What should I use it for?
In case of posts - should I downvote things that I don’t agree with? Or things that I don’t want to see in my feed (posts with low amount of votes fell more to the bottom)? Or things that I consider harmful/stupid/younameit?
In case of comments - should I downvote something that I don’t agree with? When should I use this button in case of comments. Or maybe I should not - cause what’s the point, actually?
Imagine the sub is big. Lets say 500,000 users. There are many posts each day. Now you’re not wrong. A sub can decide that users shall never use the downvote button, but always report a post for a mod to decide if the post is allowed to stay, or if a post will be removed.
In that case, the mods have way more work. They have to decide on every reported post, no matter if there is one single report, or hundreds of reports for one post. The mods have to decide if a post will be removed or not. If you ask me, that’s quite a task. You’re deciding this for all of the 500,000 users, after all. It’s not just you and your personal opinion, but you have to think of the whole community. I ask: Is that even possible? What if you can’t help but decide largely based on your personal opinion, even when that doesn’t overlap with the bulk of the community? Or what if a mod loves to be a kind of an dictator and starts to remove posts even without reports - simply because he doesn’t like them?
The other option is to use the system to sort content. Content that most people like will be above, and content that most people find to be off-topic will be below, or even collapsed if enough people found it to be off-topic or inappropriate.
That way, everybody can help just by browsing and using the system. The power of the crowd, so to speak. Why go the problematic and long road to remove posts as a mod, when everybody can help shape the community?
On Lemmy’s main page there’s written
Rules No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct. Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here. No porn. No Ads / Spamming.Who do you think will guard those rules to be respected when a big group of people starts to add “wrong” content? I am not so sure that this website will always have only good, well-balanced, polite and wise users. Also people’s minds change, as we can see e.g. in politics nowadays, where more and more conservative views are rising and only people from govt/politicians/judges can stop the madness.
What if people who like Linux memes will start upvoting Linux memes on Linux subreddit. Almost everybody likes memes, right? But, is it a place for memes? I doubt so. However you will see memes upvoted so often, that it will reduce usefulness of reading c/Linux.
Moderators, admins, they are to intervene when something wrong starts to happen. From my personal experience I can tell that lots of people just read&click and don’t really care for quality. The more users will be here, the more often they will upvote offtopic content. When 10/100 users will flag some content as improper or offtopic, then mod can look at it and decide if those users are right and the post should be suspended/deleted. Active users (those who flag content) are usually the first line of taking care of tidiness. Mods are the second line. When there are 500k users, then there should be more mods. I wouldn’t trust so much in users downvoting, cause more and more of them will treat it like nonagreement button. Also - what is the reason of downvoting if you can upvote? If content is relevant, you upvote, thus bring it to the top. If not, you just read next one, and maybe upvote this second content so it goes above the previously seen content you didn’t upvote. That’s unnecessary doubling of same responsibility in two different tools.
I see it like that. That’s why I’m confused by the downvote button.
Those are the site-wide rules. Posts breaking these rules are never okay, regardless of the sub. That’s a different thing. There is a reason these things are not allowed. For example porn: If you want an instance where you kid doesn’t see porn, you should be able to rely more or less on that. That’s not an opinion a community can discuss or vote on, that’s a hard decision. “No porn.”
What is “wise” and “good” depends on the user. What is “wise” and “good” in a sub decides the community. Posting dead cats in a cat sub? Nope. Posting dead cats in a sub for road accidents? Yes, please. Dumb example, but I think you know what I mean.
In that case, the community has to discuss this. You can either split the community into “Linux Discussion” and “Linux Memes”, and users can subscribe to both ones, or just one of them. That’s the beauty of the subscription system.
But if the users can’t make up their mind, and most users of the Linux sub don’t want to create a new sub for memes (for whatever reason), the other members have to create a new Linux sub: “Linux Discussion”. They create new rules, state that memes can be posted there, along with a link, and be done with it.
I remember the sub “Roguelikes”. At some point in gaming, the genre “Roguelike” became popular, and players and developers alike used that term without really knowing what it means. The result was that games were posted in that sub that weren’t really roguelikes. The people who knew what it originally meant were upset and tried to change the rules to get this point across, but it was too late: There were already too many people who (for some reason) insisted on their understanding of the term, and the original community had to create a new sub: “Actual Roguelikes”. There even was a sub “Roguelites”, for games that are similar to, but not really roguelikes. But still, the “new crowd” wasn’t having that.
Things like this do happen. It’s not a big deal. That’s the beauty of an open system: Anybody can create any sub they wish. For any reason.
That’s my experience as well. One of the problems is that most mods are way too much into “subscription numbers” and “community size”, as if that’s something to be proud of. In other words: Many mods care more for a “big sub”, than they care for quality. Also, many mods consider the sub they mod “their sub”. That’s also a very dangerous misconception of the position that we call “moderator”.
I absolutely agree. If you ask me, what we right now call “downvote” isn’t at all on the same scale as “upvote”. That’s a visual communication problem, and a general problem with the understanding of the voting system. On this instance, there isn’t even a system. The buttons simply exist, and the calculated number is displayed and used for sorting by default - without any explanation or intention.
Have you read my suggestion here? https://lemmy.ml/post/39710/comment/16708