I used to downvote fairly often on Reddit as a sign to disagree or to push down really disgusting bigoted comments. And to be honest, it became a habit to just downvote without replying. However, now that I’m on lemmy and not Reddit I’ve been actively trying to not instantly downvote things and instead move on or take the time to reply. Has anyone else been trying to do this?
I’ve never changed my voting habits. I downvote trolls, hate, spam, and irrelevant content. I never downvote out of disagreement, nor do I use the upvote as an agreement button. I will upvote people I disagree with/am debating with if I believe they are promoting relevant discussion. That is how voting is intended to be used.
I don’t downvote if I disagree but I can’t help but upvotes in agreement. Positive reinforcement is my thing.
Same for me, my only difficulty is discerning whether the commenter is promoting relevant discussion or doing some variant of gishgallop or sealioning.
Some variant of what’s it?
I had to look it up. Basically bad faith actors.
Gish gallop: “This Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments” - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
Sealioning: “Sealioning’ is a form of trolling meant to exhaust the other debate participant with no intention of real discourse.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
They should make it so that replying to a comment automatically disables your ability to downvote it.
Would simultaneously prevent people trading downvotes while they argue back and forth, and encourage people to simply ignore trolls and move on without replying.
If a post contains incorrect information that could be dangerous, you should be able to reply to it and also downvote it so that the incorrect information becomes less visible. For example, if someone said you should pinch your nose and lean your head back when you get a nosebleed. You should be able to correct them and still downvote to make the incorrect information less visible.
Wouldn’t the correction be sufficient? Other users could read it and decide to downvote
I like this idea. Make the karma irrelevant so we don’t get those awful bots or the tit-for-tat arguments
Same. For me, upvote = adding something to the conversation. That’s why I upvote most comments I come across, and rarely downvote people.
I usually downvote not because I disagree but because I think the comment is low effort or written in bad faith.
For any weird, bigoted stuff, lots of downvotes and no replies is hopefully the message an OP needs to receive to get the hint that they should by plying their recruitment attempts elsewhere. Engaging them is probably the worst thing to do.
I’ve had to remember that there’s automatic hiding though, and do that manually.
Definitely agree with that, I very much so still downvote bigoted comments and posts though I think I’ve only encountered two comments like that so far. Lemmy mods and admins are doing a great job.
I switched instances just so I could be on one that had downvotes because I passionately believe downvotes give immediate power to of self moderation to the users. However, I’m very light on downvoting. I only downvotevote stuff like the OP was talking about or if something is technically incorrect and damaging to a thread. But again I’m very light on downvoting, as I was on Reddit before. I usually ignore something that I simply don’t agree with or think is too silly, etc.
I think the issue is that pushing this kind of self moderating also takes a lot of culpability out of the mods hands as well and helps encourage reddit’s typical “my free speech!” trolls. I like the idea of mods having rules that allow them to use discretion to take out the trash and in theory upvotes should still outshine the trash.
That said I do see some things where it’s like this ads nothing to nothing and I do miss the ol’ downvote key to encourage it away. I also used to(well I tried anyway) use it as a means of breaking momentum of those stupid ass posts on reddit that would often fly to the top of a comment thread burying the actual discussion and content towards the bottom.
I was Reading a post earlier tonight where someone shared an anti Covid view point and dropped the whole big Pharma/government groupthink garbage.
Every comment was telling them they would not be accepted here with those views.
I checked a few hours later and the conspiracists comment was gone, but it did have the largest number of downvotes I’ve come across yet at 150ish.
An echo chamber we need not be, but conspiracy garbage we need not at all.
I just miss when conspiracies were fun and not essentially a threat to one’s livelihood.
From everything I’ve seen, conspiracy theories were rarely harmless. They almost always were rooted in antisemitism.
Nope. Downvotes are there to be used, so I use them.
I dislike using downvote as a disagree button. Makes me feel like I’m discouraging people from sharing an opinion that’s different than mine. Even if they are wrong (in good faith) I think I’d rather they feel it is a safe place to be wrong and just own the mistake with an edit or a reply. I know it makes me feel bad (I know I should have thicker skin) when I’m downvoted for having an opinion so I don’t want to make others feel that way.
I agree about not using it just to disagree with an opinion, but I do think the ability to downvote is very important. It just needs to be clear that it’s supposed to be used to reduce the impact of stuff this is either harmful or just distracts from the conversation.
If I’m in a thread talking about what the best flavor of milkshake is, I will absolutely upvote someone claiming that chocolate is the best even though they are “objectively” wrong. They are however engaging with the conversation. On the other hand, someone who comes in saying that they hate milkshakes and prefer lemonade, while they’re not exactly wrong in having that opinion, it would be worthy of a downvote because they’re in the wrong place for that comment.
And then there’s the bots/people that if they lost the ability to ever talk again, the world would be a better place. Never feel sorry for downvoting them.
You have a point. I did find myself downvoting much of what I disagreed with on Reddit. I wouldn’t mind seeing everyone break that habit here. Maybe that should be stickied in some official welcome to Lemmy etiquette post.
