Currently downvotes are enabled on a trial basis, this was done by me to see if they can be enabled to prevent spam from rising to the top of communities, along with the fact that is another form of interaction/feedback.
However I’ve gotten some pushback for this and so I’d like to see the general consensus of this decision. Please put any comments/concerns in this thread, and please vote here: https://forms.gle/zqDxemJCiTAXJi5i9
the results of this poll and the comments will determine if we keep or remove downvotes again
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Nope. I’m seeing male posters getting downvoted, which sucks. Everyone should be welcome in all communities unless the community states otherwise or a post is off-topic.
Yes I can clearly see this more about girls… and Sex Doll stuff aren’t a niche here it was worth checking this place out though I wish your site luck Reddit and Internet has become to damn soft in general people are just ridiculous nowadays it’s kinda sad 🤷🤦♀️
I changed my mind. I was pro downvote but I just looked at the new community list, saw one I liked, and then saw that a lot of the posts that fit the theme just fine have been downvoted for no reason. The mod is clearly upset about it also.
So yeah, please turn downvotes back off.
Yes that’s how reddit is that’s the issue people just downvote a lot for things they don’t like hivemind like as well. YouTube is different from this as the videos arent NSFW Sex. That’s why the block and report is more useful, also a lot of my posts would technically be negative 6 at the moment and all I do is fuck a sex doll I understand I don’t have a vagina and u might not like my content but just block me
I can see a lot of pros and cons, and I don’t think we can know what is best without a longer-term trial. There’ll be some trolling and harassment that comes with it, which is really bad, but also it allows user filtering of spam and junk posts, which is good. Hopefully there’s less of the former and more of the latter.
How do you know that there was no reason behind the downvotes?
I was for disabling down votes the last goaround wrt this topic, and I’m of the same opinion.
LemmyNSFW hasn’t grown much more in the past year and this will just drive away more posters (of which there aren’t much left) imho
Additional - I’d prefer that others block me (so they don’t have to see what I post) or block/don’t subscribe to various communities I mod that they don’t want to see as part of their feed, rather than have them downvote individual top level posts.
Enabling downvotes wrt comments, I’m okay with…
Yes
I feel that downvotes serve an important purpose both in keeping out spam, but also in preserving the many-niches architecture common in porn. Without downvotes even more work will be put onto mods in order to make sure the content posted is relevant to the communities its being posted too. Take c/Hotwife which has recently had a few postings that have 0 to do with hotwifing. Allowing downvotes is an imperfect solution, but I think an important one.
What about people getting pissed over something (presumably, it’s hard to tell) and then going after people’s posts in other communities and rampage-downvoting everything?
Every downvote on pro-downvote comments should count as a vote for re-enabling. Clearly they’re okay with downvotes, at least when it suits them haha
If 10 people downvote 10 pro-downvote comments, your algorithm would count that as 100 votes against downvotes. Didn’t think that one through, did ya?
Shoot you found the flaw in my system.
I think a lot of responses were correlating downvotes with censorship which is something I can agree with. I personally don’t want to see someone’s dick in gonewild but I know it’s for someone. Maybe we can have a tagging system that user can filter what they don’t want to see. But I don’t care if downvotes comes back or stays away because I’ll just block the accounts that shows things I don’t want to see.
I’m for them in theory but I feel like they get abused. Like if someone posts a dick in gonewild. Nothing wrong with that, but most people don’t wanna see dicks.
I don’t suppose you can leave it up to the sub-lemmy to decide? (Sub lemmy? Wtf are we calling these?)
Nothing wrong with that, but most people don’t wanna see dicks.
I agree that there’s nothing wrong with that, but if most people don’t want to see it, then… why shouldn’t it get downvoted? That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Give the people what they want.
Perhaps dicks belong in a more niche sub where people actually do want to see that?
Liked having them gone. Not sure I’ll keep posting if they stick around.
Removed by mod
I feel downvotes are fairly useless.
They’re used as a disagree button. Ok but why do you disagree? Leave a reply and let’s discuss. Gain saying has little value and that’s all a downvote to disagree is.
They’re used to report spam. Spam should be reported so I don’t think that’s a valid argument for them. Downvoting spam leaves it up, reporting spam gets it taken down. We have a better solution to spam than downvotes.
They are used by bad actors, with the removal of downvotes bad actors have to spend more effort in making a comment and it becomes far more obvious in who they are, report and block them.
Finally downvotes are a way to yuck someone’s yum, I’m mindful of the instance we’re on. I don’t want our communities to become like Reddit where only one genital configuration and body type are allowed.
Very well articulated 👍, especially your last point, given the still fragile growing-pains state that LemmyNSFW is currently in
When is a decision expected?
Probably about a week, just to make sure everyone is able to see the poll
A poll isn’t a good way to decide this. Regular posters suffer from downvotes more than others, and they drive our community. Their opinion should count for more.
Currently three regular posters have complained about it:
- Radovic
- Cleverhans
- LVL3_Eroticism.
Yes I definitely understand that, that’s why the comments here and the poll are being taken into consideration
To be quite frank, I don’t know why you’re even doing this. We had a discussion about it last year and all the same points were raised after which you turned them off, only to turn them on and have another debate a few weeks later and you then had to turn them off again. I think you know that you will probably have to turn them off again at some point. So how about you level with us, what is it about downvotes that you find so compelling?
Downvotes can be a useful tool to shape a community, the issue comes in when several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in. Which is one of the main issues brought up here.
