a small difference, but important to how people use the site
Horrible idea. No one sees this button, no one knows what it does, and upvotes definitely should have that effect.
Yea, i’m working on my own Fedi software and i’m struggling with the point of boosting in the link aggregator context. It’s an odd overlap with Reddit-style reposting to appropriate subs, but based on the user.
It makes sense in the Twitter UX, but i struggle to find it’s place in the Reddit UX.
Boosting is super important in all contexts in the Fediverse.
When am instance subscribes to a content source - be that a user actor or a group actor - on behalf of a user, it only requests future content. Back catalogues are not fetched by default. Boosting re-publishes the content, so that it is received by new followers.
With a group actor, the boost triggers the actor to reboot the content itself, sending it out to new subscribers to the group, and filling in that back catalogue.
if old content isnt fetched for a newly subscribed instance to see, how are users going to boost that content in the first place?
i disagree, it’s a great functionality that people should learn… and here’s the simple point… you can BOOST a comment you disagree with, so that your argument AGAINST the comment will get more visibility… reddit is dysfunctional, and this mechanism can help fix one of the problems reddit cannot get rid of… this mechanism can help discussion, and fight against things like brigading…
think about it a minute… someone makes a really TERRIBLE point that you can dismantle easily… tear it down, and BOOST the hell out of it… reddit cannot accommodate that… keeping those two functions separate is critical…
this will help keep every thread from becoming a popularity contest that is entirely predictable, once people figure it out
edit to add: i’ve only been using this platform for a few days… but i promise you, it works the way it’s supposed to… try it out…
They’re not redundant functions. They’re… Mixed up on kbin right now, because things were originally built with the up button boosting content, but that’s incongruent with how Lemmy does it, so it was changed.
But boosting isn’t really about sorting at all. It’s about republishing content, so that it can be sent out to instances that have started following a group after the content was originally posted.
I believe it is more akin to ‘re-tweeting’ for your followers.
All boosts you boost are not private and everyone can see everything you have boosted
