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
Yes I like having downvotes. I use downvotes to notice trends of spam so I can better identify who to report/block.
That site sabotages the back button, fyi.
ALSO the downvote disabling feature never worked as intended. It only blocks lemmynsfw accounts from downvoting anything, lemmynsfw or otherwise. THIS account could already downvote anything federated.
the downvote disabling feature never worked as intended. It only blocks lemmynsfw accounts from downvoting anything, lemmynsfw or otherwise. THIS account could already downvote anything federated
Sure but those of us on lemmynsfw can’t see them.
Ok. I generally like being able to see things.
You could downvote from another account but it wouldn’t be federated and tallied for anything but your home instance.
I’m 50/50 on this, so I’ll not vote, but I want to at least share my thoughts.
On one hand I generally like downvotes, because it makes it easier to identify bad actors & trolls. However, on an instance that’s all about nudity and sex, it could become a tool for harassment towards original content creators, which could discourage them from actually participating here. And I think OC is something we’d generally like to see more of, right? Or if we go with people who may be not quite the model standard body type, or do content that may not be the most vanilla kink out there, then they may be discouraged simply by people being not a fan of it, and it being very visible to them. It’s one thing to not get many upvotes, another to receive a lot of downvotes.
If this was a regular instance I’d easily vote for the downvotes, but here I’m rather leaning towards “nay”.
Ditto
Please don’t bring your bad Reddit habits to Lemmy.
Please take your own advice.
Which bad Reddit habit am I inflicting on Lemmy? Qt3456 is making low-effort comments in place of upvotes.
You’re derailing the topic with off-topic pseudomodding.
I don’t know if it’s possible from a technical standpoint, but it’d be great if it was a toggle that you could set to not see downvotes on your own posts or comments.
I find myself posting more constructive dissent here than on Reddit because I don’t get discouraged from hive mind dog piles.
The effect would be similar for those content creators.
Downvotes have some advantages over blocking. They:
- Indicate trends of spam (as @[email protected] pointed out).
- Allows minimizing exposure to unwanted content from a given account without blocking out exposure to all that account’s content. (Accounts may post a mix of content I do and don’t like. Blocking throws out the baby with the bathwater.)
- Help disambiguate the popularity of content vs. reach of content. (Relatively few upvotes compared to other posts could be due to community obscurity, or posting at a poor time of day. It doesn’t indicate whether the community likes the post, or how you should adjust your posting habits to increase appeal. Counting downvotes helps you understand how many total people viewed a post, and the percentage of those who appreciated it.)
- Are lower friction. (They take fewer clicks.)
I really don’t think anything has fundamentally changed with the community or platform since the decision to remove downvotes in the first place. I just don’t think the population of Lemmy as a whole is large enough or mature enough to use them in a responsible manner and it will continue to be used as a “this isn’t my fetish” button rather than any indication of quality or community relevance just like before.
I agree that the spam problem has gotten worse over time, but I really don’t see downvotes doing very much to fix that. Most of it is from content sellers. They only need one post to do well to get their visibility and they almost always get at least that much so they still end up rewarded for the behavior in the end.
Agreed with this. Lemmy is too low volume to need them.
I feel downvotes are fairly useless.
They’re used as a disagree button. Ok but why do you disagree? Leave a reply and let’s discuss. Gain saying has little value and that’s all a downvote to disagree is.
They’re used to report spam. Spam should be reported so I don’t think that’s a valid argument for them. Downvoting spam leaves it up, reporting spam gets it taken down. We have a better solution to spam than downvotes.
They are used by bad actors, with the removal of downvotes bad actors have to spend more effort in making a comment and it becomes far more obvious in who they are, report and block them.
Finally downvotes are a way to yuck someone’s yum, I’m mindful of the instance we’re on. I don’t want our communities to become like Reddit where only one genital configuration and body type are allowed.
Then use your same logic for upvotes, which you clearly didn’t. Only having it one sided defeats the entire purpose of votes, if you can’t see that then you have insanely flawed logic.
I’m obviously not going to make your argument for you.
Having it one sided clearly doesn’t defeat the purpose of votes. When you went to the ballot box do you upvote your chosen candidate and also downvote your least favourite?
Not having downvotes is a simple statement: “If you do not like this thing, we don’t care”. Report the spam and block the creators you don’t like, simples.
So you use my logic for upvotes, which you clearly didn’t, and maybe you’ll see why it’s downvotes that are removed and not upvotes.
See, if downvotes were active you might have just gainsayed and moved on and we wouldn’t have had this interaction. Neat huh?
I’m for them in theory but I feel like they get abused. Like if someone posts a dick in gonewild. Nothing wrong with that, but most people don’t wanna see dicks.
I don’t suppose you can leave it up to the sub-lemmy to decide? (Sub lemmy? Wtf are we calling these?)
