Thanks to the admins for not enabling downvoting

Far too often, lately, I see lots of people worried about the number of downvotes, or making preliminary justifications and requests to not downvote particular posts.

Me? I don't have to think about any of that. The content of the posts and comments determines their quality, not some artificial number that only represents whether people dis/like something.

Edit: Wow, a lot of people from other instances seem really offended that I don't like downvoting and seem a bit confused that I'd be thanking my admins for something I appreciate.

If you like downvoting, you don't have to move here. Enjoy your instance's features. Welcome to the Fediverse.

54 comments

Thank you indeed, much better experience
- 👍

User voting is the best feature reddit ever had. I can't even comprehend when Lemmy instances want downvotes removed. Do you not understand why Twitter is a flaming wreck on the altar of Engagemagog, while reddit was largely functional in spite of absentee landlords? Moderation is what keeps a forum from becoming 4chan - and users moderating each other is a great first approximation. Even sorting good stuff first and bad stuff later can be great for everyone, before removing a single comment or commenter.
- Moderation is what keeps a forum from becoming 4chan...
  Exactly.
  ...and users moderating each other is a great first approximation.
  No it's not. Downvotes only matter if the person cares—not even if they're arguing in good faith or not. If I literally don't care what my vote count is, having a negative number won't change that.
  All it proves is a mob can vote together. It doesn't prove why the comment is bad, because it could be a very reasonable comment that people simply don't like. I'm sure you've seen plenty of times where someone throws cold water on a topic, but the substantive pushback comes from other users debating the claims, not attaching a negative number to it.
  Likewise, bad-faith actors should be moderated by actual moderators, not general users—and unlike Reddit, you not only have community mods, but you have instance mods who aren't (usually) beholden to corporate interests.
  While I can appreciate that people like to be able to sort by vote count, I believe all that does is create artificial bias. If a comment is truly that bad, a moderator should probably be looking at it, anyway.
  Ultimately, this is Lemmy. We have the opportunity to create something better than Reddit that fosters better discourse.
  
  Agreed
  
  Downvotes keep assholes hidden whether or not they "care." They protect you from exposure to the worst loudmouths, before the moderators are even awake.
  And I've seen moderators erase stuff they "simply don't like." People are people. Downvotes are at least a democratic form of exclusion, and have softer consequences than outright censorship. You are free to scroll down and expand where someone's taking a kicking for a presumably-awful comment. But Lemmy severs whole subthreads when one comment gets removed.
  Why do even you care if a comment's been downvoted for mere disagreement, if you don't think getting buried matters?
  While I can appreciate that people like to be able to sort by vote count, I believe all that does is create artificial bias.
  That selection is the central function of this sort of website. The front page is not a chronological feed of what everyone posts, or a true-random potpourri of the last twenty-four hours.
  The whole friggin' idea is relying on crowds to sort things.
  Otherwise - why have votes at all? Why not get on your admin's case for allowing upvotes, the way you'd apparently chide them for considering downvotes? Feedback is necessary. The use of feedback is why reddit mattered, and the absence of negative feedback is why competing sites sucked. Twitter is a harassment engine where the only response besides engaging with trolls or silently taking abuse is to report someone and cross your fingers. Facebook is a disinformation hugbox, by design, openly encouraging group owners to be heavy-handed petit dictators. TikTok is a firehose of sludge that does not give a dang whether you like it.
  Seeing these posts celebrating the lack of a crucial feature is like finding out some instances are flat forums. Like you'd have to scroll through seven pages of signatures and block-quotes to get this reply. Reddit's only good decisions were downvotes, nested comments, and compartmentalization, in that order, and it is bizarre how many people want their choices limited to even less than that.

Your welcome as always. It is a point of difference in the sea of Lemmy instances that hopefully, like you've said, makes the content more enjoyable.

I've always wondered- does that work when other instance users are involved? Downvoting worked for me just now (which I undid)
- You send the downvote to your instance. Your instance takes note of it. It then forwards the "state change" to our instance. Our instance drops the request as we do not have downvotes enabled, and that's it. :)
  
  I do see one down vote when using voyager. Is this just being pulled from people who down voted it on my instance?
- On instances that do not use downvotes they aren't counted when viewed from that instance.
  
  FWIW, they are not counted at all, Lemmy drops the request before it makes it to the DB. So we (reddthat) have no way of knowing (from our side) if there are any down votes happening.
  Which, depending on your point of view, could be a good or bad thing.

Agreed. Hexbear doesn't have downvotes either.
I find that it just discourages discussion by enforcing an already majority opinion; people pretend as if something being downvoted alone is proof of it being wrong somehow. And there's the report button for things that actually break rules.
- I haven't interacted with a hexbear user for a while, but on this one I agree.

downvotes are only disabled on the specific instance but still enabled if I am viewing from a federated instance
- Yep, but the point is I don't have to see it. I could have 20k downvotes, but I'll never know. Out of sight, out of mind. I personally believe it poisons the discourse, but I know some people like it.
  
  You also don't see the upvote count either, unless you have it enabled. My instance for some reason doesn't allow me to downvote anyone, and I can't see upvotes.
  To me it just sounds like you want to feel good about the things you're able to make others agree on, and simply don't want to face the fact that sometimes you may say awful stuff.
  The above is not directed at you but anyone who would say yes upvotes, no downvotes.
  
  🤖Lemmy Karma Bot🤖
  You have 46,537 upvotes and 13,391 downvotes
  I am not a bot and this action was performed manually. I also made up the numbers.
  Click here to not buy me a coffee!

Yonatan Zunger, the lead engineer on Google+, once wrote a post about the research Google did to decide that downvotes don't foster healthy discussions. Sadly his post has been lost to time, but I found it pretty convincing. It's also refreshing not to feel the need to find and downvote every comment in a heated thread that's, racist, fascist, transphobic, etc.
- Reporting is a much better method for moderation on Lemmy anyway. The mods here seem to actually care a lot more than they do in more centralized spaces.

Imagine being worried of downvotes!

When downvotes are disabled, you depend solely on moderators to decide what kind of content is acceptable. As an anarchist, I abhor this.
- You still do. The downvoted content doesn't go away until it's removed, and you run too much of a risk of mob mentality with downvoting for my taste
  
  Suppose a cryptofascist is saying dogwhistles in a thread. If I report it, I'm depending on the moderators to either recognise the dogwhistles or listen to and trust my explanation. If downvotes were enabled, I could do something about the problem other than debating a fascist.

54 comments