Unpopular Opinion

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Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!

How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.

If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.

Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)

If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].

Rules:

1. NO POLITICS

Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.

2. Be civil.

Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...

Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.

5. No trolling.

This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.

Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

founded 2 years ago

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[Meta / Poll / Discussion] Should we get rid of the voting guidelines? (dubvee.org)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/unpopularopinion

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In the community details, we have a note about "Vote the opposite of the norm":

If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.

I've read lots of comments here that amount to that being confusing. There's also the fact that not everyone votes like that, so it's hard to really tell from the votes if something is widely considered unpopular or not. Plus, I don't really want to tell people how to vote.

I also just realized that it's slightly unfair to people running with downvotes disabled.

So, should we get rid of that guidance and just assume posts are voted based on their overall merit / agreement? I'll leave that up to you all.

There are two distinguished comments below which will be used as the poll. Upvote the one you wish to vote in favor of. You can downvote the opposing option if you want, but it won't affect the results; I'm only going to look at the upvote counts. I'll leave this up until next Friday to give everyone time to voice their opinions.

I'm not going to lock the post so that you can comment with any opinions or thoughts. Hopefully the 'distinguish comment' action federates out so those remain visible. If not, look for the two top level comments from me that start with [POLL]

all 5 comments

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

[POLL] Keep the voting guidelines as they are.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

[POLL] Get rid of the voting guidelines.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If the voting guideline isn't there (whether or not it gets followed), then this just becomes a vent/random post/whatever community. The unifying principle is about whether or not the opinion is popular or not, and having the policy there makes it clear what the focus out the discussion should be on.

Things like that voting policy are subtle, but they really do work to keep a community more coherent and on track than it would be otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the feedback; that was our thought as well. Though as far as becoming a vent/random post community, there are soft ways to deal with that which would have a similar effect.

That said, we do want the community to reflect the wishes of its members (and to not be overly confusing). I've heard enough mentions of "I don't know whether to upvote or downvote this" that I thought it was worth getting some input and opinions from the community at large.

I'm abstaining from the vote (removed the default upvotes from my comments), but I'm also in favor of keeping them.