90
Why care? There is no karma system. Just move on
If you're moderating a small community, downvotes can bury posts and hurt its growth.
I still think downvotes (and upvotes!) should count for more when they come from subscribers. At least for sorting within the community
Can't they just block the communities?
Already 2 steps ahead, 3 steps backwards, and 2 forwards. If one shows up on the "all" feed, I block it. Ain't much left AFAIK.
It's best for me to block them rather than just downvote a random post purely based on the community it's in.
for some reason i literally can't downvote anything
Sorry, sister. As others have said Blahaj Zone doesn't do downvotes. I think it was to ensure a less negative space for The Community (in that you can still downvote things and brigade without being clocked as bigoted) but that's a bit apocryphal.
You're on a no-downvote instance.
Instances can disable this feature maybe blahaj has done so?
If you're modding a small community trying to get off the ground and you're suffering from downvoters who aren't participants in your comm, ban the downvoters.
Edit: Hilarious that I got downvoted by an account with 0 comments
You have two downvoters, probably the same person
flyingsquirrel a sockpuppet with 0 comment / 0 posts
https://lemvotes.org/user/flyingsquirrel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
nothis a vote manipulation account with 0 comment / 0 posts
someone I've had to remove from my communities https://lemvotes.org/user/nothis@sh.itjust.works
Probably a real person's main account, but just really combative with nothing to say
I think people often use /all to browse, which makes sense for a fairly small site like Lemmy. But the downside is that people then upvote or downvote based on their preferences, not the community's.
(Eg, the fellow below who has decided Apple and Nintendo are like Nazis and must always be downvoted.)
load more comments
(22 replies)
I worked at a site with a karma system years before reddit and the like ever came into being. There will always be people who just downvote anything they don't like. Unless you start finding and removing those users, nothing is going to change with them. And if you start removing chunks of your community, you have fewer posters, less interaction, etc.
Complaing about downvotes? Straight to jail.
Not just fediverse, I think any site that allows "downvotes" has this issue.
Personally, I don't see why the ability to downvote needs to exist. If someone is trolling, ignore it or report it. A troll post with a score of 1 and no comments is better than one with a score of -100 and no comments. The downvotes probably encourages the troll. They know they've upset a bunch of people. All their posts getting no interaction will bore them.
On the other hand, downvotes existing leads to things being hated on for no reason. Someone on asklemmy asks what your favourite pizza topping is and the top comment is pepperoni with a score of 100 and bottom is sardines with a score of -50. You see that and think nobody likes sardines. But what if taking away downvotes changes the scores to 100 pepperoni and 12 sardines. Now sardines isn't looking so bad even though the number of people who like it hasn't changed. What does the downvoting add? It just makes the people who like sardines feel bad. They might end up not contributing in the future and then every answer to asklemmy ends up being identical.
Downvotes are useful to make bad content sink. Without them, the bad content has the exact same score as fresh new content, content that failed the Fluff Principle, etc. And you do want the bad content to sink; if you don't reduce its visibility, some clueless muppet is bound to interact with it, usually generating more bad content.
That's why I'm not sure if the best solution is to outright remove downvotes. It feels to me like throwing the baby out with the dirty water.
Instead I feel like splitting its role into 2+ buttons might alleviate the issue. Perhaps a simple "disagree" button, or a more complex Slashdot-like system, dunno. Either way, giving people way to say "I disagree!" without interfering on the main purpose of the button - sorting content.
This could also solve another issue with downvotes I don't see people mentioning often: you're often downvoted without knowing why.
Someone on asklemmy asks what your favourite pizza topping is and the top comment is pepperoni with a score of 100 and bottom is sardines with a score of -50. You see that and think nobody likes sardines. But what if taking away downvotes changes the scores to 100 pepperoni and 12 sardines.
At least in the default interface, the sardines comment would show +12 -62, so you know at least 11 people upvoted it.
If we’re using votes to rank content then downvotes are redundant because now you have to upvote „right” stuff and downvote „wrong” stuff. Assuming everyone is waging the same kind of information warfare then downvotes won’t anything… but we’re not. Those that downvote willy nilly just want to have more say in things than others who don’t have energy to religiously clean website from „wrong” content. You’re not responsible for safeguarding users from „wrong” content unless you’re reporting rule breaking one. If you don’t like what’s being said but it doesn’t break rules then reply and explain why is it wrong, let others upvote if they agree.
