I prefer votes being semi-anonymous. The vote counts are technically public, you just have to use software that displays them, but that added barrier is enough for most people to never check and that is how I prefer it. I feel like seeing voter names just encourages getting into pissing contests about "why did you downvote me" which I don't want to happen because: A, votes don't matter and B, if someone downvoted without commenting they probably don't want to spend half an hour arguing in comments.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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if someone downvoted without commenting they probably don’t want to spend half an hour arguing in comments.
Bingo.
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Because the reason for a vote is personal and different to everyone.
If I see a post with a title containing 20 emojis, I downvote it. Doesn’t matter the content of the post.
Now, assume that post was about fighting for lgbt rights or fighting against anti-abortion legislation. Some moral crusader sees my downvote and immediately calls me a bigot. When, from my perspective, all I did was downvote a bunch of emojis.
Take that idea and expand it.
This. One thing I couldn't stand about Reddit was seeing people who have so little going on in their lives that they thought it worthwhile to "background check" other posters.
This was a big thing with Twitter too. "Oh, they follow such-and-such in their list of 10,000 follows, who turned out to be bad in recent news, so this person's views are worthless and they must also be bad!"
Like, being able to have a quick glance and be like "Ah this is clearly a bot / hate-troll / what-haves, can be handy for some sense of accountability, but purity-testing and association-mobs are the stuff of cautionary science fiction, and should be avoided.
100% agreed.
I wish people would respond to the comment, not the commenter.
I don't love the idea that Nazis can lookup that I voted against their propaganda when it appears here.
Piefed has supposedly implemented a workaround to allow for private voting.
Oh, neat!
It'd probably lead to lots of small drama and every disagreement getting to a personal level. It's speculation at this point. I also think a decent chunk of people here aren't able to behave nicely. I'm not sure if we should grant them additional capabilities.
But it's not like voting here on Lemmy were the pinnacle of technical advances... It's an echo chamber for popular opinions and common and often uninspiring interests. I think we could change how it works, as it's not super great in the first place.
Agreed. What's your pet solution?
Uh, it'd need to be either a complicated algorithm. I mean I'm often not interested in meme pictures and political news. I'd like the one niche hobby electronics project to float to the top for me. And they're just not so popular. So I don't see how voting would work for me in the first place. The other thing that works very well is having separate communities for topics. I can just subscribe to the electronics, disregard the world politics. I think that already helps me half the way. Also multireddits(?) or seperate feeds help. And I don't really have a good solution for the rest of it, yet. For the comments, i really don't know. Lots of good answers here don't even have any votes cast on them.
Well you didn't ask but I'll tell my solution anyway! No downvote button. That's it! In my experience downvoting is almost always about opinion and almost never about the quality of the comment. It's toxic. It's the equivalent of shouting "Shut up!" and so obviously discourages more sensitive contributors from expressing themselves. It's even technically a form of censorship because it makes the comment less visible. It's useless and pernicious and I don't get why we need it. End of rant.
I agree with you about meme pictures. Personally I'd love a setting to block all images completely.
Fair enough. There is one big upside with downvotes... And that is people can just click downvote and be done with it and move on with their day. I think that avoids some unhealthy conversations. And people really like to engage when they disagree. And it's far easier to disagree with someone than to write a nuanced and positive comment. I think a simple downvote allows people to just vent instead of spamming, for some mild cases.
Other than that I also don't see a good point in downvoting. Sometimes it helps with spam, slop, misinformation and just stupid stuff. But we already have a "report" button for that. And I frequently get singular random downvotes on my comments. And that's just annoying. I think regarding the voting mechanics, we'd be perfectly fine without downvotes.
people can just click downvote and be done with it and move on with their day. I think that avoids some unhealthy conversations.
I'd heard this argument before but you must put it better because I now understand it. An off-ramp for sterile conflict, basically. Yep that's fair and I never even thought of it.
Still, fact remains that I personally have never (literally never) downvoted a comment. Which inevitably makes the downvotes I receive feel even more unjust. Can't win!
