Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

founded 4 years ago

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I had forgotten how great it is to see the number of downvotes (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been so used to judging a post just by its popularity on reddit, but it's actually so much more useful to have an idea of the downvote ratio. I'm glad we have that here.

It was a scandal when it disappeared from YouTube, but I didn't realize it was missing from Reddit too for much longer!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Yes, servers can disable downvotes. Beehaw does that, for instance. I'm on lemmy.world which allows both. I prefer both because I think it helps silence bad faith participation with less active moderation, but I respect that some places don't want it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is there an easy way to check what the "properties" of each instance? Example

- downvote_allowed: true
- max_image_size: 500kb
- community_allowed: false
- no_mail_login: false

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm definitely on the fence about it. I agree about the bad faith participation with downvote brigading, but I also feel that having downvotes is, overall, a good way to gauge community agreement.

I think what I would like the most is a visible upvote/downvote percentage ratio. That way you could see not only the net upvotes - downvotes like on reddit, but the actual participation by the community.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

You can see it by hovering over the counter and looking at the tooltip, but yeah having both upvotes and downvotes prominently displayed could be nice as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

unfortunately, "bad faith" is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes I wish to very silently express my disapproval without alerting anyone that there has been disapproval. Everyone finds themselves holding a deeply unpopular/controversial opinion from time to time, bc the universe is a complex place. I see it more as doing my part to "slow the angry mob" when the groupthink starts to get out of control

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It also enables bad faith participation such as down-vote brigading.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

while that's true, people will always find a way to be jerks. if people can't be jerks with a downvote, they'll express their jerkitude verbally, which is certainly worse. i just wish we could move beyond the point where a downvote (or a bunch) was enough to emotionally devastate a person-- or where people feel the need to do that to others.

this is such a nice place now, but, then again, so was reddit in the beginning.