My wonderful co-admin @supakaity@lemmy.blahaj.zone has made a modification to the downvote system. It's not currently enabled, but if we were to turn it on, downvotes would be available for use, but they would weigh 5 times less than an upvote.
Which is to say, it would take 5 downvotes to counter an upvote. This would let downvotes have an impact on what appears in the hot topics sort, but hopefully mitigate some of the more negative impacts of downvoting.
Are there any strong objections from Blahaj Lemmy users to enabling downvotes with this modification?
I wonder what a downvote system where downvotes require a "Downvotes are used to hide off-topic content, not as a dislike button. Are you sure you want to downvotes?" checkbox would do? Wouldn't stop malicious actors but it would stop some people who just downvote casually without thinking about it?
Idk though. Pretty much any downvote system will disproportionately affect marginalized folk.