Several people in the community have expressed frustration in regards to the fact that any post that fits the community it’s posted to but is slightly out of the normal post type like, for example, being more hardcore rather than softcore, get’s a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.
We have also had complaints that particular types of posts as a whole get more downvotes even if they are in the appropriate community and are the normal type of post for a community. This especially appears to be happening to male content.
Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don’t even want to see in the first place.
We understand some may not like some content of a particular post or community, but downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them in our instance and especially in other instances, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all.
After some discussion amongst the moderators and admins,because of the reasons above, we’ve decided to disable downvotes at least for the time being.
What do I do if I dislike a post?
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We recommend those who would normally downvote a post they don’t like just, instead, block the user who created the post, or, if the community is a topic you dislike, block the community. That way, you no longer see those posts, but don’t effect those posts’ visibility to other members of the community and instance.
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Additionally, you can view your “Subscribed” feed instead of “Local” so that you only see posts from the communities you are subscribed to.
What do I do if a post doesn’t fit the community it’s posted in or is spam?
- Please report the post, either the mods of the community or an instance admin will remove the post if necessary, as soon as possible. We have admins and mods online almost around the clock, so these types of posts should be removed quickly.
Potential future post filtering on lemmy:
- In the future it appears that lemmy may implement a tagging system similar to flairs on reddit. This request has piqued the interest of the lemmy devs, so keep an eye out sometime in the (maybe not so near) future for the implementation of that feature.
As @yay@lemmynsfw.com has said in the comments:
Downvotes should be used for posts you don’t like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don’t like.
When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.
But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.
Please put any comments questions and concerns in the comments below, we are of course always open to community thoughts and feedback, and want to work with you to keep this instance an enjoyable and entertaining place to post and browse.
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Welp, guess the bot content and spam-posting will always rise to the top now :/
Only if those things get upvoted. And if those things get upvoted the community probably wants to see that content. In that case it’s only “spam” to you. If you don’t like those people who post “spam” you can block them.
Just like many downvotes come from outside a community, many upvotes do as well, so I’m not sure upvotes means that’s what the community wants to see. It might make things trend to more generic which kinda defeats the whole point of separate communities…
get’s [sic] a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.
That’s literally the point of the downvote system. To downvote posts you don’t like, or you feel are out of place.
Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don’t even want to see in the first place.
This seems to be the real issue you’re trying to fight. It seems like only permitting downvotes on communities that the user has been a part of for greater than 1/2/7/30/pick-a-number days would be the proper solution. If people in a community are downvoting a post, then it means they don’t think that post is worth sharing. No admin, moderator, community owner, etc. should be able to change that.
I am strongly against removing downvotes.
I fully understand why you guys did this and it is certainly a solution to the problem above.
That being said, I really do not like this change.
I would go into detail about the reasons why, but I feel like this topic has been hashed out a few times before. So everyone should know why people are for and against this change.
(I am only posting this comment because the other way to show disapproval has now been removed.)
Thanks for keeping us in the loop! While I agree that downvoting can be problematic for smaller nicher communities, I’m not a fan of removing the downvote button. I think a better option would be to remind users (in a post like this) that they can block communities whose content they don’t want to see on their client
I disagree that blocking users or communities covers everything. Upvotes are for good content, neutral (no action) is for most posts that you just scroll past, but downvotes are for 5 second clips without sound that technically don’t break any rules of the community. But maybe other people might disagree, and that’s good, in that case they can upvote and the net value of the post is clear. If not, the OP gets a clear signal that the number of downvotes is higher than the number of upvotes and they can fuck right off with those posts.
Especially if they also post other, high quality content, you can’t expect me to just block the user who has done nothing wrong, or report their post that breaks no rules.
Or do you expect me to upvote literally everythingI scroll past (except the posts I would have downvoted)? I’ll gladly do that if I can autmate it, otherwise ain’t nobody got time fo that shit.
Sounds like we’re only allowed to upvote and anything whatsoever that gets posted is considered valid content? So… basically just a shitty Instagram for nudes?
I just want to go on record saying I do not like this change, though I do understand the good intention behind it.
