Anyone who cares about downvotes needs to get their head examined. A downvote can mean the person doesn’t agree with your comment, doesn’t like your tone, thinks you are incorrect, thinks the comment doesn’t add to the discussion, hell they could downvote you just because they don’t like your username. None of that matters. All it does is show you if your comment goes against the zeitgeist or not.
The whole point is that people can downvote you for any stupid reason and doesn’t accurately reflect why a post is being rejected by the community. People will do it simply because they want to silence you.
And it causes issues with brigading, botnets, etc. It’s why hexbear and lemmygrad are being defederated – and their members are able to get around it simply by making accounts on other servers and going right back to the brigading. Removing the voting option and giving admins tools to IP ban everyone from an instance upon defederation would go a long way toward fixing the problem. Just putting the hurdle of needing a VPN to regain access alone will deter a lot of idiots.
I’ve had plenty of times where a comment I made got downvoted like crazy, but a response I made to a comment asking for clarification got a lot of upvotes. It seems people really like to jump on that downvote button, especially if they see something already getting downvotes (i.e. maybe they don’t even read it, they just downvote on reflex).
Votes happen to be really easy to deal with in software, which is probably why they’re so commonly used. However, when it comes to people actually casting votes, they behave a lot differently than software creators expect.
So perhaps we should try something else, like maybe sort by “activity” (how many times the comment was replied to) to sort of counteract that reflex-like urge to use it as an agree/disagree button (if you agree or disagree strongly, you’re likely to comment).
You can also be “downvoted into oblivion” if you’re 100%, objectively correct, but your conclusion goes against the “hive mind.” I have had comments with a ton of sources and detailed analysis that got downvoted like crazy, and then the top comment is like “X group, amirite?”
You’re 100% correct that reddit rewards snark far more than constructive discussion. That’s part of why I’m here, and why I’ll probably be perennially disappointed with social media.
it isn’t sorting by “contribute/doesn’t contribute,” that’s for sure.
It’s both. You’re not wrong with the groupthink thing, but they absolutely do help to combat disinformation and useless comments. I get that you’ve made a decision, but you don’t need to rationalize away the negatives.
Votes still get federated. Even if not exposed via UI anyone running their own (federated) instance can query for who voted on beehaw posts. Only a matter of time before that’s directly exposed as a mod tool.
I upvoted this post even though I don’t agree with it. See the downvoted pic of the girl taking a shit to see why I think downvotes are needed at times.
And then we have to deal with the community collectively adopting shitty or evil ideas and enforcing them, shutting down victims or anyone who opposes them. So who checks the community? Who protects the individual?
I left Reddit because I felt it was toxic and I really didn’t like the direction the platform was going. If a community here on Lemmy goes bad, I can leave for another. It’s not hard.
Moderation, IMO, should largely focus on removing trolls and reminding people to be civil. That’s really about it. It’s not their job to police a community, it’s merely their job to respond to consistent complaints from users. I.e. it’s your job to report people and posts, and mods should only step in if there are multiple complaints for the same thing.
Sometimes mods are asleep or not locked to their desks. Downvotes help get shit like that (pun fully intended) out of most peoples feeds unless they are browsing by new or are way way way down on the hot scroll list.
I totally agree here. And I want to take it a step further and instead of sorting by average votes, we should merely be including it as one of many indicators, such as:
number of direct child comments
number of total descendant comments
maybe length of direct child comments - a longer response is more likely to be an interesting rebuttal than a “go away troll” comment
number of independent users among total descendant comments - if it’s just the same two people going back and forth, that’s just a good, old-fashioned argument that most won’t care to read
And so on. But instead, we seem to just sort by upvotes - downvotes and call it a day.
It is functionally a “I don’t like this” or “I’m right” button.
Sometimes comments are just wrong, and detract from the community. Downvotes (plus an interface that hides negative voted comments) clean things up without need for formal moderation.
Whatever can be said about downvotes (an automated system for marking one’s disapproval) is probably true of reporting (a human reviewed system for marking one’s extreme disapproval), too.
