So, federated network advantages here: you can always modify your instance's hosting code to patch this out, at least for the users on your instance.

What you cannot do is prevent other federated instances from publishing the votes submitted to content on their instance. But if you're accessing that content through your local instance, they can modify the upvote button to pop up a dialog saying something like: "The instance that hosts this content has elected to make usernames visible for upvote/downvote. Would you still like to vote?"

Personally: In many ways I don't mind. I'm on the internet with my real name. I don't mind being accountable for my behaviour online. I might be a little more cautious about upvoting something controversial or NSFW, but largely it wouldn't change my behaviour.

They basically already are, if you run an instance. Might as well make it easier.

Yes make it public.

No real reason not to.

I support opening up vote logs to moderators in their own communities. Voting records add useful context to the nature of the exchanges happening, eg. if two people are having a back and forth, but neither is downvoting the other, it contextualizes the disagreement as less hostile.

I don't think it's a good idea to give every new user the burden of using that information responsibly. A minority would use it to retaliate, stalk, and harass, and there would be too many of them to reasonably hold them accountable.

Having seen the complete absence of mayhem on kbin caused by vote visibility, the absolute and utter nothing that will come of this decision leads me to say yeah, sure. That said, I’d prefer improved mod tools over this, but option c isn’t listed.

Based on the comment, it seems there's more opposition toward visible downvote than upvote, so maybe dev should just make upvote visible and not downvote?

There's more talk about how bad visible downvote is and no one seems to talk about the upvote lol.

My posts and comments are already exposed, so it seems like it would make sense to make votes public as well. I think it contributes to the general spirit of the platform.

I'm split, but I lean slightly towards no. On one hand, it could be good for discoverability, and it would help my efforts to make a client-side algorithm

On the other hand, it will make one of Lemmy's problems worse - engagement. Some people will vote less, and it's already feeling a little quieter around here as the numbers settled after the Reddit Exodus. I doubt it'll be a massive change, but a .5% decrease in voting, permanently, could make a difference

Ultimately, you can see it on federated platforms, so shrug

Already had one person today mention my down votes .

It didn't validate their argument at all and without context it can be interpreted in any fashion to make it seem malicious

Hard yes from me, thank you.