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.
Commenting merely boosts activity on a post… Exact opposite of what you’d want.
Why is that the exact opposite of what you want?
If there’s something objectionable in a rule breaking way, report. Otherwise, this seems like you literally just don’t want to have discussions, which is certainly your prerogative but then what exactly are you getting out of this?
Here’s an excellent example… Nothing against the rules in the comment, but it’s off-topic and, frankly, insane. It should get pushed towards the negative and hidden. https://kbin.social/m/worldnews/t/53687/-/comment/229302
I get you, altho that I’d just report.
If we took a less spammy/insane thing for example though, like just a low quality post, I understand that. Not objectionable enough to report, and no utility in responding because it’s just noise and you’d just increase the noise. And there is utility in getting rid of it (or at least deemphasizing it) because it gives space to actual discussions.
I think that’s a reasonable use case for downvotes. It’s definitely not the only way they are used (e.g. disagree button), but valid anyway. There are other mechanisms to sort this way too (e.g. number of likes + age of comment, so old comments with no/few likes sink - new junk still sits at the surface for a bit tho, possibly longer than if downvotes could drop em). But worth more thought for sure.
This, tbh.
If you see something racist or objectionable or maybe it just hurts your fee-fees because the post pointed out you take life advice from your imaginary friend in the sky… doesn’t matter. Sometimes you don’t want to give the effort of a response
It’d be as stupid as taking away the ‘upvote’ button, as well, and then saying “well content will promote based on activity! If it wasn’t worth a comment or response, why are you bitching about it in the first place?”