An oldie, but a goodie
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Didn't know Lemmy has this "feature". I know mastodon does not support downvotes.
I'm nitpicking here, sorry in advanced.
You put "quotes" around "feature" as though it is a bug. My instance (the user you are responding to is also a member of Blahaj) does not support downvotes and it is one of the reasons I signed up for it. So, I do feel it is a feature and not a bug.
Here's a long explanation about why I feel that way:
I think people should be allowed to be wrong on the internet without having a huge negative number hovering over their head. If they're wrong, people should go to the comments and say why. People absolutely care about that dumb number, and to pretend they won't or shouldn't is just not how humans work.
If a comment is controversial, it's upvote/downvote will be neutral and it'll get lost. Controversial comments should be read so discussion can form around it.
If the post should be downvoted to oblivion because it's toxic or offtopic, it should be removed instead.
I feel that downvotes are only useful if the community needs to collectively use it to moderate (I'd argue it had a purpose on Youtube, before they removed it. It could be abused, but it was useful to fight misinformation or product marketing disguised as content).
Some instances allow to sort by contraversy.
Isn't showing only upvotes is default in Jerboa?
We're ultimately talking about which order comments should appear on a post. I don't think controversial sort should be default, and I don't want to read the most controversial comments all the time. I think the comments that generate the best discussion and/or are the most valuable should float to the top naturally. Ignoring down votes does this, with the added benefits of removing the possible toxic effects of down votes.
Dunno, I don't use it. Don't need to, my instance doesn't allow downvotes. If I needed to move from Blahaj for some reason, I might look into it, might not.