Really loving the new experiences here on Lemmy.one. But I’m seeing many subs with off-topic posts. Community downvotes will help overworked mods find and remove such posts. I understand no one likes to be downvoted but it’s a necessary tool for our community and only helps users understand and refine what and where they are to be posting their content.
I guess people in general prefer this way - which is probably why 99% of Lemmy instances have downvotes enabled. You can choose any one of them :)
For me, it makes me more stressed about posting stuff, specially since you can be downvote bombed just for saying you didn’t like X book, or whatever.
It also makes me more stressed when reading comments, for some reason. Either when I see an innocent random comment with negative points - I feel bad for the commenter - or when I end up using it as a disagree button and get more stressed. IDK why.
So for me, not having it is way better. Otherwise I maybe wouldn’t even have created a Lemmy account, and used the “opportunity” (Reddit down in flames) to be less online - which I guess would also be a great outcome.
TLDR: some people prefer no downvotes, but most instances allow them. Your user is already on lemmy.ml, so why do you care?
I actually agree that people should just join an instance that best fits with their goals rather than trying to change an existing instance (assuming that things were always that way). I’m only arguing about the benefits of downvotes in general.
I care because I think most people are better off with downvotes enabled; it would be in the best interest of the majority of people if they supported downvotes. I also support the existence of instances with downvotes disabled, I just don’t think that most people should use them.