• MyBrainHurts@lemmy.caEnglish
    272·
    6 days ago

    I think people often use /all to browse, which makes sense for a fairly small site like Lemmy. But the downside is that people then upvote or downvote based on their preferences, not the community’s.

    (Eg, the fellow below who has decided Apple and Nintendo are like Nazis and must always be downvoted.)

    • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1010·
      6 days ago

      But the downside is that people then upvote or downvote based on their preferences, not the community’s.

      This is only a downside for niche communites promoting positive topics like equality. Communities about for profit companies, that promote horrible ideas and people, etc are what downvotes are for.

      If there was a community called “Nestlé is awesome” I would hope it gets downvoted into oblivion.

      • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.caEnglish
        195·
        6 days ago

        I don’t like linux, should I downvote all linux stuff? Does that make the fediverse better?

        • subignition@fedia.io
          10·
          6 days ago

          There are various philosophies about how fediverse participation should work. Some would say you should block a community you don’t like (but that is not harmful) rather than downvoting its posts (because downvoting is supposed to be a signal that the content doesn’t belong on the community where it’s posted)

          Others vote on posts regardless of their communities, preferring to try to curate the fediverse at large rather than their own feeds

          • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            51·
            5 days ago

            preferring to try to curate the fediverse at large

            In my opinion, it is presumptuous and arrogant to attempt to curate the fediverse at large according to one’s own preferences.

            • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              5 days ago

              It is arrogant to think the context of a community overrides anyone’s personal preferences on how to interact with the voting system.

              • subignition@fedia.io
                3·
                4 days ago

                I think there’s an argument to be made though, that if you’re a person who browses the “all” feed rather than subscriptions or individual communities, that there’s a point where you should block a particular community you don’t want to see rather than continuously downvoting it. When the content isn’t harmful but you merely dislike it, it seems reasonable to expect the user to curate their experience at least a little.

                • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  4 days ago

                  There is also an argument that expecting everyone to agree with and follow the unwritten rules of ‘voting correctly’ is just a vocal minority trying to impose their will on all users.

                  Generally I limit to subs but browse All occasionally to find new communities. Part of this process is upvoting and down voting stuff and seeing which communities has more stuff I want and less stuff I thought was worth downvoting. I then sub or block after that point.

                  That is how I notice spammed slop as part of blocking a community. No, I won’t be going back to remove down votes before blocking just because the community is about spamming slop and the posts fit the sub. Harm isn’t a down voting requirement.

        • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
          65·
          6 days ago

          Sure, go for it. I literally do not care how people use single accounts to vote on any topic.

          When they use multiple accounts, yeah that is clearly terrible because they are artificially inflating their votes.

          • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.caEnglish
            75·
            6 days ago

            Weird thread to be commenting on if you literally don’t care but you do you!

            I personally think this sort of stuff helps keep the fediverse from being awesome but you do you!

            • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
              44·
              6 days ago

              I care about voting freely, not the actual vote results.

              I upvote a shit ton of stuff which makes it more visible. That helps the fediverse. The shitty posts and comments that I downvote are what I see keeping the fediverse from being awesome.

              • MyBrainHurts@lemmy.caEnglish
                65·
                6 days ago

                Except, and I’m stunned this is a surprise to some but here we are, not everyone agrees on what’s awesome and what’s shitty.

                So, in OP’s case, the people who come here to talk about the nintendo games and then decide to take the plunge and post something are met with downvotes for having the audacity to post in a harmless community that others don’t like.

                It’s lame and makes the fediverse less fun for folks, which is poison for somewhere that depends on network effects.

  • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    231·
    6 days ago

    Does it stay in the Apple and Nintendo communities or does it get cross-posted everywhere? I don’t downvote for dislike, but I don’t want to block a general community because some asshat is crossposting just under spam levels.

    I downvote for verifiably false.

    • Nightwatch Admin@feddit.nlEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      Same. I see upvotes, upvotes everywhere!
      Even if Apple/Nintendo are completely different, that’s still not quite the entire fediverse, right?

    • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      verifiably false

      Can you provide a link to show that? I went looking but the cross-posts that I saw were in !Apple@lemmy.world and !Apple@lemmy.zip. Since both have “Apple” in the name, that does not seem entirely like spam to me - unless you mean the content is low quality?

