???
I mean there is a small part of me that feels rejected when I see downvotes. Another small part that is paranoid that someone is following me and downvoting me just out of spite. And the remainder uses it as an opportunity to reflect on what I said to see if either I could have worded it better or to rethink my position on whatever it was I wrote.
My only complaint is that people (myself included, I’ll admit) don’t always leave a comment to why they downvoted. I get it. The culture isn’t always conducive to a good faith discussion/disagreement. But it should be.
People should be safe to disagree with me. In fact, let me put it out there right now:
I will never put you down for coming at me with a good faith disagreement of opinions about anything I say.
I only downvote spam, hate, factually incorrect, and other nonconstructive content. It’s my personal opinion that the down vote is to be reserved for content that ought to be removed from the platform. A post showing effort and Goodwill is always worth the vote to me.
I would hope that moderators would police spam voting. The problem is sure to get worse in the future.
Why should you change your opinion just because people disagree? Do you trust randos on lemmy who are likely tankie trolls more than yourself to form an opinion?
Because I like to consider myself open-minded and amenable to the idea that I do not know everything, and I can be wrong on occasion. I also like to hear people out and if possible, learn something I didn’t know. Do I always change my mind? No. But if someone gives me good enough reason, I will likely look up their side of things and if necessary, reform my opinion based on new facts.
I have seen some mods ban swathes of users with excessively negative voting records, encouraging them to curate their feed instead. I think the ratios were closer to 95% downvotes than the 2:1 you suggest, but the example stands. :)
In my initial consideration of this problem I was thinking just ban the users, but that doesn’t feel like the best solution to me. I think that not allowing users to pass that 2:1 ratio in the first place is a better solution for everyone. Also, as I’m sure you understand, the exact ratio is less important than the idea of limiting downvote predominant users.
Pretty sure I was making a wording related home but I forgot what I wrote
Oh well
Edit oh I remember, it was relating how mods demand “positive” behavior, to the misogynistic phrase “smile more” normally directed at a woman, from a power wielding man trying to elicit a response
It’s funny that I got deleted while literally calling out bad behavior but hey, their house, their rules
Edit edit a user has the up and downvote buttons. If a board doesn’t like that, they should change visibility. I believe beehaw does
It’s sadly frustrating because it discourages opposing opinions. I always try to upvote the things that make me want to respond. Whether it’s something I can add to or something I disagree with, I’ll only downvote when something is obviously spam or deliberately inflammatory without adding to the conversation.
Putting your finger on the upvote/downvote scale in any way amounts to censoring the community’s collective voice. If the intention is to create an open, impartial forum for discussion and community interaction, then no such action should be taken.
Enforcing a “positive” trend in voting might create the façade of a seemingly friendlier community, but not a genuinely friendlier one. It might also create toxic positivity.
I don’t agree with OPs idea, but this assertion really bugs me.
Putting your finger on the upvote/downvote scale in any way amounts to censoring the community’s collective voice.
This is true, but lemmy is awash with people, bots, and other bad actors doing exactly this.
It would only be a reason not to take action if the existing system were free from such interactions.
I’m not advocating manipulating votes. I just wish everyone were more aware that vote manipulation is happening and it heavily influences the general opinion of lemmy.
If the intention is to create an open, impartial forum for discussion and community interaction, then no such action should be taken.
If ensuring that users can’t predominantly give negative feedback violates your understanding of the intention, surely the existence of moderators does as well.
I’ll just quote from my other comment:
Censorship is sometimes necessary (the classic example of yelling “fire!” in a theater) but always problematic. It should never be implemented in blanket policies but only in specific cases to drive specific outcomes (not to create a generally more positive atmosphere) - hence moderation and reporting.
And from just a moment ago:
YIj54yALOJxEsY20eU@lemm.ee >The existence of moderators suggests we can’t be trusted to say anything we want.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub > The existence of moderators suggests that moderating conversation between humans requires contextual, circumstantial, individual and specific decision-making. That is, it requires human attention on each instance rather than broad conversation-affecting policies.
Do you think users that contribute downvotes more than anything add to the community interaction and help create open discussions? I personally think they inhibit that and discourage others from sharing. This is a limit that practically should not be reached by any good faith users, so I do not anticipate a net negative effect.
Do you think users that contribute downvotes more than anything add to the community interaction and help create open discussions? I personally think they inhibit that and discourage others from sharing.
It really doesn’t matter what I think, or what you think, about such users, because any such opinion could only be a generalization, and therefore not a good basis for making policy decisions.
I do not anticipate a net negative effect.
I don’t think you’re putting enough thought into unintended consequences. Censorship is sometimes necessary (the classic example of yelling “fire!” in a theater) but always problematic. It should never be implemented in blanket policies but only in specific cases to drive specific outcomes (not to create a generally more positive atmosphere) - hence moderation and reporting.
If you were to implement a policy like this, what you are doing is saying to the entire community, “I don’t trust you to express your opinions without guardrails, and so I am putting this filter on you to adjust them.” It’s a very parental idea, it seems motivated by a desire to control the conversation on a broad scale.
It really doesn’t matter what I think
Nice dodge. I don’t think its a generalization, I think its inherently perpendicular to the goals of the platform. There is no way to objectively measure that, and only the mods have the stats to attempt to approximate it with a large margin of error and shakey axioms.
I think this is a very specific case that only effects a small but vocal subset of users. And yes, I think trolls who spam downvotes need parenting. The existence of moderators suggests we can’t be trusted to say anything we want. Again, good faith users will never hit this limitation.
Have you considered the consequence of someone seeing that message and realizing they are being overly negative? It still allows unlimited downvotes, but introduces more effort only for the “downvote trolls”. Even seeing a popup and acknowledging they are downvoting more than upvoting would increase the friction.
It could increase polarization due to those now required to upvote, but orients people to encourage more which engages users.
I think I should down vote this.
Twice.
