My wonderful co-admin @supakaity@lemmy.blahaj.zone has made a modification to the downvote system. It’s not currently enabled, but if we were to turn it on, downvotes would be available for use, but they would weigh 5 times less than an upvote.
Which is to say, it would take 5 downvotes to counter an upvote. This would let downvotes have an impact on what appears in the hot topics sort, but hopefully mitigate some of the more negative impacts of downvoting.
Are there any strong objections from Blahaj Lemmy users to enabling downvotes with this modification?
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Is it possible to have no downvotes on Blahaj, but do have downvotes on federated communities?
This would give Blahaj users the same perception of federated communities as other instances have and give us a safe space in Blahaj. It also means we can sort federated communities like normal and see what everyone else sees, while still having downvotes nonexistent in Blahaj communities.
I’ve never really wanted downvotes in Blahaj, but I’ve worried about not having them for other instances. It feels like I’m not on a “level playing field” when I can be downvoted by others on a federated communities, but can’t downvote anything myself. I’m also worried that with downvotes = 1/5, it would result in a skewed perspective of federated communities if Blahaj sorts federated communities that way too.
I don’t know what the code looks like (yet?) but I feel like denying downvotes only on local communities wouldn’t be a hard change to make.
Edit: I also wouldn’t mind if downvotes were 1/5 on Blahaj but 1=1 on federated communities, but I can see that being a harder change to make.
Edit 2: if this is a straightforward change I wouldn’t mind implementing it when I have time. I have some familiarity with Rust, TS, and JS so it wouldn’t be difficult to jump into.
Yeah, I’d like it if other instances were treated “as is” and that their individual policies on voting were respected when displayed to blahaj.zone users. Although, I do not know if it is possible to have two separate policies depending on whether the user is in their home instance.
All this change would do is alter the weighting downvotes have in the sorting algorithm, I dont think it is possible without big changes to alter the displayed score. In anycase the downvotes are still being stored, so anywhere without these changes are unaffected
Good suggestion, I like this idea too
Would it be possible to enable this at the topic level but not the comment level? My thinking is that it makes sense for helping users decide what posts to read in the first place, but would still discourage low-effort negativity that doesn’t actually contribute to a discussion.
But even if the answer to that is “no”… I don’t strongly object to trying this out and seeing how it works for this community. 🙂 If de-weighted downvotes still lead to problems, the change could always be reverted. Thank you for exploring the options!
Would it be possible to enable this at the topic level but not the comment level?
That’s actually a really good idea, and it addresses most of my concerns with the downvote system. However, I have no idea what is involved in making that happen in the backend, and don’t want to throw even more work at @supakaity :)
So, looking at the Lemmy code it seems pretty straightforward (like, really straightforward. There’s two checks, one for comments and one for posts, so just make them use different functions). I can try doing it, maybe even propose it as a PR upstream. Might take me a day or two for a PR though.
If it’s straightforward, I’d Very much support this!
If you don’t end up making the PR I’m down to go check it out. If you do make the PR, link it so I can go give my support for it lol.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3063 it got denied, and it’s incomplete, but if you want to base yourself off of this I’m all for it.
Ah that’s a shame, although I understand where they’re coming from being wary of complicating settings for the front-end. Either way I’ll look into it a bit when I can get to my PC and see if there’s still any hope for it lol.
Regardless of what happens with it, I appreciate you making the PR!
I think comments could still benefit from the weighting, but maybe a lesser ratio?
I like this solution best too!
Some of the comments in the “kick tankies out” post on /c/196 says to me that we need downvotes.
I like having downvotes personally, in whatever form.
I would like downvotes, and I think this modification is fine
I love that we have the fidelity here to implement things like “downvotes are at 0.2x power” and stuff like that! That sounds cool, should totally try that out and see how it ends up feeling. I think people would ultimately be OK with a near-zero-power downvote, if that ends up negatively affecting conversations too much.
Sounds like a really good compromise. “Rediquette” says it’s only to discourage spam and posts that add nothing to the conversation, but in practice, basically everyone uses it as an “I disagree” button. Gets used as a tool to discourage dissent and silence the actual unpopular opinions.
This is the big thing I hate about downvotes on Reddit. Instead of downvotes, people who disagree should make a comment about it, and then THAT comment can get upvoted to show that people disagree with the original comment. It encourages conversation and discourages echo-chambers where people are punished for having a different opinion.
Exactly
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I like the partial weights, it basically means that the whole community has to band together to hide something, which is essentially what they were originally supposed to be used for on reddit.
i am largerthanabreadbox
Thanks for sharing!
wow!
Downvotes are a useful tool for sorting content and unless they are being abused should be implemented with a 1:1 weight with downvotes.
That will not be happening.
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Interesting! I’m certainly willing to try it out
I personally think downvotes are unnecessary, because if there’s any constructive disagreements to be discussed, it’s better to get people talking rather than downvoting. Not upvoting is basically the new downvote, which would make sense if someone is flaming or trying to sow discord, they are basically ignored. Negative attention is still attention, and those types don’t deserve any.
Edit: To clarify, I think downvotes aren’t a good idea for blahaj but, as others ITT said, will put us at a disadvantage if other instances have downvotes enabled.
In the original reddiquette, it mentions downvotes are not meant to be used as dislikes, but for content that is not relevant to the subreddit (or community in our case) or discussion – if it doesn’t add anything of value. That gives the community the ability to push down and essentially hide things that aren’t meant to be there. A sort of community-powered moderation for things that aren’t entirely rule-breaking.
For example, someone posts a cute cat picture on a programming community. Is it cute? Do I wanna see more? Possibly. Is it relevant to the particular community? No. It could also be useful to hide particularly bad or wrong advice given as a comment.
Unfortunately, as we all know, it doesn’t work that way. Downvotes are used like dislikes. And probably have also been used at reddit heavily by bots to influence what the public gets to see, and what they don’t. I think the mechanism is useful, but it may need to be re-imagined.
I wonder what a downvote system where downvotes require a “Downvotes are used to hide off-topic content, not as a dislike button. Are you sure you want to downvotes?” checkbox would do? Wouldn’t stop malicious actors but it would stop some people who just downvote casually without thinking about it?
Idk though. Pretty much any downvote system will disproportionately affect marginalized folk.
Plenty of accounts on reddit just existed to see how much they could get downvoted by picking fights and spreading hate for fun, I don’t want to see any of that here
Exactly, downvotes are another way of feeding the trolls
I concur, I actually really like not having downvotes at all.
I like this, downvotes would be welcome
I think that is a fair system! I still want the option to throw a downvote if something really needs it - but it keeps brigading or shit from happening.