Slashdot's system was a good compromise: no upvoting or downvoting, just labels like "insightful", "informative", "funny", (uh) "troll" etc. At least that forces people to be honest about what they're really trying to say.
Hmmh, there are some ideas out there. Maybe we'd be better off with these more nuanced slashdot labels, or emoji reactions. I mean they're not quite the same thing, but we have these emoji reactions on Github where you can give like 6 specific ones like thumbsup/down, a rocket, eyes ... And I think some of the Fediverse microblogging platforms have them. It's a step in that direction. The common argument against them is, we can't calculate a ranking with nuanced choices and it becomes unclear how to sort the posts.
And i still use some platforms entirely without voting. Like more old-school internet forums. I think they're fine and fun to use. Sometimes they offer the ability to give stars or medals for outstanding comments. But other than that voting is pretty much absent. I think it immediately makes them loose the social media vibes. But it often changes the atmosphere for the better. But it's probably really the result of several factors.
I don't know how to tie this up. Seems we agree, the current mechanics of Lemmy isn't the pinnacle of evolution. Maybe one day someone implements a better concept. It might take some effort to make fundamental changes, since this is baked into the underlying Fediverse. But there's lots of room for improvement left, in my opinion 😉
(And it'd probably help lots of users if the ranking and sorting wasn't just a blunt popularity contest.)
They're usual for non-participants, IMO. When you're a passive consumer looking for actual information or insight, the sortable comment score is what makes all the difference.
emoji reactions on Github where you can give like 6 specific ones
Forgot about that. Yes exactly, would definitely be progress.
I don’t know how to tie this up
Upvote and move on. :) But still, emojis would be better.
I don't have a strong opiniion on the matter, but it really seems like it would encourage stalking and revenge-downvotes.
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As an instance admin, you can see who voted what. Moderators are also able to view votes in their community. See discussion regarding vote privacy here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4967
I'm not sure what you're referring to here.
If you mean like to see who upvoted and who downvoted you, you can actually see that on Mbin. It's a Lemmy fork that allows you to see exactly who upvoted and downvoted your comments or posts. Lemmy just didn't add that function itself.
If you mean a Karma total, because it just harbors a competition. If people are posting just to get their number higher then they don't care about the community or engagement. They just want a bigger number on their account. I don't post a fuckload because I want Karma, I post a fuckload because I like lemmy and wanna give it some content because I have saved content.
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This may be overthinking things a bit but…
I mod a desert of a sub for my alma mater, and I’m pretty sure the same person downvotes everything I post there. No comments, just a single downvote. As a mod I would love to be able to confirm my suspicions, but as a user, I like my votes to be anonymous.
As a middle ground, perhaps the software itself could auto-mod a bit. If a single user only ever downvotes content from a community, and crosses a certain threshold, they might be soft-banned for some number of days with a note in the mod log to the effect of “negative contribution.” After some amount of time, the ban is automatically lifted. If a community mod notices that the same user keeps getting soft-banned every 30-something days (the soft-ban limit plus some amount of time for it to kick back in), they can decide if they want to ban the user.
This seems like a you thing. I mean, with no big algorithmic promotion engine and no immediate reward for upvotes I just don't see the point either way.There's like a dozen of us around here and no prize for being popular. Who gives a crap? It's a little button thingy that helps you feel like you did a thing to the thing wihtout having to write a post and clutteirng the feed. It does its job.
Upvotes are public if you use mbin, not sure why downvotes are hidden
To be clear - are you asking about a breakdown of who voted which way or just a per comment/post total (i.e. +6)
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If you want to read up on people's objections, there's load of comments at https://lemmy.world/post/18805474 and the GitHub Issue it links to at https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4967
I'm not personally in favour of ideas about voting privacy (I think it's a bit anti-Fediverse and hampers backfilling), but those who disagree tend to feel more strongly about it than I do, so I try to avoid arguments about it.