      • Oni_eyes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        6 days ago

        I meant that’s how I personally downvote. I don’t subscribe to either Apple or Nintendo communities but I do see the cross posting spam in other communities and suggested it as a possible reason other people are downvoting.

        • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
          3·
          6 days ago

          Thank you for the explanation - upvoting btw (unless you cross-post your explanation where it does not belong, then I guess we should downvote it? :-P)

  • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
    201·
    6 days ago

    A good chunk of active Lemmy users are interested in open source and digital freedom. Apple and Nintendo are the opposite, very big on vendor lockin and anti consumer practices.

    • misk@piefed.socialEnglish
      62·
      6 days ago

      Valve is exempt from this for some reason however. It’s more like stereotypical basement dwellers treat this like a game where you win by accumulating more imaginary internet points. This kind of tribal behaviour is why threadiverse seems to be failing but at least some people get to feel superior to others in the meantime.

      • BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Valve isn’t perfect but they’ve gotten a lot of community good will by not being shitty and vindictive. Nintendo has been just really shitty to their own fans for a long time, with unnecessary litigation and criminal prosecution.

        I do agree that tribalism is pretty extreme within the fediverse, but I also don’t think that’s anything new for any small internet community.

      • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        6 days ago

        There are plenty of reasons to be shitty at valve but my understanding is the steam deck is modable without breaking warranty

  • chromodynamic@piefed.socialEnglish
    161·
    6 days ago

    Upvotes/downvotes are unfortunately a fundamentally flawed concept. They originally served as an superior alternative to forums’ previous sorting method of most-recently commented, but they are far from flawless themselves.

    My ideal alternative would be some kind of customisable sort order chosen by the user that uses some kind of sentiment analysis of the text to find the kind of posts the user is interested in. For example, you could sort by whether post look serious or joking, how long they are, ratio of words to hyperlinks, etc. Could also filter out ragebait and similar rubbish.

    Of course I can see downsides - performance considerations, and it would only work for text posts and comments, but it’s just an idea off the top of my head.

  • threeonefour@piefed.caEnglish
    174·
    6 days ago

    Not just fediverse, I think any site that allows “downvotes” has this issue.

    Personally, I don’t see why the ability to downvote needs to exist. If someone is trolling, ignore it or report it. A troll post with a score of 1 and no comments is better than one with a score of -100 and no comments. The downvotes probably encourages the troll. They know they’ve upset a bunch of people. All their posts getting no interaction will bore them.

    On the other hand, downvotes existing leads to things being hated on for no reason. Someone on asklemmy asks what your favourite pizza topping is and the top comment is pepperoni with a score of 100 and bottom is sardines with a score of -50. You see that and think nobody likes sardines. But what if taking away downvotes changes the scores to 100 pepperoni and 12 sardines. Now sardines isn’t looking so bad even though the number of people who like it hasn’t changed. What does the downvoting add? It just makes the people who like sardines feel bad. They might end up not contributing in the future and then every answer to asklemmy ends up being identical.

    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzEnglish
      10·
      6 days ago

      Downvotes are useful to make bad content sink. Without them, the bad content has the exact same score as fresh new content, content that failed the Fluff Principle, etc. And you do want the bad content to sink; if you don’t reduce its visibility, some clueless muppet is bound to interact with it, usually generating more bad content.

      That’s why I’m not sure if the best solution is to outright remove downvotes. It feels to me like throwing the baby out with the dirty water.

      Instead I feel like splitting its role into 2+ buttons might alleviate the issue. Perhaps a simple “disagree” button, or a more complex Slashdot-like system, dunno. Either way, giving people way to say “I disagree!” without interfering on the main purpose of the button - sorting content.

      This could also solve another issue with downvotes I don’t see people mentioning often: you’re often downvoted without knowing why.

      Someone on asklemmy asks what your favourite pizza topping is and the top comment is pepperoni with a score of 100 and bottom is sardines with a score of -50. You see that and think nobody likes sardines. But what if taking away downvotes changes the scores to 100 pepperoni and 12 sardines.

      At least in the default interface, the sardines comment would show +12 -62, so you know at least 11 people upvoted it.

