Asklemmy

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Downvotes = “I disagree” or “this is bad and you should feel bad”? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by maegul@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

156 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I think I’ve settled on the latter. Disagreement is maybe best communicated by the absence of an upvote? And downvotes work best when they signal something that is just off base, and while not reportable, is not appreciated at a broad cultural level.

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[–] anteaters@feddit.de 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Originally up- and down votes were intended to crowd source filtering and rating content in a community. So voting up for things you want to see more of and vote down spam or content that is unfit for the community. But people will tend to upvote things they agree with and downvote those they deem wrong - I also find myself doing something like that. I now try to follow these rules:

Upvote things I like (or agree with)
Don't vote on things I don't agree with or think are dumb
Downvote things that I feel really don't belong here.

It helps that lemmy currently shows the number of up and down votes instead of just the score, it gives a bit more inhibition before downvoting stuff.

[+] coldhotman@nrsk.no 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] Zippy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Don't think the moderators need to action every instance when a person or two thinks something doesn't belong here. The down vote can take care of that. Moderators can focus on blatant issues.

[–] anteaters@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good question. I think reporting is left to cases where a post is so bad that a moderator needs to take action to remove it or the user from the community. So downvote things that are of low quality and report things that are against the community or instance rules?

[+] coldhotman@nrsk.no 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] anteaters@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes, up/down votes are inherently subjective and reports are to be used for objectively bad content. It is up to the users to decide whether they feel that opinions they don't agree with are worthy of downvoting or not. In the end the voting system tries to give the community a voice to mirror what content they like to see - within the rules that are enforced by moderators. I think it would be better if people downvote content they don't like instead of using it to "punish" people they argue with. That's why I think it is a slight improvement that lemmy shows up and down votes separately - it gives the downvote a bit more gravitas and in consequence "not voting" receives some, too.