Currently downvotes are enabled on a trial basis, this was done by me to see if they can be enabled to prevent spam from rising to the top of communities, along with the fact that is another form of interaction/feedback.
However I’ve gotten some pushback for this and so I’d like to see the general consensus of this decision. Please put any comments/concerns in this thread, and please vote here: https://forms.gle/zqDxemJCiTAXJi5i9
the results of this poll and the comments will determine if we keep or remove downvotes again
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I don’t see it being a benefit in communities in that I mod (hentai, paizuri, tentaclehentai, and hentaigif), so I’m not personally keen on it but I can see why larger communities might want it. I’m no longer as hopeful that a more active hentai-oriented community will develop here, so though I voted “No”, I’m a little apathetic about the choice now, personally.
From what I recall, some users use downvotes for more than just spam, like disliking things. This creates a problem when people browse the Local feed and downvote stuff they don’t like even if they aren’t even subbed to that community. This impacts niche communities and their posters/creators who would get more downvotes from people seeking more mainstream content even if it would otherwise fit that community.
If the goal is just to ward off spam, then unless reports aren’t enough, I’d keep downvotes off.
Currently downvotes are enabled on a trial basis, this was done by me to see if they can be enabled to prevent spam
There’s a bunch of spam from a user called “BravoIsabella” that has positive upvotes, and a grumpy post from one of the AI communities saying “mystery downvoter show yourself”.
Yeah, I posted this. Somebody or a number of somebodies are mass now downvoting nearly everything I post. Presumably, they have some beef but they should have stated it openly and we could have discussed it. Instead they are just blanket-bombing me.
Frankly, it’s the sort of thing one expects on reddit. But this is supposed to be a better sort of place?
Oh and the “mystery downvoter” post got, as of this moment, a -11. In a new community with 5 subscribers. It basically means a gang of people are just going around and downvoting everything I post. It’s no longer about artistic differences or anything, it’s a vendetta.
And frankly, I am not here for this type of shit. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into creating art and sharing it, including creating new communities. But this gang of self-appointed anonymous vigilantes is really making me reconsider whether it’s all worthwhile.
Sorry about the whining. But since the admin asked how people feel about downvotes, that’s how I feel.
It’s shitty. I appreciate your posts. Here’s hoping OP turns off downvotes and we can go back to the way we were.
Thanks!
Enabled downvotes and place immediately got more argumentative and a bit more toxic. No, not want.
I too, as a person who has no feelings for men, have clicked posts for gay porn by accident. I too have come across posts which I did not prefer, even if they were concerning women. I, too, have seen some things which in general I do not like. In these cases—
I simply became more careful and started taking a look at the community name first. Secondly I started looking for communities whivh fit what I like better. Niche ones without exposure. A good sign. For the last, there are a number of ways for me to deal with it, like simply moving on. Blocking where maliciousness exists. Finding other communities. Et cetera.
I think vote up is to “like” a post and down vote to “dislike” a post. If the intent is to use down votes to prevent spam that is what a report button would be for.
I think it’s better to have a button to report spam, harassment, etc , rather than using downvote. Downvote is too ambiguous.
Such buttons aren’t really supported in mobile apps though.
I suppose it makes sense if the change is lemmy-wide
I mean, that’s how the report button works site-wide. If we are talking about a button that works automatically, then you are basically copying the downvote, but worse, since it cannot be offset by many people upvoting.
You need to remember that it is hard to distinguish between a downvote / button use because of spam / harassment and because of people not liking something. You need a human to do that. Fetish content will get downvoted / buttonned by people “not into it” when obscure enough. Regular OCs will also get that treatment - since users will get bored and seeing new content from them may make them downvote / button.
From a user interface perspective, I think it’s far less likely people will report spam than downvote when they do not like something. I suppose we both are only hypothesising here though.
I don’t see offsetting as a good feature. It just seems to drive people into tribalistic up/down wars. What’s the point of users seeing the net votes?
Only if it isn’t a single button.
The point is the same as with hiding the yt dislike button. It helps people determine if something is of higher quality or not.
do reports downrank posts?
It might even remove the offending post entirely.
automatically/instantly? or do you mean after review?
Maybe it’s just me, but after enabled I seem to get much higher quality content on the local page.
No downvotes. People use it as a “this isn’t my fetish” button and everything even slightly niche gets sent to oblivion. Especially bad for gonewild posts where people’s self image gets involved.
Also using a Google doc for this poll seems like a bad idea since people who aren’t from this instance can vote
You are using “some people misuse a thing” as a rationale to get rid of the thing.