      • misk@piefed.socialEnglish
        61·
        6 days ago

        If we’re using votes to rank content then downvotes are redundant because now you have to upvote „right” stuff and downvote „wrong” stuff. Assuming everyone is waging the same kind of information warfare then downvotes won’t anything… but we’re not. Those that downvote willy nilly just want to have more say in things than others who don’t have energy to religiously clean website from „wrong” content. You’re not responsible for safeguarding users from „wrong” content unless you’re reporting rule breaking one. If you don’t like what’s being said but it doesn’t break rules then reply and explain why is it wrong, let others upvote if they agree.

        Tildes solved this already. They have regular upvotes and they have labels for offtopic/noise/malice. Being able to use labels is reserved to users with good standing and can be applied once only. Noise downranks things without removing them, malice is essentially same as reporting them. Notably, there is no label for „wrong”.

        • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzEnglish
          3·
          5 days ago

          downvotes are redundant

          In practice they are redundant because most people vote based on opinion, so both become the same (agreement gauge). However ideally they aren’t redundant; upvotes are to be given to things that stand out, and downvotes to things that detract from the discussion (noise, trolling, etc.)

          Those that downvote willy nilly just want to have more say in things than others who don’t have energy to religiously clean website from „wrong” content.

          Some see this as an abuse of the system, not as its normal usage. I’m not sure on the dividing line between both things, though.

          If you [=anyone] don’t like what’s being said but it doesn’t break rules then reply and explain why is it wrong, let others upvote if they agree.

          The problem with that is Brandolini’s Law: even if we ignore “intention” (whatever this means), it takes far more effort to address bullshit, assumptions, oversimplifications, “ur sayin dat cuz ur…” etc. than to come up with it. And if it takes too much effort, people won’t do it.

          As such, a system can’t rely solely on replies to let users show each other “hey, this post/comment is bad”.

          You can rely on stricter moderation; but that comes with additional costs.

          Tildes solved this already.

          Incidentally my proposal to fix downvotes isn’t too different in spirit from what Tildes do.

          So, people want to up/downvote based on opinion, right? Let them do it. But give people other ways to quickly show some piece of content is bad, and why. Effectively splitting the downvote button.

      • threeonefour@piefed.caEnglish
        51·
        6 days ago

        Downvotes are useful to make bad content sink. Without them, the bad content has the exact same score as fresh new content, content that failed the Fluff Principle, etc

        I don’t see how downvotes help filter content. It makes sense at first, but either people are sorting content by New, in which case votes do not matter, or they are sorting by Top and will get only the “good” content. Several instances already have downvotes disabled. I don’t see any complaints from their users about “bad” content having the same scores as “good” content.

        lemmynsfw had to disable downvotes because gay content posted in gay communities was being downvoted. It wasn’t being downvoted for quality, but for not being what the majority of users wanted to see. That doesn’t mean all users now have to see gay content they don’t like because they can’t downvote it. It’s still easy to filter using the block feature. Again, I’ve never seen users there complaining about being unable to filter good from bad because they can’t downvote.

        if you don’t reduce its visibility, some clueless muppet is bound to interact with it, usually generating more bad content.

        I’ve seen posts and comments with -100 votes often get lots of interaction from people who can’t stop themselves from arguing with a troll. Sometimes there’s only 1 or 2 comments under a post so the score doesn’t even change its visibility at all.

        Either way, giving people way to say “I disagree!” without interfering on the main purpose of the button - sorting content.

        The way to say “I disagree!” is with the reply button! Votes don’t prove who is right and who is wrong. I’ve never changed my opinion because of downvotes. Sometimes I even agree with a downvoted comment because I form my opinion based on arguments, not votes.

        I also like seeing different opinions. Yours gave me a lot to think about! It’d be a shame if people didn’t post their thoughts because they feared being downvoted for it.

        • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyzEnglish
          21·
          5 days ago

          I don’t see how downvotes help filter content. It makes sense at first, but either people are sorting content by New, in which case votes do not matter, or they are sorting by Top and will get only the “good” content.

          Think quantitatively. Ideally “meh” content should still be easier to see than the bad one.

          lemmynsfw

          In their situation (as admins of an instance where downvotes were consistently misused), I agree with their decision. However I still think something needs to be done on a software level.

