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2y ago

Blahaj Lemmy Users - Downvote question

My wonderful co-admin @supakaity@lemmy.blahaj.zone has made a modification to the downvote system. It's not currently enabled, but if we were to turn it on, downvotes would be available for use, but they would weigh 5 times less than an upvote.

Which is to say, it would take 5 downvotes to counter an upvote. This would let downvotes have an impact on what appears in the hot topics sort, but hopefully mitigate some of the more negative impacts of downvoting.

Are there any strong objections from Blahaj Lemmy users to enabling downvotes with this modification?

65 comments

Is it possible to have no downvotes on Blahaj, but do have downvotes on federated communities?
This would give Blahaj users the same perception of federated communities as other instances have and give us a safe space in Blahaj. It also means we can sort federated communities like normal and see what everyone else sees, while still having downvotes nonexistent in Blahaj communities.
I've never really wanted downvotes in Blahaj, but I've worried about not having them for other instances. It feels like I'm not on a "level playing field" when I can be downvoted by others on a federated communities, but can't downvote anything myself. I'm also worried that with downvotes = 1/5, it would result in a skewed perspective of federated communities if Blahaj sorts federated communities that way too.
I don't know what the code looks like (yet?) but I feel like denying downvotes only on local communities wouldn't be a hard change to make.
Edit: I also wouldn't mind if downvotes were 1/5 on Blahaj but 1=1 on federated communities, but I can see that being a harder change to make.
Edit 2: if this is a straightforward change I wouldn't mind implementing it when I have time. I have some familiarity with Rust, TS, and JS so it wouldn't be difficult to jump into.
- Yeah, I'd like it if other instances were treated "as is" and that their individual policies on voting were respected when displayed to blahaj.zone users. Although, I do not know if it is possible to have two separate policies depending on whether the user is in their home instance.
  
  All this change would do is alter the weighting downvotes have in the sorting algorithm, I dont think it is possible without big changes to alter the displayed score. In anycase the downvotes are still being stored, so anywhere without these changes are unaffected
- Good suggestion, I like this idea too

Would it be possible to enable this at the topic level but not the comment level? My thinking is that it makes sense for helping users decide what posts to read in the first place, but would still discourage low-effort negativity that doesn’t actually contribute to a discussion.
But even if the answer to that is “no”… I don’t strongly object to trying this out and seeing how it works for this community. 🙂 If de-weighted downvotes still lead to problems, the change could always be reverted. Thank you for exploring the options!
- Would it be possible to enable this at the topic level but not the comment level?
  That's actually a really good idea, and it addresses most of my concerns with the downvote system. However, I have no idea what is involved in making that happen in the backend, and don't want to throw even more work at @supakaity :)
  
  So, looking at the Lemmy code it seems pretty straightforward (like, really straightforward. There's two checks, one for comments and one for posts, so just make them use different functions). I can try doing it, maybe even propose it as a PR upstream. Might take me a day or two for a PR though.
- I think comments could still benefit from the weighting, but maybe a lesser ratio?
- I like this solution best too!

Some of the comments in the "kick tankies out" post on /c/196 says to me that we need downvotes.

I like having downvotes personally, in whatever form.

I would like downvotes, and I think this modification is fine

I love that we have the fidelity here to implement things like "downvotes are at 0.2x power" and stuff like that! That sounds cool, should totally try that out and see how it ends up feeling. I think people would ultimately be OK with a near-zero-power downvote, if that ends up negatively affecting conversations too much.

Sounds like a really good compromise. "Rediquette" says it's only to discourage spam and posts that add nothing to the conversation, but in practice, basically everyone uses it as an "I disagree" button. Gets used as a tool to discourage dissent and silence the actual unpopular opinions.
- This is the big thing I hate about downvotes on Reddit. Instead of downvotes, people who disagree should make a comment about it, and then THAT comment can get upvoted to show that people disagree with the original comment. It encourages conversation and discourages echo-chambers where people are punished for having a different opinion.
  
  Exactly

Downvotes are a useful tool for sorting content and unless they are being abused should be implemented with a 1:1 weight with downvotes.
- That will not be happening.

i am largerthanabreadbox
- Thanks for sharing!
- wow!

I like the partial weights, it basically means that the whole community has to band together to hide something, which is essentially what they were originally supposed to be used for on reddit.

Interesting! I'm certainly willing to try it out

I personally think downvotes are unnecessary, because if there's any constructive disagreements to be discussed, it's better to get people talking rather than downvoting. Not upvoting is basically the new downvote, which would make sense if someone is flaming or trying to sow discord, they are basically ignored. Negative attention is still attention, and those types don't deserve any.
Edit: To clarify, I think downvotes aren't a good idea for blahaj but, as others ITT said, will put us at a disadvantage if other instances have downvotes enabled.
- In the original reddiquette, it mentions downvotes are not meant to be used as dislikes, but for content that is not relevant to the subreddit (or community in our case) or discussion – if it doesn't add anything of value. That gives the community the ability to push down and essentially hide things that aren't meant to be there. A sort of community-powered moderation for things that aren't entirely rule-breaking.
  For example, someone posts a cute cat picture on a programming community. Is it cute? Do I wanna see more? Possibly. Is it relevant to the particular community? No. It could also be useful to hide particularly bad or wrong advice given as a comment.
  Unfortunately, as we all know, it doesn't work that way. Downvotes are used like dislikes. And probably have also been used at reddit heavily by bots to influence what the public gets to see, and what they don't. I think the mechanism is useful, but it may need to be re-imagined.
  