That’s a great step if it’s something worth replying to. Not everything is.
Why do you think I joined the instance I did?
Downvoting is useful for pushing irrelevant/spam comments down but it is definitely overused.
Yup, I saw vote manipulation way too much on Reddit. 3-5 down votes on a dissenting opinion right after it’s posted usually tanks even the most well reasoned comment. Accounts like Unidan fly under the radar for so long.
It’s not used for pushing irrelevant or spammy content. It’s used to show you don’t agree and push that content away from sight. At least be honest about that if you support using downvotes.
People act like they are making the thread better in some way by cleaning trash. But that’s not what happens. You are just making sure opinions you don’t agree with are at the bottom of the thread. Nothing noble about that. Feels good, sure.
You’re phrasing it in a way that is actively harmful. It’s like you’re trying to make downvotes worse than they are.
They’re absolutely useful, but not for just opinions you don’t like.
I think we just have different experiences with downvotes. I see them being harmful, yes. Because they are used to disagree, not to flag incorrect content, in subreddits (communities) where opinions are discussed. In technical fact-based subreddits they may work fine, but in discussion-based ones, they are horrible and leads to one opinion at the top always.
There’s a difference between acknowledging people use downvotes incorrectly and encouraging them to use downvotes incorrectly. The first one is a fine discussion. The second is harmful.
You shouldn’t try to make things worse to prove your point.
At least be honest about that if you support using downvotes.
lemmy.one has downvotes disabled.
I have them disabled also on my instance. Beehaw showed the way here and it makes sense to me to not use them. People just want to punish opinions they don’t agree with. The button should be called Punish. :)
Not really, I’ve only ever down voted something that I thought really needed to be down voted. There is a reason why the down vote buttons exist but they should really only be used when you have a good reason to use them.
It’s funny though, because I have the exact opposite problem, as I up vote pretty much every post I see. While that is better, I understand that it’s probably also bad in it’s own way.
I think it wouldn’t hurt to upvote more than what you normally do on Reddit while you’re on Lemmy. The community here is smaller and it’ll benefit a lot of more people interacted with the site by upvoting.
I don’t know if absolute numbers would really help. Like it doesn’t bother me that I haven’t seen any lemmy posts with 35k score yet.
Just so long as there’s some variation in scores that we can use for sorting content, it works.
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Yeah it wasn’t made for disagreement, it was meant for a crowd control form of moderation. That’s why they had the karma index and allow for subreddits to impose karma restrictions. (I guess there could be an argument about it being a form of social credit system if it were, which let’s be honest it became that anyway, whether or not it was intended to be that way from the beginning)
“Discussions became binary”. And yet you subscribe to the binary of “hateful vs. non-hateful opinion” as if it’s clearly identifiable.
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Hate speech laws in real life are also very ambiguous and rarely stand alone in court without another more easily proven charge.
Upvote to you too anyway, although I’m still guilty of using downvote as a disagree button.
HackerNews has an interesting approach: You can’t downvote comments unless you reach a certain amount of “Karma”, and you can’t downvote posts at all, you can “flag” them, meaning you think they don’t belong here. Flagging doesn’t affect the vote count, but massive flagging does make the post appear lower in the feed, and alerts mods.
This, alongside the tight moderation and zero-tolerance towards flame wars in the comments makes HackerNews one of the best places on the internet imho.
Completely agree on all points.
An additional one I’d argue is a huge part of HN’s success is their employment of a full-time moderator, dang, who does a great job.
I don’t think I have downvoted anyone in Lemmy yet.
But post and comment quality is much higher than Reddit.
I downvoted that post that was an advertisement for crypto
up/down voting is simply a way to help comments you think are good, or agree with, become more/less dominant in the thread.
In some cases, comments are useful to explain why - but often that’s just not the case.
As time goes on I’ve been using the down vote more freely. Generally for anything I find low quality. I used to be more restrained with it but now I see it more as another tool that I have to shape the kind of content that gets promoted in the communities I interact with. It’s the only option beyond withholding an upvote to keep low effort posts, trolling, and bigotry out of your communities other than reporting, which shouldn’t do anything unless a post breaks the rules.
I intentionally joined an instance that doesn’t allow it. I do it kind of compulsively on other sites but really don’t feel good about it. Plus I always found it hurtful when people did it to me just because I didn’t know something or had a polite disagreement. Downvoting reminds me of the 6 Million Merits episode of Black Mirror (if that’s what it’s called). Now when I try to downvote Lemmy says nope can’t do that and I feel happy and relieved!
I’m definitely more open to interactions on here. The fediverse, and lemmy especially, feel more like a community and not just an endless sea content.
Yeah I’ve started getting into a couple reddit style arguments here and feeling that feeling again just makes me say “nah” and be a little nicer to keep it from going that way, or just bail if it seems unavoidable.
It’s so refreshing to have respectful conversations here.
Yeah everyone I’ve seen here seems so nice compared to reddit.