It may seem very clear to you that “no one” wants downvotes, but as an admin I get complaints for basically every decision made on this site, so what is the “right” choice is sometimes hard to determine. I’ve been getting complaints about downvotes being disabled for awhile now, so it wasn’t clear to me. Even now, the opinion is still very split. Which is why I enabled them quietly to see if it would cause any issues. It did, so I made this post to see if people think the issues created by downvotes outweigh the benefits, and what peoples’ other opinions about them are.
This is my opinion based on what I’ve read and the results of the poll: I think at a later time when lemmynsfw is larger, downvotes may be viable, especially if lemmy implements a custom home feed so that not everyone sees the same posts. This would help mitigate the issue of people not in communities downvoting posts. But as it stands, I’m leaning towards disabling them again. Frequent posters, which are kind of needed for this site to survive, don’t seem to like them, and the poll is split almost 50/50. I have to try to balance enjoyability of posting and enjoyability of consuming content on the site, and it just seems like downvotes really hurts posters and only marginally helps consumers.
I’m leaving the poll up for a few more days and am going to continue to read the comments, but, if nothing changes, that’s probably what’s going to happen.
I know this is an incredibly divisive topic and I don’t envy the position this puts admin in. For what it’s worth, I appreciate that you’re trying to make it work and involving the community in the process.
Downvotes are a useful tool to shape a community and help with moderation, but with the size of the active posting population as well as the broad reach for posts across the greater Fediverse downvotes don’t lend well to fostering the human element. It’s fine to have them with a larger active community where people can form their own content bubbles, but pretty much anything that’s posted here ends up at the top of local for a few hours and is going to get a lot of eyes on it that may not enjoy the premise of the community. You’ll have no posts to downvote after the community has chased away anyone who posts though.
With Yiffit, pornlemmy, and now Lemmyf.uk all shut down this is the only dedicated nsfw instance left that I’m aware of. It honestly just seems like Lemmy in general is hostile to nsfw content.
All this seems very fair. I’m under no illusion as to the popularity of downvotes, I would say that damn near all of them want to be able to downvote.
The question I have asked you and have asked @CombedSpaghetti is what motivates me or any of your other regular posters to post when they know that all their efforts can be nullified, for any reason you can think of, by someone pushing a button at the wrong moment.
And you can’t. Not unless you cut us in on that sweet crypto action 😜
Like I said I understand what you’re saying, my answer is it’s not always as simple as doing something that makes one group of people happy, I have to weigh the options, which is why I made this post.
Also, I don’t get paid to do this, they crypto money goes 100% to paying for hosting the site to my knowledge. All the admins have day jobs.
The stated reason is spam. We’ve been getting a lot of that recently, so I get admins are looking for a way to deal with it. But the spam is being upvoted, so I don’t think it’s working.
Yeah this time spam. This is admin Yay talking about it last year:
Some people found it right, some people hated it, some people hesitated. At the end of the day, since we are on a disorganised platform like fediverse, I find the decision we took right. However, I was also annoyed by the lack of downvotes. So I searched for a solution.
https://lemmynsfw.com/post/4962186
Then he said this a few months later:
As you may notice, downvotes have been completely off for the last few days. I did this because I couldn’t resist the pressure of some friends :/ I still don’t know what to do about this. The majority of members probably want it to be completely open. As mods, posters and admins; some think it should be closed, some think it should be restricted (I guess).
I guess there is no solution that makes everyone happy. I realized I don’t have admin skills in stressful situations, I’m a fucking stupid lol :D I miss @gabe so much.
lemmyposter212 suggested “fuzzy votes” or something that can work for us too. I think I’ll just ghost this issue for a while.
https://lemmynsfw.com/post/7152586
“Annoyed by the lack” and “:/” sounds like the admins just want downvotes. Well, it is their instance and they will have what they want.
Disable down votes. Its nothing more than a Tool for Trolls.
I think it’s better to have a button to report spam, harassment, etc , rather than using downvote. Downvote is too ambiguous.
do reports downrank posts?
Reports should not downrank posts. It should notify moderators. Moderators can decide to add a mod comment, hide the comment, delete the comment, message the commenter etc. There can be tools under moderators control to automate this.
It might even remove the offending post entirely.
automatically/instantly? or do you mean after review?
Reports just trigger a mod or admin to review the post when they see it. Reports do not affect the ranking of a post in any way unless moderator action is taken and it’s removed.
After review ofc. Good moderators is the core of lemmy communities, not only for removing spam but for keeping things on-topic.
Such buttons aren’t really supported in mobile apps though.
I suppose it makes sense if the change is lemmy-wide
I mean, that’s how the report button works site-wide. If we are talking about a button that works automatically, then you are basically copying the downvote, but worse, since it cannot be offset by many people upvoting.
You need to remember that it is hard to distinguish between a downvote / button use because of spam / harassment and because of people not liking something. You need a human to do that. Fetish content will get downvoted / buttonned by people “not into it” when obscure enough. Regular OCs will also get that treatment - since users will get bored and seeing new content from them may make them downvote / button.
From a user interface perspective, I think it’s far less likely people will report spam than downvote when they do not like something. I suppose we both are only hypothesising here though.
I don’t see offsetting as a good feature. It just seems to drive people into tribalistic up/down wars. What’s the point of users seeing the net votes?
Only if it isn’t a single button.
The point is the same as with hiding the yt dislike button. It helps people determine if something is of higher quality or not.
I do agree if it were not a single button the likelihood would be much further less. I would imagine ideally one tap to open a modal window and then one tap between ‘This is spam’, ‘This is harassment’ or type in Other : []. So maybe just moving the Create Report to where downvote button now is worth trying.
There is a fundamental difference between YouTube and Lemmy though - community members and community moderators. I think having a signal from dislike is much less needed because of it. However, I do think it would be nice (not impactful at the current size of community) to have a viewcount of some sort.