Tildes solved this already. They have regular upvotes and they have labels for offtopic/noise/malice. Being able to use labels is reserved to users with good standing and can be applied once only. Noise downranks things without removing them, malice is essentially same as reporting them. Notably, there is no label for „wrong”.
downvotes are redundant
In practice they are redundant because most people vote based on opinion, so both become the same (agreement gauge). However ideally they aren't redundant; upvotes are to be given to things that stand out, and downvotes to things that detract from the discussion (noise, trolling, etc.)
Those that downvote willy nilly just want to have more say in things than others who don’t have energy to religiously clean website from „wrong” content.
Some see this as an abuse of the system, not as its normal usage. I'm not sure on the dividing line between both things, though.
If you [=anyone] don’t like what’s being said but it doesn’t break rules then reply and explain why is it wrong, let others upvote if they agree.
The problem with that is Brandolini's Law: even if we ignore "intention" (whatever this means), it takes far more effort to address bullshit, assumptions, oversimplifications, "ur sayin dat cuz ur..." etc. than to come up with it. And if it takes too much effort, people won't do it.
As such, a system can't rely solely on replies to let users show each other "hey, this post/comment is bad".
You can rely on stricter moderation; but that comes with additional costs.
Tildes solved this already.
Incidentally my proposal to fix downvotes isn't too different in spirit from what Tildes do.
So, people want to up/downvote based on opinion, right? Let them do it. But give people other ways to quickly show some piece of content is bad, and why. Effectively splitting the downvote button.
Downvotes are useful to make bad content sink. Without them, the bad content has the exact same score as fresh new content, content that failed the Fluff Principle, etc
I don't see how downvotes help filter content. It makes sense at first, but either people are sorting content by New, in which case votes do not matter, or they are sorting by Top and will get only the "good" content. Several instances already have downvotes disabled. I don't see any complaints from their users about "bad" content having the same scores as "good" content.
lemmynsfw had to disable downvotes because gay content posted in gay communities was being downvoted. It wasn't being downvoted for quality, but for not being what the majority of users wanted to see. That doesn't mean all users now have to see gay content they don't like because they can't downvote it. It's still easy to filter using the block feature. Again, I've never seen users there complaining about being unable to filter good from bad because they can't downvote.
if you don't reduce its visibility, some clueless muppet is bound to interact with it, usually generating more bad content.
I've seen posts and comments with -100 votes often get lots of interaction from people who can't stop themselves from arguing with a troll. Sometimes there's only 1 or 2 comments under a post so the score doesn't even change its visibility at all.
Either way, giving people way to say "I disagree!" without interfering on the main purpose of the button - sorting content.
The way to say "I disagree!" is with the reply button! Votes don't prove who is right and who is wrong. I've never changed my opinion because of downvotes. Sometimes I even agree with a downvoted comment because I form my opinion based on arguments, not votes.
I also like seeing different opinions. Yours gave me a lot to think about! It'd be a shame if people didn't post their thoughts because they feared being downvoted for it.
I don’t see how downvotes help filter content. It makes sense at first, but either people are sorting content by New, in which case votes do not matter, or they are sorting by Top and will get only the “good” content.
Think quantitatively. Ideally "meh" content should still be easier to see than the bad one.
lemmynsfw
In their situation (as admins of an instance where downvotes were consistently misused), I agree with their decision. However I still think something needs to be done on a software level.
Again, I’ve never seen users there complaining about being unable to filter good from bad because they can’t downvote.
Note this is prone to selection bias.
I’ve seen posts and comments with -100 votes often get lots of interaction from people who can’t stop themselves from arguing with a troll. Sometimes there’s only 1 or 2 comments under a post so the score doesn’t even change its visibility at all.
If it wasn't downvoted, you probably would've seen way more interaction with it.
(Additionally I think people who argue with trolls should get 1d~3d bans. Just a "stop it, you baka!". Including myself. But that's an aside.)
The way to say “I disagree!” is with the reply button!