  I wonder what a downvote system where downvotes require a "Downvotes are used to hide off-topic content, not as a dislike button. Are you sure you want to downvotes?" checkbox would do? Wouldn't stop malicious actors but it would stop some people who just downvote casually without thinking about it?
  Idk though. Pretty much any downvote system will disproportionately affect marginalized folk.
- I concur, I actually really like not having downvotes at all.
- Plenty of accounts on reddit just existed to see how much they could get downvoted by picking fights and spreading hate for fun, I don’t want to see any of that here
  
  Exactly, downvotes are another way of feeding the trolls

I like this, downvotes would be welcome

I think that is a fair system! I still want the option to throw a downvote if something really needs it - but it keeps brigading or shit from happening.

I came into this thread thinking that I want downvotes enabled, and now after reading some pretty compelling arguments I can see how disabled makes a lot of sense too. Hopefully this partial weight approach is a good balance between the two. Can always continue to iterate

I think this is a really good idea. That said I think it's important to revisit this at some point and determine how it alters the vibe relative to other instances. A post with equal upvotes/downvotes would be hid in one system and platformed in another. Unfortunately there are lots of awful takes (read transphobia) that could easily reach a 50/50 split. In particular, I think this may become an issue when we inevitably see a conservative corner of lemmy rise up.
- Transphobia won't reach anyone. I have zero tolerance for it, even the "just asking questions" sort. I will remove anything even hinting at transphobia, and ban/suspend anyone whose intentions I doubt.
  
  based as fuck moderator
  
  this is the best way ❤️

I think we should give it a try! Can always disable them later.

I prefer not having them.

After seeing some contentious threads on here recently, it's actually much nicer to read without seeing all the posts spammed with downvotes. Makes it feel a lot more friendly.
My preference is to keep downvotes disabled.

Weighted downvotes are a good idea. No objections from me

I wouldn't mind trying it but I also always disliked downvoting systems in favour of hiding or reporting/blocking (if it was incredibly out of line). I always thought that down voting was presumptive.
Just because I don't like something doesn't mean it should affect anyone else.
(Edited to say I'm not against it; if it were enabled, I'd be fine with it too. I do like the ability to weight them differently too, so that helps)

i like it! downvotes are too strong for how they're often used, and this seems like a great compromise.

go for it

i think thats a v good idea c: i am like very new here but i think that'd effectively help limit/prevent people mass downvoting something, i think it'd provide a space for healthy disagreements

i like this idea!! it seems like a good way to counteract downvote spams while still having a way to express dislike

Totally fine with this, but I’m curious how weights/disabling downvotes works? Like does the 5:1 downvotes weight apply to downvotes everywhere, even on other instances that have normal weights? Or is it just for communities that are hosted on blahaj.zone?
- This would be a global change to the way our instance displays downvotes. Anywhere downvotes would apply, they would still apply, but with 5 times less weight.
  
  @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone it's global and it would display on our instance like:
  Score: 4.2. Upvotes: 5. Downvotes: 4
  Other instances' "hot ranking" is unaffected by our change and they are free to rank and score up and down votes however they please.
  
  Ohh okay, gotcha. Thanks for the explanation!

Does this apply to all votes:
by local users on local posts
by local users on global posts
by global users on local posts
I'm curious how it works when factoring in other instances' interconnectivity.
Also are other instance users currently able to downvote posts on this instance?
- Out of the box, lemmy treats all votes as equal whether they're from the local instance or whether they've federated, and all the votes do is change the order of the posts in views that use scores as part of the calculations. (hot, active and top)
  This change is simply a change in the weight of downvotes so they have less impact to the score of a post. It won't otherwise change their behaviour.
  Also are other instance users currently able to downvote posts on this instance?
  Depends what you mean. At the moment, our instance ignores downvotes that federate to us and we ignore downvotes when calculating the score of external posts that do use them. Which is to say, anything you view through this instance is in effect, viewed as if downvotes didn't exist.
  However, instances that don't ignore downvotes calculate them in to the post score, which means they will sort posts in a different order.
  So if you make a post to an external community that allows downvotes and then get downvoted, people on instances with downvotes will see them, but we won't
  You can see more about the ranking formula at https://join-lemmy.org/docs/en/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
  
  So if you make a post to an external community that allows downvotes and then get downvoted, people on instances with downvotes will see them, but we won’t
  It would be nice to see the number of downvotes & upvotes on external communities just for the purpose of knowing what other people are seeing, but still have posts sorted with disregard for the downvotes.
  Although I'd imagine that's a bit complicated (if even possible at all)

i dont really get why they were disabled to begin with
- Because they are often weaponised against marginalised folk.
  
  And here's a specific example: https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/146fb4d/downvotes/

Having been here for a couple of days I now feel that downvotes are a bad idea. They don't add anything of value to the discussion that cannot be expressed by simply not upvoting. If they must be re-enabled (which I disagree with) I think they should be at least an order of magnitude different, 20:1 or even 50:1, just to make brigading harder. I don't miss them from Reddit, and if they're enabled at 5:1, I'd consider finding another instance where they're just disabled - but hey, I'm new, so I might be missing something.

How does this work with communities on other instances? Currently we can't downvotes those, but would this allow us to?
Anyway, I say either go all in or don't allow them at all.
- Normally, downvotes federate in and out, just like upvotes. Because we've disabled them, our instance doesn't send out downvotes out, and ignores any that come in to us.
  Anyway, I say either go all in or don’t allow them at all.
  I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with allowing standard downvotes without modification. When given equal weight, they further marginalise the already marginalised.

This sounds way better than disabling downvotes completely. This would probably be a fair compromise between downvotes killing posts too easily and allowing bad/low-quality posts to rise.

65 comments