across a variety of modern up/down vote based platforms, some make it a personal mission to avoid downvoting (the only real exceptions when someone is being utterly objectionable, ie. ridiculously racist/sexist etc or blatant spamming (1)
in general, it is almost always better to have a respectful discussion than mindlessly downvoting and moving on. if two parties can meet for respectful discussion the outcome is almost always superior to the text-book divisiveness of a downvote war etc (2).
in a great many cases people usually find they don’t disagree as much as previously thought, have their mind opened to a valuable new perspective, or at worst accept to disagree respectfully. definitely a better outcome.
yes it is time consuming, but don’t we all generally want quality over quantity?
(2) the original idea of a self-moderating community through up/down votes is a good idea, yet appears to have been hijacked by the modern social-media-type weaponised web, which is being turned against humanity to divide and polarize us against eachother. and is particularly suspectible to bot manipulation.
(1) which can have eg. their own flags
That would have the unfortunate side effect of increasing negativity, as people are pushed to actually voice it instead of giving a harmless downvote. And when you consider the extra effort required, the downvote itself essentially becomes meaningless, turning this into a mechanism of “if you don’t like it, make sure to let everyone know why, or shut up” which I don’t think is very helpful.
That said, maybe something like adding an extra step where you choose a reason for the downvote from a list like “spammy, offensive, rude/toxic, annoying, misleading/innacurate” etc. or write your own, and those could be visible to moderators (anonymously) as a sort of micro-report. Would dissuade people from mindlessly downvoting and help improve moderation in the process.
Also I often think people easily tend to downvote things just because they disagre, even though it might be constructive content. I have at least caught myself doing that before.
adding an extra step where you choose a reason for the downvote from a list like “spammy, offensive, rude/toxic, annoying, misleading/innacurate” etc. or write your own
This sounds like an excellent idea & the perfect compromise. As outlined in 1 of the OP i think spam/toxic/offensive could have their own flag. But definetly inaccurate etc could be a perfect compromise.
and those could be visible to moderators (anonymously) as a sort of micro-report. Would dissuade people from mindlessly downvoting and help improve moderation in the process.
Definitely another good idea, the only possible exceptions might be if a user is just spamming the wrong reasons merely to keep downvoting mindlessly, it may be good for mods to have a way to detect that. As it it could indicate possible bad faith and especially possible bot manipulation.
unfortunate side effect of increasing negativity, as people are pushed to actually voice it instead of giving a harmless downvote. And when you consider the extra effort required, the downvote itself essentially becomes meaningless
I agree with the mechanisms you’ve described here, except that I wonder if it might actually help rather than hinder. If people are entering mean things then it would increase the negativity, but if they’re voting for mean reasons then isn’t that that type of behaviour we want to weed out (and possibly even discount such a downvote for such mean reasons?).
And if they’re providing respectful, helpful criticism then I don’t think that is increasing negativity, but potentially makes a net positive overall.
I think that puts too much burden on the voter. I don’t want to write an essay every time I see a white brotherhood post in my feed, or one of the dozens of sockpuppets they run.
I’ve always been confused as to why some people think its required that you write an essay when expressing “dislike / aversion”, but not when expressing “like”. Its inconsistent, and would just deter people from expressing dislike if it takes much more effort.
Here is a perfect opportunity to speak with someone who has a guiding intent for how they want voting to work in lemmy!
Definitely voting can be a vehicle for different purposes in different platforms or subs.
Imo up vs down votes aren’t always symmetrical in practical purposes.
If someone is posting spam or irredeemable hateful garbage, it needs to be removed anyway 1
In a technical/mathematically proveable support-type thread, ofc upvoting the best or most correct answer is logical and provable, and downvoting harmful or absurd answers is logical and provable.
If the topic covers a range of (equally) valid subjective opinions, then downvoting really doens’t make sense - if someone wants to take a numeric poll or survey they can use an appropriate medium 2. For example its illogical to downvote a topic or eg. song from a music genre you personally dislike (unless the genre is hateful, see 1), since someone else’s opinion to enjoy it is valid. And you can still always upvote genres/songs/topics you DO like. So downvoting something merely because we dislike/disagree, isn’t really logical, unless it fits 2 or 1.
Imo the only remaining reason to downvote is for valid criticism, ie. something really isn’t going to work, or needs critical improvement. if so, don’t we all want to see a better world - rather than merely condemn things we don’t like? If so, it is far more valuable to provide constructive feedback so someone can learn why their idea needs more work, and then have the opporunity to improve it.
Alternatively, if they are presenting a world view we cannot agree with for moral reasons (rather than something harmless like personal taste), but they have the potential to be redeemable, then isn’t it better to try to offer them a respectful alternative view, rather than push them off into an echo chamber where they’ll only amplify their destructive views and cause further harm to society?
1 and could perhaps be better addressed by flagging than downvoting.
2 like a poll system, unless the site or sub rules are very clear that votes = polls
For example its illogical to downvote a topic or eg. song from a music genre you personally dislike
Why is that wrong to do? Votes are preference, and completely up to the person voting how they want to use it. Other people don’t have to follow anyones rules for how they vote.
Votes are preference, and completely up to the person voting how they want to use it.
That’s fair, I was going to add a note about this at the end, but thought my comment was already getting a bit long.
You’re absolutely right its ultimately entirely up to whatever method is preferred.
My statement about logical vs illogical was within the context of the ‘method’ I was proposing in the OP. (Specifcally as an effort to counter what I perceive as the hijacking of vote systems for polarization and manipulation on many larger platforms. )
There’s always tradeoffs and no doubt my proposed method has several overheads, which might even prove unmanageable at scale anyway.
white brotherhood post in my feed
As mentioned in 1 of the OP, imo objectionable content should be flagged anyway, rather than relying on downvotes.
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Yes
People really do forget the days of unsorted forums, having to click through 30+ pages of replies to find the correct answers.
Problems I have with the voting system.
- People often only read the title and that is it.
- Upvotes do not necessarily reflect the quality of the article or content because some things are pure subjective or based on opinion x.
- Assuming you have a small guild you will so or so get less up- or downvotes, posting the same content in a bigger guild automatically results in more up- or downvotes, for exactly the same content.
- Downvoting legitimate things only screw up the search because it might rank lower or it gets hidden from the search, this is not really a Lemmy issue but on some platforms you then need to login to discover it or to unravel it.
- Having a constructive discussion on the topic is often more helpful than just up- or down-vote without any reason why.
- The voting system is frequently weaponized, if you do not guild x or dude x then you will regularly end-up down-voting him just because you do not like what he has to offer, regardless if it is good or not.
- Assuming you downvote something, then what. The content normally stays visible. If something suddenly get 1000 down or upvotes you do the opposite, you make people curious and then they click it because they want to know the reason. If you downvote something, you typically want to warn people like it is a waste of time, but you overall end up spending more time going through it.
- Bias is a thing. A biased person which in general dislike X will automatically down-vote it, just because he can. And he will upvote his own ideas or and others who think the same.
- It often comes down to only popularity and not quality, which I often use as main-argument against the voting system.
I am entirely against the voting system in general on all platforms.
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I tend to agree with everything you’ve said. The only exceptions being, upvoting can have a positive effect in terms of registering something you see as valuable.
Downvoting I only see as useful if its accompanied by respectful and helpful criticism.