It seems there was a simple and elegant solution discussed earlier in this thread - only allow downvotes of you are subscribed to the community where the post is. I know this would need to be implemented by the lemmy devs; is there someplace we can request or vote on such features? A whole tagging system may be nice, but it’s overkill for this problem.
Meanwhile, genuine question, how do I hide posts that I have already seen that I would have downvoted? I have already joined a bunch of communities, and I only look at my Subscribed feed. I have lemmy set to not show me posts I’ve already voted on. Thus, my feed is always kept fresh, and when I log in I just see what’s new in those communities to which I’ve subscribed.
So, now I see a post that I feel doesn’t live up to the standards of a particular community. It doesn’t break any rules per se, and it’s not report-worthy, it’s just not a good post. Normally I’d downvote and move on, and I’d never see it again. So now what do I do to ensure I don’t see it every time I log in? Lemmy doesn’t have a ‘hide’ or ‘mark seen’ feature (another good feature we should have), and I don’t want to upvote the post because it’s a bad post. I also don’t want to block the poster, because their next post might be great! What do I do here?
I hate to make this post any longer, but I’ll just provide an example. Within the last couple days, I saw the same post uploaded to both gonewild and to adorableporn. I upvoted the gonewild post and downvoted the adorableporn post, because at the end of the day it was a pretty average nude picture, perfectly reasonable for gonewild. But not, IMO, anything that could be called adorable. That, to me, seems like specifically the kind of situation that calls for a ‘downvote and move on’ response. So now how do I hide that post without blocking that user, who is otherwise posting good content?
I ran a forum with 30k active users before saying F that. One thing I learned during that adventure is that you can’t force people to behave the way you want. It doesn’t matter what you type, the up/down votes will mean exactly what the user wants. Trying to force conformity or censoring their contributions (down votes) will only end in frustration and lower user count.
tldr: Your team is behaving like it’s their first moderating experience.
Another opinion from someone with 0 posts and 0 comments on lemmynsfw
Trying to force conformity or censoring their contributions using down votes will only end in frustration and lower user count.
That is what has been happening the past 6 months on lemmynsfw. I’m very glad a change is being now to right this ship.
Harden up buttercup. I’m on world so I don’t have to worry about changes to lemmynsfw voting, but I agree with the others that removing downvotes ignores that the viewer knows what the viewer wants to see. If a certain type of content is being outright rejected by the community who are you to force them to view it? Downvotes help tell us creators what is and isn’t working for the community and encourages us to lift our game.
Now go through my history and try that bullshit line:
Another opinion from someone with 0 posts and 0 comments on lemmynsfw
I just looked at your posts, how about creating content instead of reposting it. They have bots for what you do, go let one of them do it so you can stop being sad that no one likes Amy Schumer.
I find your use of name calling disrespectful and your tone condescending. If you want to have a conversation with me do so in a respectful way.
I find your use of name calling disrespectful and your tone condescending.
That’s rich. Coming from the person saying:
Another opinion from someone with 0 posts and 0 comments on lemmynsfw
Maybe take your own advice instead of being a condescending hypocrite.
If you want to have a conversation do so in a respectful way.
Me pointing that the feedback is coming from people who have no stake in getting their posts downvoted. Isn’t the same as your name calling, condensing behavior. It seems like you are lashing out at me more than trying to get your points across.
You refusing to acknowledge my point because you intentionally ignored the content of my post is a you problem.
If you don’t want to behave properly don’t cry when you get treated the same.
Me pointing that the feedback is coming from people who have no stake in getting their posts downvoted.
Just as you have no stake in your posts being downvoted because you didn’t create the content.
I’m refusing to acknowledge your points because of your uncalled for name calling. Until you apologize I have 0 interest in talking to you.
I mean the account is 5 months old… who cares how many comments and posts they have? Maybe they have the account to vote and mostly just lurk until now?
Unless you try making posts here you wouldn’t experience first hand why people don’t want downvotes. It’s easy to criticize without having perspective of people who are submitting content. There’s also some entitlement of people who want certain content who are doing nothing to get that content.
I get that but this whole thing is like forcing a safe space for people who put themselves out there and can’t tolerate whatever comes with it. They should ignore the downvotes or just disable them themselves
