It has been almost a year since we disabled downvotes on HC. @Alice@hilariouschaos.com and I are interested to check in and read the room.

In short, downvotes affect how content is displayed here, and certain types of content gets reliably downvoted on Lemmy. For a comparison, look at:

https://hilariouschaos.com/c/Conservatives vs https://lemmy.world/c/Conservatives@hilariouschaos.com

Downvotes are often not used in good faith, and content will be buried at the bottom based on them. However, they are also a valid form of expression and I doubt anyone here is fragile enough to be affected by them.

What are your thoughts?

  • Donald J. Musk@lemmy.todayEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    I’m fine either way. Though I do think it’s funny that the trolls who love to just downvote anything that a particular user posts, can’t do it when they are disabled! lol

  • HermanEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    What we really need is emoji reacts so that we can start snoojaking plebbitors

    • AliceMAEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Man i would love that lol

      • splinterOPMAEnglish
        2·
        1 day ago

        I’ve done this one, let me know if you want to add other ones

        • AliceMAEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          What!? Cool ! Hell yea! I’m gunna look i might make a few. But I’ll send those to you to see what you think first

  • AliceMAEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    I like without down votes, but if the majority users wants to try having down votes enabled again, I’m on board with that too.

  • Fleur_English
    4·
    3 days ago

    I like them. I never use them but having that extra information I find useful.

  • airrowEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    I’m fine with keeping downvotes out because bots will swarm downvote content

    yet, if on the other hand you wanted to enable them for the lulz, it could be tried

  • NutinButNetEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    I like it the way it is. I don’t view or think about voting like I did before coming here. I just post as I please without worry or concern there.

    Also noticed that it affects others and I don’t have an automatic feel of a comment based on how it’s been voted upon and I just view comments as is without any automatic assumptions.

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    Outside of your instance the rest of Lemmy sees the downvotes on the posts. So it’s not like downvotes are disabled Lemmy wide, you just can’t see them

    • splinterOPMAEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      This is true, but it prevents external downvoting from influencing how posts are displayed locally on the instance (e.g. it prevents mass downvoted posts from being moved down the ranks).