Ok, I get it: the majority of users on Lemmy are browsing by “all”, which puts a lot of content on their feeds that they are not interested in. I’ve already got in many arguments to try to explain this is kind of absurd and everyone would be better off if they went to curate the communities they are interested in. But I also understand that this feels a bit like saying “you are holding it wrong”.
But can we at least agree to a guideline to not downvote things in communities you are not an active participant, or at least a subscriber? Using downvotes to express “I don’t like this”, “I don’t care about this”, or “I disagree with this” is harmful to the overall system. It’s not just because you don’t like a particular topic that you should vote it down, because it makes it harder for the people that do care about it to find the post.
Downvotes should be used as a way for us to collective filter out “bad” content, but what constitutes “bad” content is dependent on the context and values of the community. If you are not part of the community in question, then you are just using up/down votes as a way to amplify/silence the voice of majority/minority. By downvoting in communities you don’t participate, you end up harming the potential of smaller communities to grow, and everyone’s feed gets dominated only by the popular/lowest-common-denominator type of content.
Instead of downvoting, a better set of guidelines would be:
- If you don’t care about the post, leave it alone.
- If you don’t want to see content from a specific community, just block it.
- If the content is actual spam and/or not according to the rules of the community, report it.
Another thing: don’t forget that votes are public. Lemmy UI has a very handy feature for moderators that shows everyone who upvotes/downvotes any post or comment. I’m tired of posting content to different communities and be met of a pour of non-subscribers on the downvote side. Yeah, I think we should make some improvements in the software side to have a more flexible rule system for scoring downvotes, but until such a thing does not exist, I’m seriously considering creating a “Clueless Downvoters Wall of Shame” community to mention every user that I see downvoting without a strong reason for it.
I downvote and upvote whatever I wanna 🤷. Deal with it
The fact that this post get as much ↓s as ↑s strengthens OPs whole argument.
How does getting ratio’d strengthen the OP’s argument? It just shows how controversial it is, which diminishes the support for what’s being suggested.
Me: Downvoting for disagreeing and not being interested in the content is a bad behavior inherited from Reddit and the recommendation engines. It should be used in the proper context.
Them: I disagree. Downvote should be used for disagreement. Take my downvote without any context. Goodbye.
If you look at the people commenting, though, you will see how mostly those arguing in favor, explaining why it is bad. There is a tiny group that saying “Yeah, I downvote when I disagree, but only on <specific context>”. But the large majority of drive-by downvoters are doing just that: sticking their fingers in their ears and trying to push their opinion down.
If I can see it and I view it as bad content it’s getting downvoted. Especially since such content usually is inflammatory political post from niche politic subs that have no problem espousing their politics in a “either you agree with us 100% or you’re wrong/the enemy”. The rest of the time it’s weird fetish porn.
I browse by all because it’s a good way to see communities/content I wouldn’t otherwise see if I stuck to a curated community list. Not being part of the community doesn’t matter because I’m still seeing the content and still behaving consistent with using the downvote button to collectively filter it out.
I think a better option is these communities opting for the post not to get sent to all. Which won’t happen because a lot of previously mentioned post; the target isn’t the community who already likely agree with them, it’s everyone else. Better yet these communities could implement rules against post that are clearly inflammatory/flaming but then where would they grandstand?
People drive by down vote pictures of my friends and my cooking pics for my discord server and every post starts at -2 for literally no reason. It is neither of your examples. It is because people don’t like vegans and want to shit on us. Many of the comments are people saying rude shit and definitely not reading or caring about the rules.
Where are your mods? Mods can see obviously the comments but also downvotes and investigate repeat downvoters
I can? I have no idea, I don’t think so that is only the instance owners
i think anyone can query it, but it may not be in the interface.
Hm, that may be the instance owners only, I know I have a “View Votes” option, but I’m an admin. Would be a good thing for mods if they don’t, I know my communities get a lot of trolling and I keep tabs on them.
Interesting, thanks for that and what you do to make the fediverse a success!
