I’ve seen a good bit of debate on Kbin surrounding downvotes, so what are your thoughts? Should they exist? Should they be shown separately? Should you be able to see who downvoted?
I personally like downvotes and especially like that they’re shown separately. You’re able to get a much better idea of how people feel about something, and you can more easily express a minority opinion. Of course, there are downsides (e.g., brigades), but I think the pros outweigh the cons.
I fail to understand why people dislike them and why sites remove them.
Imagine giving a fuck about strangers on the internet disliking you…
@ThatOneKirbyMain2568 they only work if people care about it, so double edged sword.
The poster doesn’t need to care about it. Just the ones looking at the posts to see which ones are a waste of time. Hell, the algorithm might already be doing that anyways so even they don’t need to care about it.
I always loved sorting by controversial, so I would keep them, but not to hide them as Reddit does.
Also, I would remove the Activity button.I was completely opposed when e.g. Youtube essentially removed downvotes. They’re a pretty important indicator of when someone is full of shit, even though there’s an obvious abuse potential as well. As a kbin user, I understand there’s a limited federation of downvotes. I actually think it’s nice, whether or not it’s representative of the rest of the fediverse.
I try to limit my downvotes to irrelevance, spam, intentional douchiness and bad faith participation - as far as I can figure out what’s what. At least while the community seems worth it. Unlike, for example, Reddit, where the proportion of bad faith participation was huge, and the general tone was quite hostile. I like the fediverse better.
Unlike, for example, Reddit, where the proportion of bad faith participation was huge, and the general tone was quite hostile.
Also, sometimes they downvote comments they apparently don’t understand, or can’t be bothered to read closely.
Or for fun randomly, spamming downvote functionality on every recent post (back at some subreddits on Reddit), and that sucks.
This is community-evaluated content, and downvotes are a tool used for evaluation. So I think they make sense.
That being said, I don’t believe they should be public by default. People are nuts these days, especially online, and I don’t want to catch an online stalker or some nazi sliding aggro into my DMs because I downvoted their post.
They should absolutely exist. Negative feedback is feedback, and expression of only one side of the emotional spectrum is a strange and unrealistic facsimile of actual life.