All this does is bury comments regardless of quality
But if downvotes (and upvotes) are well correlated with quality, then what’s the problem? Your complaints are about community culture around downvotes, not about the mechanism itself.
I’d love to see a system where votes can be correlated between users so that the ranking algorithm weights like-minded voters and deemphasizes those voters you disagree with, but that would probably create a pretty significant overhead for the service.
And I’m saying that some communities have a “dominant mentality” that’s pretty obviously correct. The only thing worse than a person who says “just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s right” is the person who swings the pendulum too far in the other direction of saying “it’s unpopular so it must be right.”
Oh come on you don’t actually believe we should structure the entire system around such a minority use case
Minority use case? I’m talking about how downvotes are useful for communities to enforce their own norms, or ensure that erroneous information is excluded. Someone who insists on a proof that the angles of a triangle add up to more than 180º is probably going to get downvoted, especially if he’s being an asshole about it. Same with someone who insists that the common cold is caused by exposure to cold air, or that the earth is flat.
Or there are broad consensus beliefs about what is or isn’t off topic for a discussion, what types of insults break the forum rules on civility, etc. When a community largely agrees that someone is being an asshole for using racial slurs, downvotes quickly sort that out. In other words, toxicity can get filtered out through the downvote/hide mechanism, as well.
Even for beliefs that are simply matters of opinion/taste/preference, the community can decide what’s actually up for debate and what’s not, within that space. A forum dedicated to fans of Real Madrid doesn’t have to tolerate trolls coming in and saying “Real Madrid sucks” or “lol soccer is a stupid sport you Europeans are so stupid” or “sports are dumb.” Same with a vegan forum downvoting someone’s brisket recipe (or a BBQ forum downvoting a “meat is murder” manifesto). These “echo chambers” are just how people organize with people who share their interests, and it’s weird not to be able to see that there’s value in those communities.
So yeah, I think that you have a problem with people’s desire to organize into groups of similar interests, not with the actual mechanism by which those groups enforce those norms. It wouldn’t be any better with a mod-enforced echo chamber, either.
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Anyone who cares about downvotes needs to get their head examined. A downvote can mean the person doesn’t agree with your comment, doesn’t like your tone, thinks you are incorrect, thinks the comment doesn’t add to the discussion, hell they could downvote you just because they don’t like your username. None of that matters. All it does is show you if your comment goes against the zeitgeist or not.
The whole point is that people can downvote you for any stupid reason and doesn’t accurately reflect why a post is being rejected by the community. People will do it simply because they want to silence you.
And it causes issues with brigading, botnets, etc. It’s why hexbear and lemmygrad are being defederated – and their members are able to get around it simply by making accounts on other servers and going right back to the brigading. Removing the voting option and giving admins tools to IP ban everyone from an instance upon defederation would go a long way toward fixing the problem. Just putting the hurdle of needing a VPN to regain access alone will deter a lot of idiots.
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That’s my biggest problem with downvotes. I want to know why someone disagrees. That can initiate an interesting conversation.
If I’m factually incorrect, I want to know. Same goes if I expressed myself poorly. A downvote alone doesn’t tell me anything.
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I’ve had plenty of times where a comment I made got downvoted like crazy, but a response I made to a comment asking for clarification got a lot of upvotes. It seems people really like to jump on that downvote button, especially if they see something already getting downvotes (i.e. maybe they don’t even read it, they just downvote on reflex).
Votes happen to be really easy to deal with in software, which is probably why they’re so commonly used. However, when it comes to people actually casting votes, they behave a lot differently than software creators expect.
So perhaps we should try something else, like maybe sort by “activity” (how many times the comment was replied to) to sort of counteract that reflex-like urge to use it as an agree/disagree button (if you agree or disagree strongly, you’re likely to comment).
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You can also be “downvoted into oblivion” if you’re 100%, objectively correct, but your conclusion goes against the “hive mind.” I have had comments with a ton of sources and detailed analysis that got downvoted like crazy, and then the top comment is like “X group, amirite?”
You’re 100% correct that reddit rewards snark far more than constructive discussion. That’s part of why I’m here, and why I’ll probably be perennially disappointed with social media.
