Thanks for being open and honest with the community. I’ll admit I’m disappointed by the decision. But you did the right thing by communicating and letting the community help shape the decision.

After I participated in the other thread, I thought of a couple more scenarios where downvoting is useful:

• “this post is low effort”

Downvoting is a useful feedback tool to say hey OP, I have given your post an amount of my time that your low effort post did not earn. Try harder next time.

• “we don’t need yet another community for this topic”

If a person creates a new community for a topic that already has one (or more), to get around the community blocks that users have already put up, that’s functionally very similar to ban evasion. I’m tired of blocking repeat communities. If I see a person make a new community for a topic that is practically identical to one that exists, a downvote is warranted.

I’m not telling you my opinion should overrule the other arguments here, but it’s better to have all sides present so it’s not just an echo chamber.

I voted to enable downvotes due to an increase in bad faith comments and posts in some communities, and removing downvotes allows trolls and sealions to artificially appear neutral when in fact they are rightfully buried. It also discourages commenters when those bad-faith debates eat up comment sections.

That said, I completely understand the rationale above and it convinced me that I voted the wrong way. Makes total sense that most people misuse downvotes, and I agree with disabling for now.

… several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in

Could you elaborate what you mean by that? Does “participating” mean subscribing? Commenting? Posting?
Also what does “downvoting communities” mean? People go in and downvote every post?

Maybe announce/pin a polls that’s going to be used to base important decisions for an instance on. Missed the poll, definitely think disabling was a bad idea

Isn’t voting a way to participate? Is there a way to semi-lock the community instead so random drifters don’t come in a vote bomb?

This is the right decision. I did not want to add an opinion and leave the majority decide, but the issue is downvotes are not used correctly.

Consider leaving downvotes on, but ban people who only downvote in a community (this can be automated). It’s a form of unsubscribe for the user who doesn’t like the content. After a initial adjustment window downvotes will be relevant again.

Not that I have a solution but engoraging people to use “blocks” and “filters” is the way to go I think.

I’d like to create a homepage but Lemmy moves too slowly for that, so I do find myself on “all” a lot. So blocking users/communities/instances and filtering keywords are how I craft a positive experience here.

When EH was around I’d waste endless time trolling/downvoting them, which I now realise was time wasted. It didn’t help me; made Lemmy more toxic; and gave bad actors the legitimacy and attention they want.

I think my comment in the poll was fairly comprehensive, so I’ll leave it at that. Except to add good job LemmyNSFW admins you constantly handle controversy well. From instance bans, instance drama or this current downvote issue, no notes.

And … the local feed is back to unusable while the overall quality in subscribed subs is down.

Unfortunately very predictable result.

Why don’t you disable upvotes too, then? Or at least hide the vote count–it is meaningless when it’s one sided.

people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in. Which I want to emphasize is NOT the correct way for downvotes to be used.

Says who?

If you don’t want people voting in a community, then maybe change the community to block voting by non-members. I don’t know if this is technical option right now, and frankly I don’t care. If that’s what you want in your community, then that’s for you to address. Not just come on here and act like Mr. Dictator and tell people how to use communities.

At a minimum what you’re doing is ineffective, nut it’s also adversarial. I didn’t even read past this sentence, and I have no intention of going back and reading the rest. Why should I when you’ve shown how you view everyone else, as merely pawns to be told how to behave.

And why would I want to join a community when you’re so condescending to people?

Sheesh.

I know I’m late to the debate, but just for the sake of voicing my opinion I want to say that not being able to downvote frankly to me makes this instance feel childish and not serious, and worse than that, like I’m being nanny-ed or babysat - which is very strange for an inherently NSFW instance.

I understand the reasoning behind the decision, and absolutely acknowledge the very clear good intent, but it feels needlessly oversteppy to me, like an elementary school teacher telling their students they don’t have to merely get along but they must all be friends. And certainly I don’t want anyone to feel bad, whether by receiving downvotes or any other means, but I also don’t feel obligated to shelter the feelings of those who put themselves out there for assessment either, and I don’t think we’re being entirely honest about the situation at hand in these discussions… The potentially offending parties don’t largely appear to be breaking into people’s homes to insult them, more closely rather these potential offenders are being offered free samples by a local hot dog stand; some people are just not going to think the stand makes very good hot dogs and yes some people are just not going to be fans of hot dogs at all. I don’t think saying “I didn’t enjoy that hot dog” is the same thing as being an unruly dick. And yes I’ll acknowledge that of course there will be some bad actors, but there will always be some bad actors. I’m not trying to say “toughen up” exactly but I don’t think the benefit of sheltering some users from the potential negative impact of being downvoted by a bunch of complete strangers is enough to outweigh the restriction on users.

I understand this is a settled point and don’t expect my input to change matters, nor am I trying to pull any disingenuous ultimatum bullshit or anything, but from reading the discourse on the topic I’ve gotten the impression the admins of this instance are genuinely trying to do their best and make the most reasonable decisions while listening to the voice of the community, so I felt I would be remiss not to add mine to the discourse. Cheers.

Really disappointing decision. I’m tired of blocking so many niche (to say the least) communities polluting the local feed.