Sorry to be unclear though: I did not mean that I ignore those users but that I choose to ignore those labels on the users. They aren’t ready to be used to ignore people yet - if ever that day may come.

If it helps to go deeper: imagine the following scenario. A moderator is tasked by a community to uphold certain standards, like let’s say it’s an “art” community and some people very much dislike AI, while others like AI. Having a label (e.g. PieFed allows people to place “hashtags” onto posts - Mbin can do this too but I forget if that’s just when federating with Mastodon or if it can also do it for Lemmy as well) allows the people who strongly dislike AI to not have to receive such. By placing the decision away from the moderator into the hands of the individual users to set up their block lists, this represents a “democratization of moderation”. Power to the people! Why would that be bad?

An example I more commonly use is porn: should it be removed, or allowed? Moderators can only do either one or the other - never both. Whereas if there is a label, rigidly applied, the end-user can switch it on or off at will, even while at work without fear of losing their jobs.

But back to the democratization issue: the idea is that “moderation” is an authoritarian-style concept, where the Power (like shit) flows downhill. In contrast, allowing the voters to carry the day is democracy in action.

And as such, it can be abused - e.g. if people could create 1000 accounts, and thereby have 1000x the voting power of a common singular person, or even just 2-5 accounts and thereby have 2-5 the power of 1. All the benefits, and all the detractions too, of democracy, applied to Lemmy.

But we can also have the best of both worlds: moderation and user-defined thresholds to show vs. not show certain content. If I want to see more contenious content, I can relax the thresholds, or even get rid of them entirely (as I actually have done), but if someone else chooses to curate their view more tightly, then why would I judge them?

One potential reason for the latter is when people duplicate content, b/c they don’t see each other’s. Thus, the “label” concept shows through even more clearly there: what if instead of “showing” vs. “not showing” content, we could have a whole entire spectrum like “here’s content we think you’ll REALLY like”, “here’s some other content that, fair warning, you’ve not much enjoyed in the past”, and also “here’s other content that, whoops no you aren’t allowed to even see this b/c it’s gone at the moderator’s behest”. Since 3 > 2, and choice > no choice, hence isn’t labeling “better”?

I honestly do not know. But it’s a grand experiment to find out, nonetheless!:-)

The scenario you described though, might just need a schism to form 2 separate (sub-?) communities. Btw, not to toot its horn too awfully loudly, but PieFed also has “categories of communities”, so that if they both were placed into the same overall Category, people wouldn’t even have to so much notice precisely which Community the content was in, except when posting. And side-note: that also dramatically speeds up the onboarding of a new account: you can simply subscribe to “Memes” for instance, rather than each community individually, although you can always leave individual ones - such as [email protected], for political extremism - at anytime later, or subscribe to new ones.

And ask for commenting rather than merely voting: that much I agree - and at that point, why bother with the downvote even? Also, if a conversation should be happening, then shouldn’t it rather be UP-voted, for relevance rather than “I (dis-)like this”?

Which reveals one trouble with voting: not only did it used to mean (I am told, though I was admittedly not on Reddit myself yet at the time) that “this content is less relevant”, but moreover, some people think that, while others simply use it as a “Like” button. The discrepancy between those two uses causes confusion - as you say there are conversations that should happen, yet they keep getting buried by using the “dislike” button (or worse, mod removal that likewise can be used to suppress dissenting viewpoints rather than content that is truly not worth seeing).

So I am not sure that I agree with you in all aspects. But I am upvoting your comment for relevance all the same:-).

It’s a bit of a juxtaposition when you’re faced with repercussions for not agreeing with the “hivemind” or bubble or whatever.

Believe me, I KNOW that feeling - I have made posts that are among some of the most heavily-downvoted in an entire community’s history:-).

Yeah in that case, downvoting AND commenting is fine. I didn’t want to be too long-winded (although I did type up a MUCH longer reply, but then I deleted it all in favor of the above simplicity:-), but definitely there are cases where downvoting is appropriate: e.g. what about polls that say like “upvote if you agree, downvote if you disagree” - voting is mere participation there, not a sign of unfriendliness? And in Reddit there were certain communities where the voting metrics were SUPPOSED to be flipped from the norm.

In general many downvotes means that you might not be a “fit” for what the community is trying to do? I dunno.

because I know full well that its all the people who feel addressed by that comment.

Not necessarily - some people may even agree with you, but not like the language (especially more puritanical folks), or some may prioritize the process over content, like react to your tone over your statement, or whatever.

as a user, you don’t even know what happens to your comments or bans, unless you specifically look for it

But that’s what I am trying to tell you: perhaps it is that way on Mbin, but it has not been that way for people on Lemmy for months now. Well, tbf it is for those on Lemmy.World that is still running 0.19.3. This information is now ONE SINGLE CLICK AWAY when you are at the comment. I’ll try to see if I can dig up an example, though it will come from one of my Lemmy alts.

Anyway, do as you want, I guess I was saying that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but I don’t want to actually tell you what to do, just provide that as a thought so that you don’t feel so powerless: YOU can control what OTHERS think, to some degree, by altering HOW you state something. It’s a thought to consider anyway (e.g., did I just encourage you to think that, by stating it like that?:-).

Example: being at the post you want to look up (you can still search the modlog the old way too, though this is a new short-cut), click the hamburger menu and you can see either the user’s or the individual post’s full moderation history:

and then this is the result for that one, so note that it’s the full history, not just the latest action or current status whatever:

So I mean, yeah, you do have to click once if you are interested, but you don’t have to do all the convoluted filtering in order to find it, as you used to.

Here’s a second example for you - you see that it is removed, and let’s say that you desire to know why:

I guess it’s 2 clicks b/c first the hamburger menu, then scroll to the last option, but after those 2 clicks, here’s what you see - the answer that you wanted to know!?:

I don’t know the rules of that community, but the mod claims that you violated multiple of them, plus used abusive language in particular - e.g. not stating “I disagree with your thoughts” but calling someone “a dumb baby” specifically.

Again, you can do whatever you want… but so too can mods, and that’s a tough thing that they have to do btw, to enforce the rules that their community wants and demands that someone do for them. Start up your own community if you wish, and then you can be your own mod, but then people will end up disagreeing with you and you will experience first-hand what it is like to be in that moderator position: it is not always, nor even usually, fun - it’s WORK, and most people (the kind with a conscience) feel that it’s a heavy burden (though some do abuse their role, I definitely concede that point as well).