When I first found out it was an interesting concept that I was pretty neutral on but the more I engage/lurk with the community the more I enjoy it.

I generally don’t post/comment much on Reddit because I tend to be extremely sincere and that’s not always well received. Usually I don’t get much hate, but what I do get is a lot of non-interaction mixed with downvotes. And it’s just really discouraging when I’m just trying to share my thoughts.

But having no downvotes here is so nice because I’m not afraid that I’m going to get silenced into oblivion. Either people will actually engage with me (and maybe disagree, but in a meaningful way), or they’ll move on and not randomly share their disdain via downvoting.

It’s such a small change but makes a big difference. I bet a lot of people feel the same as me - it’s more comfortable to engage here.

  • magnetosphere English
    11•1 year ago

    I agree wholeheartedly. I didn’t like downvotes, but I didn’t realize how terrible the concept of downvotes really was until I lived without it.

    Here’s my comment from another thread:

    I wasn’t a fan of Reddit’s downvote system. It was a pointless, vague way to show displeasure without actually providing any useful information. I never knew if a downvote was because I made a comment that was factually wrong, the reader had a differing opinion, or simply because I made a grammatical error. Plus, there’s brigading. By itself, a downvote doesn’t really tell you anything.

    I’m sure that in at least some cases, a genuine discussion (rather than a simple downvote) would have been more thought-provoking for everyone.

    • SensEnglish
      9•1 year ago

      Maybe an unpopular opinion of mine, but I don’t mind downvotes, but there doesn’t need to be a calculation of the sum of the upvotes and downvotes imv. That way both are observable for the users. If something is unpopular, you can see it but it doesn’t affect its overall standing in post hierarchy, pretty sure this is how reddit used to be about a decade ago.

      • @bugEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        I’d like to see what it’s like the other way, you never see any of the upvote or downvote scores so you don’t get influenced by the hive mind (but you still see the popular comments sooner, and can filter out the mass-downvoted)

        • Lionir [he/him]English
          2•1 year ago

          You can actually do that. In your settings on Lemmy, you can disable “Show scores”.