If someone posts fetish x on a vanilla community, they should get downvoted. If they post that same thing in a community about fetish x, then the community can simply be blocked by those so inclined.
If they post that same thing in a community about fetish x, then the community can simply be blocked by those so inclined.
Yes, they could. But that’s not what’s going to happen.
Believing that fetishes should be separated in their own corners and downvoted otherwise is an excellent reason to not have downvotes - or to just not post content in this instance anymore
Separating things into their own corner is literally the point of subs.
Unless a community explicitly has a rule excluding content, and the uploads are valid there, downvoting something just because you’re not into it just seems like entitlement to me. Its the same “reasoning” people use to get gay content outside of Rule34 or other general boards, because they find it “icky” (of course none of these people complain about lesbian content)
Having to enumerate every single rule on a sub would be horrific and more importantly preference can’t be written into rules. What a community likes and doesnt like is based on the voting system, thats the fundamental point of Lemmy and reddit.
Thinking you can post whatever you want and expect all the exposure without regards to a communities tastes just because it doesnt explicitly violate rules is entitlement.
Seems like the divide is between people who actually contribute to this instance and post content, versus those who don’t and want to decide what get seen or not. Question, when we are gone, are you going to start posting? Will you create and moderate communities? Or are you going to keep sitting and expecting poster to cater to your tastes?
Its pretty rich to sit on your ass, makes demands and still call others entitled.
I posted when this instance first started and there was nearly nothing. So yeah I would and did. I didnt complain about the down votes and wasnt demanding up votes either.
I’m entitled to nothing, posts or votes. You are entitled to nothing as well.
If they post that same thing in a community about fetish x, then the community can simply be blocked by those so inclined.
The problem is the majority of people don’t actually do that. They just downvote it to oblivion. That’s a significant part of why they were turned off in the first place.
by that same logic a use that sees content they don’t like on a community they do can block that user.
is there a problem with content being posted that doesn’t match communities right now? i haven’t noticed one. the biggest problem on this platform right now is lack of content. downvotes, or any tool for creating explicit negative social interaction or feedback can make a community more hostile and less inviting. right now i generally see almost no posts on any nsfw communities that should get downvotes that don’t just get taken care of by a moderator. right now we need to draw people in to posting content way way more than we need better tools to organize it.
the biggest problem on this platform right now is lack of content. downvotes, or any tool for creating explicit negative social interaction or feedback can make a community more hostile and less inviting.
Exactly this. We don’t have enough content to give users the tools to discourage posting.
This is the important part:
Especially bad for gonewild posts where people’s self image gets involved.
We don’t need a “go away, you’re ugly” button. That’s what blocking is for.
Hm… what if downvoting was weighted only 1/10th as much as upvoting? So a few downvotes here and there from people doing it wrong wouldn’t amount to anything in others’ view, but if a post is heavily downvoted due to being in the wrong community or low effort, that’s visible?
Maybe? I dunno. Turning off downvotes seems like a pretty simple solution. Trying to come up with complex ways to make it hurt just the right amount doesn’t seem like it’ll work in all cases.
It’s called fine-tuning, and if everyone gave up that easily, many domains would suffer, like medicine, architecture, manufacturing design etc. Don’t be afraid of something simply because the ideal fix is more complicated than 2+2.
I don’t see much reason to have them. Others have spoken of helping with spam. I haven’t noticed any spam on this instance.
You haven’t seen the new posters that suddenly show up, drop the same 2 pics in about 40 different places, then never post again?
Oh sure but I wouldn’t have considered that spam I guess.
I see a handful that have upvotes.
Downvotes are good, just as good as upvotes, having it one sided defeats the entire purpose of voting.
Everything just being upvoted is a terrible idea and you can see the negative impacts it already has in other places of the internet.
I personally believe downvotes can be of use, but that would require a much, much larger userbase than what Lemmy - as a whole, and also LemmyNSFW - has. Maybe the biggest stances could afford to have downvotes (though from what I’m aware, plenty of them don’t) but in NSFW I could easily see a few people with bad intentions deciding what gets or doesn’t get seen in smaller communities.
The average activity in non-niche communities of NSFW is also much smaller than their Reddit counterparts, plus the fact that - from my experience - there’s quite a few mods missing, inactive for several months to +1 year, and I’m not sure what one would do in case of brigading.
Unfortunately you can’t really stimulate people to comment, which really would’ve been a boon to uploaders
when it comes to harassment or brigaiding please report it to me and I’ll take care of it, if mods for a community are inactive
I don’t like downvotes. I post stuff here, if it gets downvoted it can fail and go below the level of visibility that garners it more votes. People will downvote for any reason that comes into their heads. It’s almost like random noise but it messes with my post’s path to its intended audience.