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It’s both. You’re not wrong with the groupthink thing, but they absolutely do help to combat disinformation and useless comments. I get that you’ve made a decision, but you don’t need to rationalize away the negatives.
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Actually, on Beehaw, you can. If Beehaw has the equivalent of kbin’s “activity” info, I haven’t found it.
Votes still get federated. Even if not exposed via UI anyone running their own (federated) instance can query for who voted on beehaw posts. Only a matter of time before that’s directly exposed as a mod tool.
I upvoted this post even though I don’t agree with it. See the downvoted pic of the girl taking a shit to see why I think downvotes are needed at times.
Isn’t that something that mods need to take care of though? Why should that burden be on the community members?
The word “community” goes a long way in answering that question imo.
If we look to the mods take care of everything, we’re a group of content consumers, not a community.
And then we have to deal with the community collectively adopting shitty or evil ideas and enforcing them, shutting down victims or anyone who opposes them. So who checks the community? Who protects the individual?
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Exactly!
I left Reddit because I felt it was toxic and I really didn’t like the direction the platform was going. If a community here on Lemmy goes bad, I can leave for another. It’s not hard.
Moderation, IMO, should largely focus on removing trolls and reminding people to be civil. That’s really about it. It’s not their job to police a community, it’s merely their job to respond to consistent complaints from users. I.e. it’s your job to report people and posts, and mods should only step in if there are multiple complaints for the same thing.
Or if it clearly violates the rules set up by the mod.
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Sometimes mods are asleep or not locked to their desks. Downvotes help get shit like that (pun fully intended) out of most peoples feeds unless they are browsing by new or are way way way down on the hot scroll list.
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I totally agree here. And I want to take it a step further and instead of sorting by average votes, we should merely be including it as one of many indicators, such as:
And so on. But instead, we seem to just sort by
upvotes - downvotesand call it a day.Sometimes comments are just wrong, and detract from the community. Downvotes (plus an interface that hides negative voted comments) clean things up without need for formal moderation.
Whatever can be said about downvotes (an automated system for marking one’s disapproval) is probably true of reporting (a human reviewed system for marking one’s extreme disapproval), too.
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But if downvotes (and upvotes) are well correlated with quality, then what’s the problem? Your complaints are about community culture around downvotes, not about the mechanism itself.
I’d love to see a system where votes can be correlated between users so that the ranking algorithm weights like-minded voters and deemphasizes those voters you disagree with, but that would probably create a pretty significant overhead for the service.
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And I’m saying that some communities have a “dominant mentality” that’s pretty obviously correct. The only thing worse than a person who says “just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s right” is the person who swings the pendulum too far in the other direction of saying “it’s unpopular so it must be right.”
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Minority use case? I’m talking about how downvotes are useful for communities to enforce their own norms, or ensure that erroneous information is excluded. Someone who insists on a proof that the angles of a triangle add up to more than 180º is probably going to get downvoted, especially if he’s being an asshole about it. Same with someone who insists that the common cold is caused by exposure to cold air, or that the earth is flat.
Or there are broad consensus beliefs about what is or isn’t off topic for a discussion, what types of insults break the forum rules on civility, etc. When a community largely agrees that someone is being an asshole for using racial slurs, downvotes quickly sort that out. In other words, toxicity can get filtered out through the downvote/hide mechanism, as well.
Even for beliefs that are simply matters of opinion/taste/preference, the community can decide what’s actually up for debate and what’s not, within that space. A forum dedicated to fans of Real Madrid doesn’t have to tolerate trolls coming in and saying “Real Madrid sucks” or “lol soccer is a stupid sport you Europeans are so stupid” or “sports are dumb.” Same with a vegan forum downvoting someone’s brisket recipe (or a BBQ forum downvoting a “meat is murder” manifesto). These “echo chambers” are just how people organize with people who share their interests, and it’s weird not to be able to see that there’s value in those communities.
So yeah, I think that you have a problem with people’s desire to organize into groups of similar interests, not with the actual mechanism by which those groups enforce those norms. It wouldn’t be any better with a mod-enforced echo chamber, either.