I realized late that Reddthat has downvotes universally disabled, and now I'm regretting choosing it as my home instance. 🙁 Is the lack of downvoting permanent?

I've mostly been using the Sync app (which shows a downvote option everywhere), so I didn't notice the lack of downvoting until I was spending a lot of time on desktop yesterday and saw there are actually no downvote buttons anywhere 😮 on Reddthat.

I've since tracked down what seems to be the Reddthat policy discussion around this issue, which also made clear that even if I downvote content from another instance through a 3rd-party app like Sync, because I'm doing it from an account on Reddthat (which has downvoting disabled), my downvote doesn't go through!

This sucks. 🙁 Downvoting is an essential tool for users to help keep their communities on-topic and discourage bad behavior. It lets people take action against ignorance or bigotry without feeding the trolls; minimize people trying to derail discussions or be obnoxious in the comments; and prevent memes, sensationalism, and low-effort posts from flooding communities meant for thoughtful discussion.

It's unfortunate that lemmy doesn't support disabling downvotes just within specific communities yet, so this wouldn't have to be such an all-or-nothing policy, but as-is this means making Reddthat my home instance has restricted my options and given me less of a voice everywhere within the lemmyverse.

@ticoombs@reddthat.com, is there any chance this policy will be reconsidered? So many comments in the previous discussion seemed to agree that downvotes are a valuable and desired feature. It doesn't seem like that feedback has resulted in any kind of policy change yet though. Was a specific decision made after that discussion to keep voting disabled, or has it just been stuck in a wait-and-see state? Would it be possible to change this?

21 comments

Upvote/downvote is irrelevant and a dumb idea. Just interact with people and don’t worry about it.
- Thats like playing battlefield without being able to see you kills / deaths. Not that I care that much about up and downvotes but seeing no downvotes when other instances can kinda sucks imo
  
  If you choose to look at how you interact with people that way, I suppose it can be like that. Most people just talk with one another and not worry about it.
- I too think that is the case. At the end of the day I think people forget that there are other humans on the replying end and they say things that they wouldn't in everyday life.
  I would also say a majority of people chose to move to Lemmy instances thinking it was a replacement for reddit and want it to be exactly like reddit. Except it isn't in some cases. That is what I've chosen for Reddthat.
  
  I also find it interesting that the only commenters here are from other instances so far 😁
- Well now I'm conflicted because I want to upvote your comment, as I also agree. So I'll interact AND upvote! Because I won't conform to what you tell me. Also, I hope you have a lovely day
  
  Aww! You have a lovey day as well!”
I'm sorry you feel that way and before we delve into the matter deeply I will preface my arguments with I hope you stay on Reddthat but I completely understand your point of view. I also hope that Sync fixes their application to only show downvotes when it is applicable.

Lemmy is Reddit like. We are not reddit. We may have a name that was originally a pun. I wanted to take the best of our previous platform and enjoy our time here.

People's preconceptions around voting is incorrect with any sorting algorithm on Lemmy. Top is the only one that filters by vote counts.
All sorting algorithms use voting as one piece to determine where it should be placed in your "feed". The amount of comments and interactions inside the post are also weighted in the algorithm. So if you are sorting via Hot, someone who comments very recently will actually be at the top of the comment section. This negates the (lack of a better term) "Reddit effect". Where coming in late to a post results in your comment have zero engagement.

There are many reasons people vote and I couldn't even list them all because they are personal reasons which are different for each individual. Agreement, disagreement, disgust, humorous etc. Out of the 4 listed here how many would you vote up? The Reddit answer would be 2. The Lemmy answer (in my view) would be at minimum 3 with disgust being the outlier.
Disagreement should not mean a downvote. You may hate my answer, you may dislike their answer, but that doesn't mean downvote. Disagreements is what makes the world go round. Differing points of views, different experiences, different values.
As long as you can be constructive in your point and you/we remain civil that would be a good conversation. Even if the conversation ends with both of us in disagreement! That is the Reddthat experience I want to foster and the ideal little corner of the internet I want to see happen.

While I understand the annoyances that come with being unable to downvote offtopic posts or downvoting personal attacks etc. Not replying and not engaging in the off topic content will result that comment going all-the-way to the bottom. Thus the same effect is reached.
For all other content such as personal attacks, abusive behaviour, or NSFW content in SFW only communities, you need to use the report button instead, because that type of behaviour should not be allowed in any community.
Reporting also can be utilised for not just comments but for posts that meet any of the conditions you specified.

As with the fediverse and as others have already alluded in reply to this. I'm not locking you here. You are able to signup somewhere else, and with tools like lemmy-migrate you can sync all of your subscriptions and be up and running in little to no time!

Obviously I don't want you to move away and I want you to have the best experience possible but at the same time I cannot see a reason to enable downvotes. Besides from the "feelgood/feel like you are contributing to the community". There are too many "downsides" which I hashed out in your linked post which make me feel uncomfortable to enable the feature at this point in time.

Downvotes, at their core are from another platform which doesn't align with the ideals I have for Reddthat, which is for health communication. When people associate a score they instinctively think it is worth/not worth something.

I hope that answers all your questions on my thought process, decision making, and how downvoting does not contribute to healthy community.

