowers downvotes to do their job better, and stops trolls from latching to top posts.
What you say about upvotes vs downvotes flies against how hierarchy inherently works. If you push something upward everything else moves downward relative to that. If you push something downward everything else moves upward relative to it.
I don't really get why. A well reasoned position I disagree with might discourage me to downvote, because I would like the reasoning itself. But why would downvoting something you disagree with be bad?
It helps prevent hivemind mentality and keeps us growing. Unpopular opinions often have ideas worth examining or could be outright correct despite common wisdom saying otherwise, and forums like these are one of the best places for us to engage with those facts. There's also times when an opinion we like dislike is misinformed, and rather than send it to the bottom, it's good to explain how it's wrong for both our own sake (refining our arguments) and bystanders that haven't given the topic much thought.
But if someone left a turd, send that stank to the bottom!
undefined> But if someone left a turd, send that stank to the bottom!
This is the crux of it though, where is the distinction between opposing viewpoint and absurdist argument? How would you combat people trolling, i.e. intentionally posting inflammatory things to cause disruption/argument?
Am I trolling you right now? Or am I arguing in good faith? :-)
Schrodinger's troll!
Judgement is best left to the reader :)
Personal experience ofc, but a lot of people argue in bad faith. Knowingly (or unknowingly) invoke logical fallacies, whataboutisms and straw man arguments. With how ideologically volatile the internet has turned in recent years, you can't really have a reasonable argument any more without it becoming just a name calling session.
Yesterday I noticed just how much reddit had jaded me. Had a bbq with some friends and a guy I knew was very much in the right, q anon stuff and all, asked me about my position on polarizing topics. I'm anarcho syndicalist. Expected it to get heated. Dude just genuinely asked questions and that was it. No trying to prod holes into the ideology or show the superiority of his ideology. It was kinda eye opening and showed me I just spent too much time in toxic areas of the internet. Though he seemed to have a bone to pick with the stereotypical city dweller lib. Had I had those positions he probably would've unloaded with quotes from the usual suspect talking heads.