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.
This is precisely my reason for why they should be public.
In my view downvotes should be used sparingly, only to suppress spam and trolling comments that don't add to the conversation.
By keeping votes private people just downvote anything they disagree with
So what are you going to do with the knowledge that I downvoted your comment?
You have no reason to so I presume you haven't.
If we were actually in a discussion and you started downvoting all my comments I'd see it as a sign of pettiness and disengage.
I'd probably also tag you as a reminder to myself not to engage with you again.
You have no reason to so I presume you haven’t.
I'm telling you I downvoted your comment.
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.
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 don't love the idea that Nazis can lookup that I voted against their propaganda when it appears here.
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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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.
Upvotes are public if you use mbin, not sure why downvotes are hidden
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.
Mbin shows who upvoted, but it does not show who downvoted. Kbin used to show both, but there are no active Kbin servers anymore.
I was just thinking about kbin. It died? I signed up long ago but didn’t really use it.
First, I wasn't talking karma count, I think that is toxic.
To answer the rest, I guess I would like to have the option of seeing who voted native to the main site.
I don't like downloading apps or installing plugins.
Mbin is not an app or a plugin. It is a fork which means that it took the basecode of Lemmy and repurposed it into something else. Some instances have then used Mbin, like fedia.io. It just happens to be that lemmy.world doesn't include that function because it uses Lemmy as its base and not Mbin.
Mbin is able to completely interact with Lemmy, mind you, so it's not seperate in anyway other than how it works.
Mbin is a fork of Kbin, a different independent project, not Lemmy.
My mistake, you're right.
So, you're saying I have to change my instance? Which would be fine and I am already debating just that.
If you want to see who specifically upvoted or downvoted, then yes. If you want the general numbers you can stay here.
Personally I've never understood the obsession with seeing who votes for you. I post constantly and have people who follow me about downvoting me everywhere. If I was checking who was downvoting me all the time, I'd never get shit done.
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Vote counts are visible by default for like 90% of Lemmy. Only a few instances hide them (or disable voting entirely). 🤨
Reworded. I'm sorry, I'm dumb.
Because they see it as voting. Voting is anonymous IRL, they want it to be online, too. Even though what people are generally voting for online is whether or not they think the poster is an asshole. 🤷🏻♂️
But also, afaik, it is visible, if you're an instance admin. Thought about making my own instance just to see who the 1 dude that downvotes everything I post (sometimes milliseconds after posting) is and see why they're so butthurt.
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.
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.
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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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.
I'd like to just see the name of the moderator that is banning me from 50 different communities they have the free time to moderate even if I've never posted in them because they disagreed with my opinion in one of them. I like to know who has skin thinner than the rice paper around a Botan candy.
The modlog is public on lemmy
It doesn't show you who is doing the modding though as far as I've seen. I've had some anonymous .ml mods remove some of my comments while citing rules that don't exist.
'Xenophobia' in this context means arguing with a Hexbear troll spreading disinformation and having one of his buddies ban me, but regardless, these aren't what I was referring to.
You skipped over the ones I was referring to here:
This is all I see on my end.
oh my bad
If you view the modlog from an mbin instance it shows which mod took the action. The mbin modlogs aren't very good for searching through, but a recent action should be easy enough to see
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