Cheers,
Tiff
- Thank you for the response Tiff! Unfortunately I think you're making a mistake in blanket-characterizing downvotes as "disagreement." The practical reality of voting on a platform like this is that votes are functionally just feedback. And without the possibility of giving negative feedback, you're making it so that any negative behaviors large or small (bad-faith argument tactics, spreading misinformation, negativity / debbie-downerism, inappropriateness, click-baiting, reaction-baiting, trolling, hyperbole, off-topicness, just plain rudeness) -- can only get rewarded with upvotes and attention unless mods are constantly policing them to an extreme.
  
  It doesn't matter if negative behaviors get less upvotes and attention than good behaviors, because a) it's usually lower effort and b) any net-positive outcome still reinforces it. Having to report to try to combat it raises the threshold of toxicity needed before most people are willing to "tattle" or "complain", and puts all of the burden on moderators to review every individual report and determine in each instance if the level of badness is enough to warrant removal or banning.
  
  Negative feedback is important to healthy communication too. Downvotes help maintain civility and standards through consensus instead of fiat. Having to remove content that isn't malicious but is inappropriate for the context or goals of a community feels like much more of a "punishment" than downvotes do. That sucks for mods having to do that level of policing if they want a high-quality community, for users who are outspoken / prolific but sometimes need help knowing where the line is, and for community members who end up feeling disenfranchised that it's all up to the mods' judgement, level of effort, and favoritism.
  
  🤷‍♂️ If you're committed to this route, I wish you luck in maintaining / scaling an environment in which downvotes aren't needed. Respectfully, I think it's a bit hubristic, and you might be letting a bias toward Reddit color your thinking too much here; downvoting is not their invention. Regardless, the core issue for me is that if I'm using Reddthat as my home instance, this decision restricts my options across all of lemmy. So I'll be making a switch, but I appreciate your intent and taking the time to consider. All the best.
  
  Unfortunately I think you're making a mistake in blanket-characterizing downvotes as "disagreement."
  
  Disagreement shouldn't mean a downvote
  
  I think our points got crossed. I believe disagreement shouldn't result in a downvote but if they are adding to the conversation it can/should still be upvoted. Regardless of disagreement.
  
  Either way. As discussed in the original thread, I disabled downvotes as that is what the (at the time) big instances did before people barely heard of Lemmy. I liked that idea to not have downvotes on Reddthat. Unfortunately a side effect was that it meant any user on Reddthat couldn't downvote on other instances. At the time if I had known that I probably wouldn't have made the no down vote! Even I find myself at the behest of this feature and find myself interacting more often instead of blanketly disregarding something (via downvoting).
  
  I find it very interesting that your perception only changed once you made the move from the web to the app which showed a down vote button. If you had chosen one of the other applications, such as Jerboa, Eternity or voyager. I wonder if we would have had this conversation.
  
  At the end of the day I hope you will come back but by no means should you feel obligated to stay.
  
  Cheers!
- Permanently Deleted
I actually like having the downvotes disabled. I saw a brigade of comments that I didn't agree with on a large post, but didn't want to have to refute each and every one... so I instinctively went to downvote (because they were misinformation comments that can be dangerous). But alas, I had forgotten that I couldn't and had to rethink what I was trying to do.

So I refuted several, but that's tiresome. I agreed with others and upvoted their comments as well. And that's when I realized that the people I agreed with were really the only ones with any upvotes. The brigade of misinformation comments were hardly being interacted with at all.

And I liked it for myself, because I couldn't just mindlessly downvote... I had to interact to refute, or simply not entertain them at all. And I realized that nobody was entertaining them; they were just a "loud majority" at the time, while the more productive comments were being upvoted, even if not responded to. And I suddenly felt less isolated in the thread, with all the misinformation comments flooded around.

So then I made my own comment to the topic. Engagement I probably wouldn't have made before. And my whole process of thinking about how I engage and interact here kind of changed. We don't need downvotes at all, there's plenty of ways to disagree already. No need to "downvote to hell" if they have an opposing opinion. Downvotes can just lead to unintended consequences and just really aren't needed, in my opinion

If there's something to report though, make sure to do that. Plenty of options though, no downvotes required
Downvotes are just used as a disagree button these days, it’s stupid.
- Yes...that was their entire purpose to begin with..
  
  No it wasn’t. The up/down vote system wasn’t made for agree/disagree, it was made to push useful and correct information to the top and to push incorrect and off topic information to the bottom. Reddit literally says that the downvote button is not a disagree button in their terms.
While I understand @ticoombs@reddthat.com views here, I share the same mindset as for when YouTube disabled dislikes...

I also believe not having dislikes and down-votes is an overall negative.

In my opinion content should be able to receive both positive reinforcement and negative feedback.
I personally think having downvotes off is better, it stops people from just mass-dowvoting people they dont Like or bridging other people's posts
- But it also shows whether a comment is controversial or not.
  
  Like if someone says some racist ass shit I'd rather see that more people dislike it than not.
  
  How would that work in you not seeing it? You would still see it but it would have downvotes attached to it.
  
  That is not how the Hot algorithm works which is the default ranking system
- Permanently Deleted
switch... kinda stinkd but tou are not married to the instance. even if you were

. 50% of marriages fail... so again no reason to not switch

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