Im not but actually I really wish the stuff done with trust cafe was integrated into the fediverse. Up votes and down votes are fine for general recomendations but me being able to rank users is pretty huge.
Who says I am?
Votes don't matter. They are the hide button of Lemmy.
I firmly believe most influencer these day were propped up with payed views and botted engagement.
How does any of that apply to Lemmy? There's no commercial interests represented here. I'm not following anyone on Lemmy because of their amount of upvotes. I'll occasionally look at the heavily downvoted to see if its a opposing view I should consider, but mostly I see those are just trolling/racism/misogyny.
I like the different here over reddit for Karma. There's no "score" and therefor no incentive for farming Karma and all the negatives that creates. We're all equal here.
edit: to my downvoter. Thank you for perfectly proving my point. The whole thread is actually asking for opinions on why each of us holds a position on upvote/downvote transparency, and you downvote my valid opinion. I don't need the vote transparency to tell me who you are, your downvote on this tells me everything I need to know about you and how to value your opinion.
just because you hold an opinion doesn't make it valid.
Oh? The answer requested by the OP is purely subjective. There is no right answer. Each of our answers is right for us, which is why the OP asked "Why are you personally...".
There is no objectively right answer here, therefore all personal opinions are valid.
your supposition that there's no commercial interests here is incorrect. just because it hasn't manifested yet doesn't mean it isn't lurking beneath the surface.
I think the most recent "polish canadian girl" campaign was quite effective and displayed exactly what it was supposed to do.
the NSFW lemmy instance is growing in numbers most recently due to the purge happening at Reddit. those posts are very much economic in nature.
also, there's strong corporatist agendas on lemmy. sure, there is plenty of political theater and grandstanding made by bots and fools alike but in reality...those can easily sway a nation.
so yes, I'll admit that your opinion is "valid", but it's also unwarranted, baseless, and circumstantial based entirely upon your own limited point of view. that's not your fault though, it's your opinion.
it's funny, opinions, everyone has one about something or someone. but really, we never stop to think, "Does anybody really care about this?"
I sure don't, I just wanted to extended a bit of "friendly" courtesy to point out the hypocrisy in your own words. In one breath you celebrate the freedom that comes from being unrestrained by vote count--and in the other your unabashedly chastise someone for daring to downvote your opinion and in turn sharing their opinion of your opinion.
Don't worry, I swear I won't form a complex opinion of you that's too harsh. you certainly haven't said anything that would warrant a strong opinion anyway.
your supposition that there’s no commercial interests here is incorrect. just because it hasn’t manifested yet doesn’t mean it isn’t lurking beneath the surface
Wait, are you agreeing with me that commercial interested doesn't exist yet? I'm making no claims about the future of it.
I sure don’t, I just wanted to extended a bit of “friendly” courtesy to point out the hypocrisy in your own words. In one breath you celebrate the freedom that comes from being unrestrained by vote count–and in the other your unabashedly chastise someone for daring to downvote your opinion and in turn sharing their opinion of your opinion.
You're framing what occurred incorrectly. The OP is calling for vote transparency, as in ownership of the upvote or downvote to the person casting it. I'm saying that the ownership of the upvote or downvote is irrelevant. I'm proving my point because I don't care who cast the downvote on my post.
It would be hypocrisy if I was claiming that knowing the ownership of the upvote/downvote doesn't matter, and if I then demanded to know who downvoted me. I'm doing not such thing. I celebrate the anonymity of the downvoter. I just don't put any stock in their downvote, which is my entire point that upvote/downvote ownership knowledge isn't required or desired by me. Even if you disagree with my opinion, which you're welcome to, its consistent and without hypocrisy .
Don’t worry, I swear I won’t form a complex opinion of you that’s too harsh. you certainly haven’t said anything that would warrant a strong opinion anyway.
I'm a rando on the internet to you. I am very glad you don't put enough stock in anything anyone says on a random message board that would cause you any strong feelings positive or negative.
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