I really would like to migrate my communities to my own instance now that I understand how this all works. I think the big change of understanding is that no single instance is reddit replacement but that the communities are subreddit replacements and it would be better to have communities on small well maintained instances all federated with each other than having a massive instance like .world. I’m grateful for Ruud and his team for setting it all up and am not criticizing anyone, just how I understand the architecture to work best.
That’s exactly what I thought too, that’s why my instance is
poptalk.scrubbles.tech, on Reddit we had several communitise based around pop music and I figured rather than just spamming .world and .ml with them that it’d be better to have an instance around them (especially because of the trolling around these communities). Plus with federation then it’s just easier, if X defeds from Y I’m out of the drama because I can fed/defed from anyone I want.
Yeah that does suck but unfortunately people using downvote as a disagree button was a problem on reddit despite the guidelines against doing so. So the same people would likely ignore OPs suggested guideline too. Again, I wouldn’t consider that bad content and not in the criteria for my prior post. Though it does make me wonder if lemmy has implemented vote fuzzing if it’s getting downvotes that quickly? Most likely people are just dicks though. My previous partner was a vegan so I am unfortunately familiar with people getting offended by them just existing.
Yeah I’m just saying the issue is for more than political content. If I ran an instance I wouldn’t use or federate down votes and that would be my personal solution. I’m working on that as we speak.
Fair, my point was not everyone downvoting things when they aren’t in a community is because they don’t like it. Good news, some instances have implemented “show upvotes only” so the displayed count is unaffected by downvotes. So you’ve already got a means/precedent to do so.
Sorry to hear that
I put some examples on another comment: I’m talking about the most inane, sports-related posts.
Also, if you think that your policing is going to help the other communities you think are “bad”, then why not just block the posters or the whole community and solve the problem once and for all?
Perhaps it’s because they think there are too many of them in the all feed?
This is a guess, I don’t use the all feeds so I haven’t seen any of them.
Perhaps it’s because they think there are too many of them in the all feed?
That’s not the fault of the all feed. That’s the fault of the user for either not subscribinng to communities they are interested in or not blocking communities they are disinterested in.
Either people browse by all because there is not enough content in the communities to follow, or there is already “too many” of the things that they don’t want to follow on all, and they should start curating their feed by browsing their subscribed communities.
Which is it? You can not have it both ways.
You are trying to enforce rationality on inherently irrational humans. It’s not going to work.
It’s even worse, because I’m not enforcing anything. I can not enforce it. I am saying “The current way of doing things seems bad. How about trying something different?” and instead of trying to take a look, people are responding by doing exactly the bad things that they deny to exist.
I don’t view inane content as bad. So that rules me out for that case.
Me using functionality of a website in its intended fashion isn’t “policing”. I usually do that afterwards if it’s bad enough but usually a sub has to have a pattern of doing it before I filter it. I know sport subs that were just match/race titled would cop downvotes on reddit, which again sounds like an issues better addressed by the community it’s being posted too.
Look, I’m upvoting you here because you are at least trying to have an open conversation about the post. I don’t even necessarily agree with you, but I don’t think your post is something that should be silenced or pushed away from view of other people.
On the other hand, you:
- downvoted this post
- started your argument based on an incorrect assumption.
- accepted that some people end up misusing the voting system
- did not retract your downvote
Do you see the problem here?
I appreciate the first part of your comment and the overall candour. However:
- Which post? Because I only downvoted the OP because you essentially imply all people downvoting content In communities they aren’t in are doing so because they just don’t like it. I’m asserting people sometimes do with reason, like the flaming I mention. Also the OP isn’t really asking a question(imo), it’s stating your views with the question in the title as a means to do so. The rest, even you disagreeing with me I have not.
- What assumption? My initial reply is explaining why people may downvote content when they aren’t in the community in cases outside the ones you’ve provided.
- I don’t see how this is worth mentioning that I accept the reality that people don’t use vote mechanisms as they’re intended? Edit: if this is in regards my sports post on reddit remark that was me essentially saying “yeah sometime people don’t use it correctly which sucks” not “deal with it”. Though again said communities could avoid it by not allowing post that are just match titles etc.
