this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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I've been so used to judging a post just by its popularity on reddit, but it's actually so much more useful to have an idea of the downvote ratio. I'm glad we have that here.

It was a scandal when it disappeared from YouTube, but I didn't realize it was missing from Reddit too for much longer!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

at least Reddit showed the upvote - downvote balance, YouTube only shows upvotes, which is a completely useless number.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Looking at you, beehaw.org

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

YT doesn't want your poor little feelings to be hurt.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

hm. The instance I'm on, lemmy.one, doesn't have a downvote button or a ratio. Can each server owner configure it to remove that? Maybe I should switch instances! Is there an easy way to export all of my communities and migrate to lemmy.ml?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yes, servers can disable downvotes. Beehaw does that, for instance. I'm on lemmy.world which allows both. I prefer both because I think it helps silence bad faith participation with less active moderation, but I respect that some places don't want it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It also enables bad faith participation such as down-vote brigading.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

while that's true, people will always find a way to be jerks. if people can't be jerks with a downvote, they'll express their jerkitude verbally, which is certainly worse. i just wish we could move beyond the point where a downvote (or a bunch) was enough to emotionally devastate a person-- or where people feel the need to do that to others.

this is such a nice place now, but, then again, so was reddit in the beginning.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm definitely on the fence about it. I agree about the bad faith participation with downvote brigading, but I also feel that having downvotes is, overall, a good way to gauge community agreement.

I think what I would like the most is a visible upvote/downvote percentage ratio. That way you could see not only the net upvotes - downvotes like on reddit, but the actual participation by the community.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

You can see it by hovering over the counter and looking at the tooltip, but yeah having both upvotes and downvotes prominently displayed could be nice as well.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

personal opinion: not having downvote is the same as a participation trophy... pointless and hurts the original idea of "upvoting" (or the winner trrophy) just because a lot of people cannot handle the reality of the world.... just sad :(

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Same, first positive thing I noticed. This really feels like Reddit in the beginning–I like it!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

its probably my favorite feature of lemmy/kbin

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Everyone feel free to downvote me so you can see it in action

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

B-b-but... Your karm- Oh wait. Never mind.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Idk about anyone else, but the icons are completely/temporarily invisible on my end. I can hit them and they appear though, sometimes.

Edit: Adding a photo

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, its just lemmy.ml's servers being overloaded.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Added a cheeky down vote for you 😉

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

Quick, everybody upvote this guy! Positive bullying!

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

What I really hope to see is some client-side algorithms that can let you track who vote-voted-for-what. This way, you (your client) could ignore downvotes if you detect brigading or rings and it could boost a particular post if it happened to be upvoted by a friend of yours.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I really like that you can hide scores on posts and comments altogether. I don't like seeing the upvotes or downvotes. I don't want to base my opinion on a comment or post on what other people have felt about it, and so just not seeing their reaction to it at all helps prevent that. I don't think popularity is necessarily a useful factor to consider in judging a post or comment. This is one complaint I have about the Jerboa app right now, is that it doesn't respect the Hide Scores preference.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everytime I loomed at my most upvoted comments/submissions on reddit, it would just be populist low effort crap that I wrote.

The meaningful insightful comments that I wrote barely got more than a handful of votes.

The voting system really isn't that indicative of anything in my opinion, other than how willing we are to lower ourselves to pander to the lowest common denominator.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I absolutely agree ... have an upvote!

Snark aside, I do agree, but my time on the microblogging side of the fediverse has habituated me to using "like"/"upvote" as just a nice pleasant gesture to the author of acknowledgement and appreciation. Of course there aren't any algorithms on the fediverse (yet?), so a "like" can only be a gesture, and it's actually wonderful.

So I do the same here. If I really think something is problematic, I frown in concern with a downvote. Thinking of it as human gestures to actual people is actually a nice way to interact on social media IMO.

And while pandering will happen, I, as a lurker/reader don't always want to highest voted comment and often sort by new and old to see other comments. So it really can be about what habits and mentalities we bring to this ... a readjustment of which being something the fediverse has to offer.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Complete agreement, it feels like I'm awakening old voting habits from a nicer internet.