There are a few opinions floating around on either or not downvotes should be disabled.

I’m interested to see what everyone thinks and if there’s a majority consensus one way or the other.

So please reply in this thread with your preference and why. You can also debate it in the comments.

Edit 23-03-2024 - Thanks everyone for your feedback. It looks like opinions are split on this, with good arguments made on either side. As downvotes aren’t currently a big issue, we’ll leave them as they are and we can revisit this again in future if things change.

  • splinterOPMAEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    The idea of down votes and people using them to disagree is perfectly fine.

    As you know, they are often not used in good faith. I’ve seen people use bots to mass downvote posts they don’t like, there are people who downvote everything coming from this instance as a default stance, or follow users around and downvote everything they post, etc.

    This does influence how Lemmy displays posts here, so it can be a bit annoying. You could make a great post and have it immediately buried at the bottom because someone doesn’t like you, for example.

    We’re happy to review this if people feel strongly about it though, it’s been a while since we last looked at it. Maybe make a post about it and see what others think.