          Again, I’ve never seen users there complaining about being unable to filter good from bad because they can’t downvote.

          Note this is prone to selection bias.

          I’ve seen posts and comments with -100 votes often get lots of interaction from people who can’t stop themselves from arguing with a troll. Sometimes there’s only 1 or 2 comments under a post so the score doesn’t even change its visibility at all.

          If it wasn’t downvoted, you probably would’ve seen way more interaction with it.

          (Additionally I think people who argue with trolls should get 1d~3d bans. Just a “stop it, you baka!”. Including myself. But that’s an aside.)

          The way to say “I disagree!” is with the reply button!

          I mentioned this in the other comment, but basically: if the reason you disagree is due to some issue in the content (e.g. it’s an oversimplification, assumption, or plain bullshit), it takes more effort to address it in your reply than to generate that content with the issue. As such a quick-and-dirty way to voice “hey, something wrong with this” is necessary, even if some people abuse it.

  • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
    111·
    6 days ago

    I worked at a site with a karma system years before reddit and the like ever came into being. There will always be people who just downvote anything they don’t like. Unless you start finding and removing those users, nothing is going to change with them. And if you start removing chunks of your community, you have fewer posters, less interaction, etc.

  • marcos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    6 days ago

    Yes, it’s typical.

    Votes don’t mean much, but communities that deviate from the main spirit have to live with them. (And yes, that’s mostly bad, even though in a few cases it’s good.)

      • marcos@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Yes, they can. But that’s quite a lot of permanent work. Lots of people interact with the content here without even looking where it is.

        I have only seen the “bad” unaligned communities doing that. The ones that actually have interesting stuff seem to just live with the votes.

        • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
          61·
          6 days ago

          I don’t mean ban every downvoter, but ban repeat downvoters. People who are clearly downvoting most things posted without any pattern.

          • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            3 days ago

            That requires the effort of either writing or at least running a bot to perform that action, or PieFed can prevent the downvoting before it happens. e.g. Blaze shared this screenshot elsewhere in this OP:

            img

            • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
              1·
              3 days ago

              That only impacts communities on Piefed locally. So people unsubscribed from other instances, etc could still downvote and harm a posts visibility across the fediverse.

              In any case, I personally haven’t identified post downvoting on the whole to be that much of an issue that it is impossible to not notice repeat downvoters by just checking posts a few times a day for a week. Not many people do it.

              Obviously if you are running a controversial community it might be different.

              • OpenStars@piefed.socialEnglish
                1·
                2 days ago

                So people unsubscribed from other instances, etc could still downvote and harm a posts visibility across the fediverse.

                Are you absolutely certain of that - that is not what the feature description seems to indicate? If true, that sounds like a bug request should be submitted, either to fix the feature itself or at least the description to match, although I do not moderate any communities on PieFed so I lack personal experience with this and will have to leave it to you who knows.

                I would have naively guessed that it would be trivially easy for PieFed to know which users were subscribed to a community vs. not, but maybe it’s in an inaccessible form or something.

                • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
                  2·
                  2 days ago

                  Are you absolutely certain of that - that is not what the feature description seems to indicate?

                  Piefed can’t control lemmy instances like that. I don’t know if it crosses over Piefed instances (I’ll ask rimu later) but I can’t see why it would work on lemmy instances. Similarly lemmy.blahaj blocks all downvotes, but it can’t stop people outside of lemmy.blahaj from downvoting posts from lemmy.blahaj. People still see downvotes on lemmy.blahaj communities if they’re looking at them from lemmy.world. It just means that from a lemmy.blahaj user’s perspective, there are no downvotes on anything.

                  I would have naively guessed that it would be trivially easy for PieFed to know which users were subscribed to a community vs. not, but maybe it’s in an inaccessible form or something.

                  Yeah, Piefed can read this - but it can only control the downvotes on its own instance.

  • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    144·
    6 days ago

    If you’re modding a small community trying to get off the ground and you’re suffering from downvoters who aren’t participants in your comm, ban the downvoters.

    Edit: Hilarious that I got downvoted by an account with 0 comments

    • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
      61·
      5 days ago

      If you’re moderating a small community, downvotes can bury posts and hurt its growth.