Agreed. I can see this being more harmful than helpful.
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
35 points (97.3% liked)
/kbin meta
5 readers
2 users here now
Magazine dedicated to discussions about the kbin itself. Provide feedback, ask questions, suggest improvements, and engage in conversations related to the platform organization, policies, features, and community dynamics. ---- * Roadmap 2023 * m/kbinDevlog * m/kbinDesign
founded 1 year ago
Slightly off-topic, but I don't think downvotes should be a thing at all. Silences minority opinions by lessening their visibility and discouraging further discussion even when they're correct. People also tend to not respond to those comments/posts in good faith, as if the downvotes prove them wrong. Turns the place into an echo chamber.
Taking out downvotes would allow for less popular opinions to have higher visibility and discussion since the majority can't just downvote it, just because they slightly disagree with it or are biased against it, and silence discussion.
People who do agree would also be able to show it through upvotes, and it wouldn't be eaten up by the downvotes.
Spam, hateful and rule-breaking comments/posts would just be reported instead. As is the case for some Lemmy instances already.
I don't think that it's off topic at all, in the contrary. If you analyse the situation described by the OP, the issue is not the fact that our actions are transparents, the issue is due to the consequence of downvoting a post and how this action made another person feel and how they acted on this feeling.
Downvoting is not a constructive tool and should be abolished. It's not a matter of the users not using it the right way, it's a matter of psychological behaviour.
We should design tools that help us to bring the best in us, not the worst. We are not here on a commercial platform who need to hook us with dopamine shot, and trigger us on engaging by frustrating us. We need to build things differently. Federating servers is great but not enough.
I think that an option to be able to remove the display of the downvote tool and downvote count should be available in the settings. I would like to abolish it all together but I'm not interested to impose this on other users, so bring me an opt out please.
what do you think @ernest? let's change this paradigm and build another better tool?
Agreed. Downvotes were never used in the intended way and just turned into "I disagree with this".
load more comments
(1 replies)
@billothekid2 I just thought of another aspect.
On reddit about 8 years ago there was a bunch of discussion of how people were running automated scripts to downvote everything by people they didn't like or whatever.
And reddit had to build in a safeguard so those automated script downvotes no longer counted. Those kinds of shenannigans would be much easier to spot in kbin's current system.
I for one would like to see a minimum ratio of upvotes to downvotes as a measure to mitigate abuse. That is to say you "earn" a down vote for each upvote you cast.
Additionally I think the ratio of downvotes to upvotes you give should be public on your profile, and an admin tool should be available to Magazine administrators to block voting, posting new threads, etc. Based on a user's vote ratio.
This is a behavioral problem with clear mechanical fixes.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Name and shame, otherwise your post here is as worthless as the troll who spent the time and effort to troll you.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I think the significance of votes expires after “generally positive/negative reception”. One or two downvotes seems insignificant.
I thought this was a good point, so I upvoted it. Now you have two upvotes.
I'm rethinking my decision...
You’re more than welcome to, my friend. It’s your vote to do with as you please.
Happens on reddit anyway. Even though people can’t see who downvoted them, they guess. Or someone (or a brigade) mass downvotes not because you downvoted their comment but just because they disagree with or resent your comments. Reddit avoided this by ignoring repeated downvotes from one person and on profile pages.
Personally, if there’s someone who is really abrasive or I just really disagree with and find their posts agitating or distracting, I just block them and that avoids the problem for both of us.
I have the downvote button hidden completely using the KES script because of that issue.
Reddit allowing you to hide your own up/downvotes to others is a really nice privacy feature that I wish the Fediverse in general had, but unfortunately the nature of federation doesn't make that possible unless you prevent them federating to other servers.