Nothing wrong with that, but most people don’t wanna see dicks.
I agree that there’s nothing wrong with that, but if most people don’t want to see it, then… why shouldn’t it get downvoted? That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Give the people what they want.
Perhaps dicks belong in a more niche sub where people actually do want to see that?
They get downvotes in the niche subs too because everyone browses Lemmy by All due to lack of content.
ok, well that just sucks.
*Edit: I feel like my wording was unclear and could be interpreted as “sucks for them, but oh well”. I meant it more in a genuine “oh damn, that’s really shitty” kind of way.
As a moderator of some of those subs I can confirm.
I’m going to post a solo on gone wild … 😈 let’s experiment lol
It will definitely get abused 🤣
Already is, big time
Ohhhh I know trust me I know lol 🤣someone downvoted almost every one of my posts on nodachiwrld 😆
Lol yeah people hate you and your magic dick
Ps tell your hot ass wife to post more 🤣
She doesn’t like posting on here because people would rather see pornstars than OC’s, eclipsebunnie stopped posting here, nsfw kitty, posterxbunny, phoebe grace all left because of it , now If I told them about the downvotes they’ll never come back here .
I disagree but that’s just me, there are plenty of tube sites to see pornstars get fucked, I come here for the OC
Exactly! More ppl should bring light to the OC’s on here rather than the pornstar posts lol
I have to disagree with that one, gonewild/oc posts get the most upvotes on average
I seen far more pornstar pics/posts make it on the front page more than OC’s, now is currently mostly OC’s but that’s only because the current OC’s are pretty new and are posting individually on other communities
if you look at top week and month the majority of top posts are OC, there are more pornstar posts because there is just a huge stockpile of porn that people can grab from, that’s always going to be true. But again if you look at the upvotes history, people do actually appreciate OC alot. The ratio of upvotes for oc vs porn is probably similar to reddit, there’s just a lot less people here, which means less interaction in general.
But then why are OC’s leaving? I talked to the girls I know and they said not many interactions on here, upvotes are good but it doesn’t keep them staying on the front pages for long and then gets drowned out by non OC posts . If people interacted with OC’s like they do with porn posts, then OC’s wouldn’t get drowned out by it
Hahaha, they’re mad/jealous because I sleep with beautiful women all the time 😅 they don’t like pretty guys with pretty women 🤣💜
People are dumb, I’m over here living vicariously through you haha
🤣🤣🤣 welll, I’m glad annnnd a new video with the wife makes it’s way here tomorrow!
You’re beautiful not pretty 🤭
(Sub lemmy? Wtf are we calling these?)
We tend to call them what the UI for most Lemmy clients (or the web version) call them, i.e. “communities”.
No downvotes. People use it as a “this isn’t my fetish” button and everything even slightly niche gets sent to oblivion. Especially bad for gonewild posts where people’s self image gets involved.
Also using a Google doc for this poll seems like a bad idea since people who aren’t from this instance can vote
You are using “some people misuse a thing” as a rationale to get rid of the thing.
If someone posts fetish x on a vanilla community, they should get downvoted. If they post that same thing in a community about fetish x, then the community can simply be blocked by those so inclined.
If they post that same thing in a community about fetish x, then the community can simply be blocked by those so inclined.
The problem is the majority of people don’t actually do that. They just downvote it to oblivion. That’s a significant part of why they were turned off in the first place.
by that same logic a use that sees content they don’t like on a community they do can block that user.
is there a problem with content being posted that doesn’t match communities right now? i haven’t noticed one. the biggest problem on this platform right now is lack of content. downvotes, or any tool for creating explicit negative social interaction or feedback can make a community more hostile and less inviting. right now i generally see almost no posts on any nsfw communities that should get downvotes that don’t just get taken care of by a moderator. right now we need to draw people in to posting content way way more than we need better tools to organize it.
the biggest problem on this platform right now is lack of content. downvotes, or any tool for creating explicit negative social interaction or feedback can make a community more hostile and less inviting.
Exactly this. We don’t have enough content to give users the tools to discourage posting.
This is the important part:
Especially bad for gonewild posts where people’s self image gets involved.
We don’t need a “go away, you’re ugly” button. That’s what blocking is for.
Hm… what if downvoting was weighted only 1/10th as much as upvoting? So a few downvotes here and there from people doing it wrong wouldn’t amount to anything in others’ view, but if a post is heavily downvoted due to being in the wrong community or low effort, that’s visible?
Maybe? I dunno. Turning off downvotes seems like a pretty simple solution. Trying to come up with complex ways to make it hurt just the right amount doesn’t seem like it’ll work in all cases.
It’s called fine-tuning, and if everyone gave up that easily, many domains would suffer, like medicine, architecture, manufacturing design etc. Don’t be afraid of something simply because the ideal fix is more complicated than 2+2.
