this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
269 points (79.8% liked)
Asklemmy
43755 readers
2108 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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. :)