- Why would I when my issues with the OP still stand? Edit 2:
- Definitely not advocating for downvoting content you just don’t like. For me content I don’t like doesn’t means it’s inherently “bad”. Bad for me means inflammatory, trolling, rule breaking, low effort etc.
- The one vote against OP is offset by my upvotes of your other comments and engagement with the post; and is likely weighing it up more than down at this point.
So you are downvoting because you disagree with something, or because you don’t like how I phrased it.
You really don’t see that is exactly (part of) the problem I am describing?
My point is: the votes on a post are not a poll. Downvoting the post does not work as a way to signal you object to the content. By downvoting my post, you are just trying to silence this conversation down and make it harder to reach other people that might be interested in it.
I mean if you want me to be specific then unfortunately I can do so. It’s more than I just disagree with you. It’s that I think your reasoning in the OP is very flawed and misrepresents the situation you are attempting to portray. Which felt dishonest initially but given your attempts to engage people who disagree I now assume misguided, sorry to say. Also I think people stating their views under the pretence of a question should be discouraged due to proximity behaviours like concern trolling (not implying that’s what you’ve been doing, just an example). Lastly, I super strongly oppose being shown content on a site like this that I can’t interact with. For your case it may make sense but I can super easily see it being abused by the cases in my example; where people can grandstand shitty politics(again as an example) but then the onus is on me for some reason to not engage with said content.
I’m a proposing a guideline, not a law. I don’t want to forbid you from doing anything. I’m just saying “hey, Lemmy doesn’t have any type of recommendation engine based on your voting history, so maybe consider the context of the community where the post is coming from before voting on whatever it is?”
If you think that you are gaining anything by voting “shitty politics”, ok. You do you. But when there are people saying “our non-english community has a bunch of downvotes from english-speaking people”, and you understand that this might be an issue, perhaps it would be a nice gesture if you voted this up to help this message reach others?
I think a better option is these communities opting for the post not to get sent to all.
Is this even an option? If it is, it must be fairly hidden. I’ve certainly never been prompted to not send a post to /all when creating a post.
I also don’t think this is a good solution, as it would further stifle the growth of small communities.
Users do users because humans do humans. The only way to change how humans use the software is by changing the software. Trying to instead change the humans is sure to fail.
Yeah, maybe a big ignore community button could do.
There is such a thing as “culture” as well. Agree that the software can make it easier or harder to tips the scales one way or another, but it’s not like people are unable of learning something just because it’s not the default setting.
A little before I started using Reddit, my mate who told me about it said upvoting was used as a means of promoting posts or replies that people may be interested in, not because you like or dislike a post or reply.
I think Facebook has changed that and I will admit I will thumbs up a post/reply because I like it, but I will also upvote posts I think other users may be interested in.
A little before I started using Reddit, my mate who told me about it said upvoting was used as a means of promoting posts or replies that people may be interested in, not because you like or dislike a post or reply.
Yeah in theory it was about promoting content that you felt was a “good link to share” and was “good content”. Not about your personal feelings on it. Never quite worked that way of course, but eh.
Yeah, it’s definitely shifted that way. I just use them both interchangeably.
With your great suggestion, i got an idea for lemmy software : why not activate vote only to subscribed community ? You haven’t subscribed, you can’t vote. But you can hide /filter the community.
The frontpage also need a rework because when you cross-post it flood thus people tend to downvote those posts. And lot other things.
it’s pretty clear reading this thread that different folk have different ideas about what or how downvotes should be used. what is intented behavior for one is wrong for another. i doubt that even clearly defined rules would change that as they woud be essentually the same thing - someone’s opinion on how it should work. plus different instances have different rules.
bruh you literally are advocating for echo chambers
For me, downvoting posts means either “this post is not appropriate for this community” or “this post is not appropriate for the ‘all’ view.”
If the community is not relevant to my interests, I just block the community.