I don’t see what possible motivation I would have to keep posting when that is happening.
You aren’t entitled to exposure. Voting the good up and the less good down is the fundamental basis of sites like Lemmy and Reddit. As a content creator/poster it of course hurts when your stuff isnt enjoyed by the community, but its the decision of the users what gets big and what doesnt.
No, it’s you who aren’t entitled to content.
If I have to make an effort to do something it has to be rewarded. Else why do it?
You don’t wake up in the morning and whack yourself in the face with a teaspoon, do you? It wouldn’t happen because there would be no reward in it. Except for that one person in 100,000.
So without me, and people like me*, you ain’t up or downvoting anything because no on is posting.
*Unless you want to leave the posting to the bots…
Lol I’m sorry but you’re are entitled to nothing when posting. If people like it, great you get upvotes. No one is entitled to those votes though. If you were, then they’d be meaningless (or at least more meaningless haha)
Well I’m not going to post anything, so you’re not going to decide whether it gets exposure or not. So that’s that sorted.
Up to you.
We can’t afford to shit on the few posters we have.
Radovic is prolific - they post a tonne of content. If they are saying they don’t like the change, listen.
Posters need viewers and vise versa. One cannot function without the other. So no I reject your appeal to authority fallacy.
I don’t need viewers. I choose to share content with users that like it but if you think I won’t walk away from this instance over this and carry on with my life without looking back then you’re mistaken.
You don’t need viewers yet you’re up in arms about the -1 vote button coming back?
What you have to do to actually win this argument is to tell me why I should bother to post anything when people are downvoting it.
What would motivate me to service the needs of people that hate the majority of content?
I don’t care about winning against you or getting you to do anything, your opinions and actions after today are your own.
Suppressing down votes is something I disagree with, and I’m voicing those concerns.
I am also being shat upon in the past few days by anonymous blanket-downvoter(s) and it’s not a pleasant feeling. Rather discouraging, too.
Downvotes have some advantages over blocking. They:
- Indicate trends of spam (as @morphballganon@mtgzone.com pointed out).
- Allows minimizing exposure to unwanted content from a given account without blocking out exposure to all that account’s content. (Accounts may post a mix of content I do and don’t like. Blocking throws out the baby with the bathwater.)
- Help disambiguate the popularity of content vs. reach of content. (Relatively few upvotes compared to other posts could be due to community obscurity, or posting at a poor time of day. It doesn’t indicate whether the community likes the post, or how you should adjust your posting habits to increase appeal. Counting downvotes helps you understand how many total people viewed a post, and the percentage of those who appreciated it.)
- Are lower friction. (They take fewer clicks.)
No downvotes. This is a porn instance. Users will downvote OC that isn’t classically attractive, gay content, etc. I’ll do that because I’m a jerk. But it discourages what few posts we get.
Spammers should be banned and or users should block.
Yes
I feel downvotes are fairly useless.
They’re used as a disagree button. Ok but why do you disagree? Leave a reply and let’s discuss. Gain saying has little value and that’s all a downvote to disagree is.
They’re used to report spam. Spam should be reported so I don’t think that’s a valid argument for them. Downvoting spam leaves it up, reporting spam gets it taken down. We have a better solution to spam than downvotes.
They are used by bad actors, with the removal of downvotes bad actors have to spend more effort in making a comment and it becomes far more obvious in who they are, report and block them.
Finally downvotes are a way to yuck someone’s yum, I’m mindful of the instance we’re on. I don’t want our communities to become like Reddit where only one genital configuration and body type are allowed.
Very well articulated 👍, especially your last point, given the still fragile growing pains state that LemmyNSFW is currently in
Then use your same logic for upvotes, which you clearly didn’t. Only having it one sided defeats the entire purpose of votes, if you can’t see that then you have insanely flawed logic.
I’m obviously not going to make your argument for you.
Having it one sided clearly doesn’t defeat the purpose of votes. When you went to the ballot box do you upvote your chosen candidate and also downvote your least favourite?
Not having downvotes is a simple statement: “If you do not like this thing, we don’t care”. Report the spam and block the creators you don’t like, simples.
So you use my logic for upvotes, which you clearly didn’t, and maybe you’ll see why it’s downvotes that are removed and not upvotes.
See, if downvotes were active you might have just gainsayed and moved on and we wouldn’t have had this interaction. Neat huh?
