Is strictly negative participation in a community healthy for lemmy?
Is strictly negative participation in a community healthy for lemmy?
If a niche community has people that persistently downvote every post
- is that healthy for the community?
- is that healthy for lemmy in general?
Examples that come to mind are political communities, linus tech tips, diet communities, etc. There will be a group of people who will not make comments, posts, but will strictly downvote everything that is in the community.
This is a continuation of a discussion @Blaze@feddit.org and I started elsewhere, but it deserves it's own space for meta-moderation discussion.
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FWIW Hexbear disabled downvotes entirely (after a scandal where an audit revealed that certain users were exclusively downvoting posts of trans users) and it doesn't seem to have resulted in any problems.
We also have a very strict moderation policy though, so this may not be universally applicable.
and it doesn’t seem to have resulted in any problems.
Has it actually resolved any?
Well it got rid of the ability of people to downvote and potentially silence (by pushing them off the front page) any posts made by trans users, so I'd say yeah.
Other than removing the ability of bigots and wreckers from hindering discussions or silencing users by burying posts with downvotes, as barrbaric said:
One healthy side effect is that it encouraged participation in discussions — if you think a take is bad enough to deserve a downvote anyway, you just need to do so in a way that associated with your user account (usually the nifty
emoji.) If others disagree with your assessment, they'll reply with why, and it starts a discussion. Now people need to post their dissent publicly.I was apprehensive about the change when it was originally made but came around on it really quickly, it really made it much more pleasant and friendly to participate in the community.
So far I can really only remember downvoting hostility and spam. Spam usually gets removed quickly, no need for discussion. But if I see hostility, I'm usually a bit scared off from replying, no matter how gently I word it, because I'm pretty sure I'll receive some kind of extremely aggressive response. Sure, it's an online stranger who knows nothing of me and is probably purposely making the most hurtful assumption possible for the sake of hurting. But I frankly have little experience being insulted and treated poorly, and I see no reason to increase my amount of unnecessary unpleasant experiences. And sometimes people are crazy and dox or figure out that information and use it to try to ruin your real life. Normal, average, non-special folk like me who don't kick up a fuss or go looking for trouble still have to take out restraining orders sometimes…
Most takes, expressed civilly, are worth an upvote even if I disagree, if they add to discussion and are posted in good faith. "Here is my politely-worded version of why Jews are evil" is getting a downvote, report, and zero actual reply because I don't want the crazy bigot targeting me next.