I mentioned this in the other comment, but basically: if the reason you disagree is due to some issue in the content (e.g. it's an oversimplification, assumption, or plain bullshit), it takes more effort to address it in your reply than to generate that content with the issue. As such a quick-and-dirty way to voice "hey, something wrong with this" is necessary, even if some people abuse it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Does it stay in the Apple and Nintendo communities or does it get cross-posted everywhere? I don't downvote for dislike, but I don't want to block a general community because some asshat is crossposting just under spam levels.
I downvote for verifiably false.
load more comments
(4 replies)
A good chunk of active Lemmy users are interested in open source and digital freedom. Apple and Nintendo are the opposite, very big on vendor lockin and anti consumer practices.
Valve is exempt from this for some reason however. It’s more like stereotypical basement dwellers treat this like a game where you win by accumulating more imaginary internet points. This kind of tribal behaviour is why threadiverse seems to be failing but at least some people get to feel superior to others in the meantime.
Valve isn't perfect but they've gotten a lot of community good will by not being shitty and vindictive. Nintendo has been just really shitty to their own fans for a long time, with unnecessary litigation and criminal prosecution.
I do agree that tribalism is pretty extreme within the fediverse, but I also don't think that's anything new for any small internet community.
There are plenty of reasons to be shitty at valve but my understanding is the steam deck is modable without breaking warranty
Upvotes/downvotes are unfortunately a fundamentally flawed concept. They originally served as an superior alternative to forums' previous sorting method of most-recently commented, but they are far from flawless themselves.
My ideal alternative would be some kind of customisable sort order chosen by the user that uses some kind of sentiment analysis of the text to find the kind of posts the user is interested in. For example, you could sort by whether post look serious or joking, how long they are, ratio of words to hyperlinks, etc. Could also filter out ragebait and similar rubbish.
Of course I can see downsides - performance considerations, and it would only work for text posts and comments, but it's just an idea off the top of my head.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I'm on Beehaw. I don't see down votes. Blissful ignorance.
Expanding on what I said to another user. The problem with simply removing downvotes is that people still find low-hanging fruits to voice disagreement through, often worse than the downvotes. Then there are two choices:
- let them be. Hexbear does this, and its users use emotes instead, that increase the visibility of bad content.
- moderate against it. Beehaw does this, and it burdens its moderation team further.
Note mod burden is the major reason Beehaw is not federated with LW or SJW, even if its admins would be otherwise OK with those two.
It's things like this that make me think we (people discontent with downvotes) are a bit too eager to throw the resource away because of its flaws, instead of trying to address them.
I don't think you're wrong about the tradeoffs, I just think the tradeoff is worth it.
What if all votes were hidden? You could still press the buttons and it would affect the sorting, but nobody sees the number.
Perhaps it's my personal bias, but I don't like the idea of hidden information. If you can't see it, it's easier to manipulate.
What if it was the opposite - all votes were shown, including who up/downvoted? From what I've noticed, people think twice before mindless downvoting if they know they can be called out for it.
Votes are public as far as the API is concerned and there are tools to show you who voted in what way.
I'm aware of lemvotes.org. However, I think this should be part of the default interface, for everyone.
In Lemmy currently this feature is exclusive to comms you moderate:
Sadly I don't expect anything similar for PieFed. I really like plenty of its features, but when it comes to vote visibility it's going the opposite direction - making them unavailable by the API instead.
making them unavailable by the API instead.
Votes are available via the API. There is a setting to limit it to your local instance. By default, they federate.
That's a rather recent change, isn't it? From what I remember the votes were cast by alternate profiles, so even if you tried to grab them from the API you wouldn't know who voted on what.
It's been around for a while, I don't remember the dates
Basically, this is what it looks like
Ah, OK. Thanks for the correction + further info!
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025
90 points (100.0% liked)
Fediverse memes
1857 readers
50 users here now
Memes about the Fediverse.
Rules
General
- Be respectful
- Post on topic
- No bigotry or hate speech
Specific
- We are not YPTB. If you have a problem with the way an instance or community is run, then take it up over at !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com.
- Addendum: Yes we know that you think ml/hexbear/grad are tankies and or .world are a bunch of liberals but it gets old quickly. Try and come up with new material.
Elsewhere in the Fediverse
Other relevant communities:
- !fediverse@lemmy.world
- !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !lemmydrama@lemmy.world
- !fediverselore@lemmy.ca
- !bestofthefediverse@lemmy.ca
- !fedigrow@lemmy.zip
founded 11 months ago
MODERATORS