Really loving the new experiences here on Lemmy.one. But I’m seeing many subs with off-topic posts. Community downvotes will help overworked mods find and remove such posts. I understand no one likes to be downvoted but it’s a necessary tool for our community and only helps users understand and refine what and where they are to be posting their content.

  • CarrierLost
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    1 year ago

    I disagree. Initially, I thought lacking downvotes was an issue as well, but I’ve changed my thinking.

    If it’s a post or comment I disagree with, I try to reconcile WHY I disagree, and then use that to participate in the discussion, as opposed to just dropping a downvote and moving on.

    If it’s a post or comment that needs active intervention by a moderator, reporting it is the best solution anyway, not simply downvoting it.

    • sin_free_for_00_days
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      1 year ago

      Without the downvote option, i just seem to block people way more frequently. Which honestly probably works out for the best

      • NightOwl
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        1 year ago

        That’s the reason I loved RES and third party apps. Ultimate block controls. I didn’t have as terrible of a reddit experience as some people as a result, since it was curated for me.

        • sin_free_for_00_days
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          1 year ago

          It was great having a long list of topics for RES to filter out of my feed, that’s for sure.

    • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Vote counts are a great way to measure public sentiment at a glance. It’s also mostly (but not always) correlated with the quality and/or accuracy of the post. If people only judge a post based on that number, it’s a problem with the people and not the voting mechanism.

      I recently had the experience where I was looking for a squid farm design in Minecraft. A Youtube video came up that explicitly said it worked with my version. As you probably know, Youtube recently decided to hide all downvotes. But the video had a few thousand views and ~50 upvotes, so I spent 3 hours collecting the resources and building the farm in my world. And then it didn’t work at all. There wasn’t even an adjustment I could make to fix it. If I could have seen the probably 100+ downvotes, I would have known to look into it more and not waste my time and effort on that stupid design.

      • CarrierLost
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        1 year ago

        I agree with this sentiment, however wouldn’t an actual text post saying it doesn’t work with your version have been more beneficial than downvotes? I think that is a good example of why downvotes are, to me, the “lazy” option. Not having them means more direct engagement is required.

      • falcon
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        1 year ago

        I recently had the experience where I was looking for a squid farm design in Minecraft. A Youtube video

        you would never know if the downvotes are because of video quality, someone not liking the narrator’s voice (or the content creator itself). As someone else mentioned, an actual comment saying it doesn’t work on a version is way clearer

        it’s also mostly (but not always) correlated with the quality and/or accuracy of the post

        it hasn’t been my experience in quite a few communities. People will downvote things they don’t wanna hear, even if it’s the truth, or just an opinion.

        • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          You’re right that people may downvote for a variety of (possibly bad) reasons, which is why that metric shouldn’t be the only one you use. In addition to just being interesting and informative, I see overall negative sentiment as an indication that the content deserves more scrutiny. Not to discount it, but maybe verify claims that I would have otherwise taken at face value.

          Also, the process of manually reading and categorizing comments as positive or negative and then adding them up is much more labour intensive than just looking at a number. I can appreciate that there are some benefits to that approach, but I don’t think it’s worth it considering that there’s a native feature specifically for that purpose.

          • falcon
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            1 year ago

            I guess people in general prefer this way - which is probably why 99% of Lemmy instances have downvotes enabled. You can choose any one of them :)

            For me, it makes me more stressed about posting stuff, specially since you can be downvote bombed just for saying you didn’t like X book, or whatever.

            It also makes me more stressed when reading comments, for some reason. Either when I see an innocent random comment with negative points - I feel bad for the commenter - or when I end up using it as a disagree button and get more stressed. IDK why.

            So for me, not having it is way better. Otherwise I maybe wouldn’t even have created a Lemmy account, and used the “opportunity” (Reddit down in flames) to be less online - which I guess would also be a great outcome.

            TLDR: some people prefer no downvotes, but most instances allow them. Your user is already on lemmy.ml, so why do you care?

      • CarrierLost
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        1 year ago

        No. If it’s clearly a troll, spam, or advertising post I can report it and let the moderators deal with it.

        If it’s a legitimate attempt at discourse, I can participate.

        If I don’t want to participate, I can ignore it and move on.

        If it’s someone or something I don’t want to engage with that isn’t a violation of the instance rules, I can block or ignore it.

        It’s a combination of self-curating and encouraging participation to help in a growing community.

      • PapyrusOsiris@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        But spam and promotional material (where innapropriate) are worthy of a report so they can be removed, not just pushed down into obscurity.