If they post that same thing in a community about fetish x, then the community can simply be blocked by those so inclined.
Yes, they could. But that’s not what’s going to happen.
Believing that fetishes should be separated in their own corners and downvoted otherwise is an excellent reason to not have downvotes - or to just not post content in this instance anymore
Separating things into their own corner is literally the point of subs.
Unless a community explicitly has a rule excluding content, and the uploads are valid there, downvoting something just because you’re not into it just seems like entitlement to me. Its the same “reasoning” people use to get gay content outside of Rule34 or other general boards, because they find it “icky” (of course none of these people complain about lesbian content)
Having to enumerate every single rule on a sub would be horrific and more importantly preference can’t be written into rules. What a community likes and doesnt like is based on the voting system, thats the fundamental point of Lemmy and reddit.
Thinking you can post whatever you want and expect all the exposure without regards to a communities tastes just because it doesnt explicitly violate rules is entitlement.
Seems like the divide is between people who actually contribute to this instance and post content, versus those who don’t and want to decide what get seen or not. Question, when we are gone, are you going to start posting? Will you create and moderate communities? Or are you going to keep sitting and expecting poster to cater to your tastes?
Its pretty rich to sit on your ass, makes demands and still call others entitled.
I posted when this instance first started and there was nearly nothing. So yeah I would and did. I didnt complain about the down votes and wasnt demanding up votes either.
I’m entitled to nothing, posts or votes. You are entitled to nothing as well.
I changed my mind. I was pro downvote but I just looked at the new community list, saw one I liked, and then saw that a lot of the posts that fit the theme just fine have been downvoted for no reason. The mod is clearly upset about it also.
So yeah, please turn downvotes back off.
How do you know that there was no reason behind the downvotes?
True. I mean no discernable reason.
I can see a lot of pros and cons, and I don’t think we can know what is best without a longer-term trial. There’ll be some trolling and harassment that comes with it, which is really bad, but also it allows user filtering of spam and junk posts, which is good. Hopefully there’s less of the former and more of the latter.
I feel that downvotes serve an important purpose both in keeping out spam, but also in preserving the many-niches architecture common in porn. Without downvotes even more work will be put onto mods in order to make sure the content posted is relevant to the communities its being posted too. Take c/Hotwife which has recently had a few postings that have 0 to do with hotwifing. Allowing downvotes is an imperfect solution, but I think an important one.
What about people getting pissed over something (presumably, it’s hard to tell) and then going after people’s posts in other communities and rampage-downvoting everything?
This should be handled by (auto)mod tools, allowing good faith users to help filter non-fitting or low quality posts, and preventing bad actors from downvote fireworks.
There are possibilities to limit available downvotes either by throttling amount per time/community/instance/user, by demanding to have a certain “reputation” in the community/instance or by making downvote cost your own “reputation”.
None of the above is perfect, but IMO outright removing a right to disagree is against community interests.
Currently I can either leave a “harassment” comment: “wtf this is doing in this community”, make complain to a mod (if there is any active), or ignore the post. Neither help community grow stronger, I think.
It seems to me that most valid criticisms are better stated as a polite comment than a numb downvote.
To be fair, comparing to Reddit, Lemmy is still niche, let alone LemmyNSFW even nicher. However, without downvotes some communities lose track. Without growing bigger, I do not expect to see some niche NSFW communities here which are already niche on Reddit. With more posters Lemmy shall grow, does not matter if it’s slowly, but it should be steadily.
Nope. I’m seeing male posters getting downvoted, which sucks. Everyone should be welcome in all communities unless the community states otherwise or a post is off-topic.
Yeah, just filter stuff you don’t wanna see. There’s a person behind the post you’re downvoting
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?
After review ofc. Good moderators is the core of lemmy communities, not only for removing spam but for keeping things on-topic.
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.
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.
Enabled downvotes and place immediately got more argumentative and a bit more toxic. No, not want.
I too, as a person who has no feelings for men, have clicked posts for gay porn by accident. I too have come across posts which I did not prefer, even if they were concerning women. I, too, have seen some things which in general I do not like. In these cases—
I simply became more careful and started taking a look at the community name first. Secondly I started looking for communities whivh fit what I like better. Niche ones without exposure. A good sign. For the last, there are a number of ways for me to deal with it, like simply moving on. Blocking where maliciousness exists. Finding other communities. Et cetera.
Ability to downvote is an important part of these communities, it’s a self control mechanism. I surely don’t want to block some users just because I don’t like some of their posts, downvote should suffice.
Maybe it’s just me, but after enabled I seem to get much higher quality content on the local page.
I think vote up is to “like” a post and down vote to “dislike” a post. If the intent is to use down votes to prevent spam that is what a report button would be for.
