Currently downvotes are enabled on a trial basis, this was done by me to see if they can be enabled to prevent spam from rising to the top of communities, along with the fact that is another form of interaction/feedback.
However I’ve gotten some pushback for this and so I’d like to see the general consensus of this decision. Please put any comments/concerns in this thread, and please vote here: (Link gone poll is done)
the results of this poll and the comments will determine if we keep or remove downvotes again
I think it’s better to have a button to report spam, harassment, etc , rather than using downvote. Downvote is too ambiguous.
do reports downrank posts?
It might even remove the offending post entirely.
automatically/instantly? or do you mean after review?
Reports just trigger a mod or admin to review the post when they see it. Reports do not affect the ranking of a post in any way unless moderator action is taken and it’s removed.
After review ofc. Good moderators is the core of lemmy communities, not only for removing spam but for keeping things on-topic.
Reports should not downrank posts. It should notify moderators. Moderators can decide to add a mod comment, hide the comment, delete the comment, message the commenter etc. There can be tools under moderators control to automate this.
Such buttons aren’t really supported in mobile apps though.
I suppose it makes sense if the change is lemmy-wide
I mean, that’s how the report button works site-wide. If we are talking about a button that works automatically, then you are basically copying the downvote, but worse, since it cannot be offset by many people upvoting.
You need to remember that it is hard to distinguish between a downvote / button use because of spam / harassment and because of people not liking something. You need a human to do that. Fetish content will get downvoted / buttonned by people “not into it” when obscure enough. Regular OCs will also get that treatment - since users will get bored and seeing new content from them may make them downvote / button.
From a user interface perspective, I think it’s far less likely people will report spam than downvote when they do not like something. I suppose we both are only hypothesising here though.
I don’t see offsetting as a good feature. It just seems to drive people into tribalistic up/down wars. What’s the point of users seeing the net votes?
Only if it isn’t a single button.
The point is the same as with hiding the yt dislike button. It helps people determine if something is of higher quality or not.
I do agree if it were not a single button the likelihood would be much further less. I would imagine ideally one tap to open a modal window and then one tap between ‘This is spam’, ‘This is harassment’ or type in Other : []. So maybe just moving the Create Report to where downvote button now is worth trying.
There is a fundamental difference between YouTube and Lemmy though - community members and community moderators. I think having a signal from dislike is much less needed because of it. However, I do think it would be nice (not impactful at the current size of community) to have a viewcount of some sort.