Downvotes can be a useful tool to shape a community, but one of the main issues brought up in the post I made is when several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in. Which I want to emphasize is NOT the correct way for downvotes to be used.

First id like to start off with an apology to those who are upset about them being enabled. It may seem very clear to you that downvotes weren’t wanted, but as an admin I get complaints for basically every decision made on this site, so what the “right” choice is, is sometimes hard to determine.

I’ve been getting complaints about downvotes being disabled for awhile now, so it wasn’t clear to me. Even now, the opinion is still very split. Which is why I enabled them quietly to see if it would cause any issues. It did, so I made the initial post to see if people think the issues created by downvotes outweigh the benefits, and what peoples’ other opinions about them are.

This is my opinion based on what I’ve read and the results of the poll:

I think at a later time when lemmynsfw is larger, downvotes may be viable, especially if lemmy implements a custom home feed so that not everyone sees the same posts. This would help mitigate the issue of people not in communities downvoting posts. But as it stands I think the best option is disabling them again. Frequent posters, which are kind of needed for this site to survive, don’t seem to like them, and the poll is split almost 50/50. I have to try to balance enjoyability of posting and enjoyability of consuming content on the site, and it just seems like downvotes really hurts posters and only marginally helps consumers.

So with all that said, downvotes have been disabled again. Sorry for all the confusion and back and forth.

  • RadovicEnglish
    11•2 months ago

    I want to thank you lemmyposter212 for this fair minded decision. I know that we’ll probably revisit this subject in a number of months and then maybe the decision will be different and I shall probably bow out gracefully at that point rather than mount a protest.

    I also want to thank the other posters and commenters who showed up to support each other, particularly @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] and @[email protected] Edit: also @[email protected]

    But for right now I have another problem which is how to go about restoring the posts I blanked out. What I intend to do is to go through and try to match the titles to their original picture and then I shall make a weekly digest post of the ones that have been restored so that the people who haven’t seen them before can enjoy them.

    Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

      • RadovicEnglish
        3•2 months ago

        Thanks for those kind words, you’ve been commenting on my posts for a while now and it’s those small acts of appreciation for what I do that make the difference.

        • @[email protected]English
          4•2 months ago

          I think we’re missing stuff like that.

          I didn’t realize how much I care about this wank bank. I was genuinely annoyed when it looked like we were going to lose some of the regular posters. Not just because that’d lower the amount of content.