Edit: actually, after reading your post, I amend my earlier list. I also downvote posts if the author is an arrogant cock nugget.
You don’t know whether someone has a good reason for downvoting or not, and every time you think you do know, you’re making yourself a little dumber.
From the title alone i agree completely with you i just don’t have the patience to read the body.
What if upvoting and downvoting IS an active method of participating in those communities?
This assumes that people who are interested in a community are subscribers, which isn’t always the case. Users like me who subscribe to RSS feeds for communities, for example. This also doesnt account for people who might create a new or alt account. Wouldn’t they have to resubscribe to every community just to get their votes counted?
Users like me who subscribe to RSS feeds for communities, for example.
If you are using RSS, you are just lurking, then you wouldn’t get to vote.
Wouldn’t they have to resubscribe to every community just to get their votes counted?
Migrating accounts should not be difficult and there are already tools that can “port” your subscriptions.
If you are using RSS, you are just lurking, then you wouldn’t get to vote.
Sorry but the assumption that people using Lemmy RSS feeds are just lurking and not actively participating comes off as a little naive.
In fact, the whole post makes a lot of assumptions that I dont think are accurate, which makes it difficult to wrap my head around whether a solution is necessary or if this is really a problem to begin with.
the whole post makes a lot of assumptions
Ok, let’s talk about it then: I’ve noticed that almost every post that I make on any smaller communities that I’m trying to bootstrap is met with 2-3 downvotes after a few minutes.
Why is this happening?
- Is the content bad? No, I’m posting news links that are completely related to the topic of the community. Emacs tutorials on the emacs community, NFL news on the nfl community, basketball, TV shows on their shows, etc.
- Is it because the intended audience is not interested in the post? No, the people downvoting are not subscribers. Eventually, the (few) subscribers that are still around do vote it up.
- Is it because I’m violating some instance rule? No, because I’m posting the content in topic-specific instances. Except the Emacs community, all the others community are on the set of topic-specific instances I created.
- Is it a personal attack? No, the people downvoting are not the same. I’m just noticing that while the post will be downvoted by random people until it is “new” and likely to be in the “all” page.
So, the “lots of assumptions I’m making” can be summed up as: posts are getting downvoted by (a) non-subscribers (b) who browse by all and © think that downvoting is going to help with curating their feed.
difficult to wrap my head around whether a solution is necessary.
It’s not the end of the world, and it’s not a hugely complex problem. I was just hoping to get people aware that this “downvoting anything that is not interesting to me” behavior is learned from Reddit (and other Social media sites) and do not translate as well to a place that is so much smaller and has no filter bubble.
I’m not surprised that so many people are acting like I called their baby ugly or something. I know that most people take this learned behavior as the “natural way” of doing things, so I was expecting some pushback. I’m just finding a bit ironic that so many people did nothing but pile on my comments and downvote everything without any further thought.
I’m sorry, but I will continue to downvote exactly one post in every stupid anime community right before I block it. We don’t need a separate community for every single anime ever made clogging everyone’s feed with boring pictures of characters.
My single downvote in each community is helping to shape Lemmy as a whole, and I’m certain it’s very effective at doing so. It’s definitely not just a childish tantrum. No, sir!
I’m gunna down vote this
I downvote anyone who is weirdly obsessed with controlling other peoples upvote/downvote behavior.
And I downvote anyone who reads any post and assumes malicious intent and tries to grandstand before looking for common ground.
This is not about telling people what they should vote on, it’s about trying to make the system work better for everyone.
Perhaps I misunderstood your intent. So youre trying to control other peoples behavior but its for their own good because theyre too naive to know whats best for themselves and you know better what is right for them. Now that I understand youre in fact a savior with good intent I retract my former criticism. Youre far too clever for all these fools you must suffer surrounding you but yet you soldier on educating the unwashed masses on how to live “right”. Carry on brave warrior. I would suggest you read up on another brave warrior philosopher in your lineage. He is written about in “the legend of narcissus”
The only fool that I am suffering is you. Lucky for me, I can solve that right away…
You seem fun.
