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

  • CHEF-KOCH
    35·
    3 years ago

    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.

    • ganymedeOP
      11·
      3 years ago

      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.