Remote View

1y ago

An update on our community regarding downvotes

Several people in the community have expressed frustration in regards to the fact that any post that fits the community it's posted to but is slightly out of the normal post type like, for example, being more hardcore rather than softcore, get's a lot of downvotes by people who simply don't like that particular post.

We have also had complaints that particular types of posts as a whole get more downvotes even if they are in the appropriate community and are the normal type of post for a community. This especially appears to be happening to male content.

Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don't even want to see in the first place.

We understand some may not like some content of a particular post or community, but downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them in our instance and especially in other instances, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all.

After some discussion amongst the moderators and admins,because of the reasons above, we've decided to disable downvotes at least for the time being.

What do I do if I dislike a post?

We recommend those who would normally downvote a post they don't like just, instead, block the user who created the post, or, if the community is a topic you dislike, block the community. That way, you no longer see those posts, but don't effect those posts' visibility to other members of the community and instance.
Additionally, you can view your "Subscribed" feed instead of "Local" so that you only see posts from the communities you are subscribed to.

What do I do if a post doesn't fit the community it's posted in or is spam?

Please report the post, either the mods of the community or an instance admin will remove the post if necessary, as soon as possible. We have admins and mods online almost around the clock, so these types of posts should be removed quickly.

Potential future post filtering on lemmy:

In the future it appears that lemmy may implement a tagging system similar to flairs on reddit. This request has piqued the interest of the lemmy devs, so keep an eye out sometime in the (maybe not so near) future for the implementation of that feature.

As @yay@lemmynsfw.com has said in the comments:

Downvotes should be used for posts you don’t like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don’t like.
When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.
But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.

Please put any comments questions and concerns in the comments below, we are of course always open to community thoughts and feedback, and want to work with you to keep this instance an enjoyable and entertaining place to post and browse.

165 comments

get’s [sic] a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.
That's literally the point of the downvote system. To downvote posts you don't like, or you feel are out of place.
Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don’t even want to see in the first place.
This seems to be the real issue you're trying to fight. It seems like only permitting downvotes on communities that the user has been a part of for greater than 1/2/7/30/pick-a-number days would be the proper solution. If people in a community are downvoting a post, then it means they don't think that post is worth sharing. No admin, moderator, community owner, etc. should be able to change that.
I am strongly against removing downvotes.
- get’s [sic] a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.
  That’s literally the point of the downvote system. To downvote posts you don’t like, or you feel are out of place.
  Sorry, but I hard disagree with you on the "point" of the downvote system. A downvote, to me, is not the same as "liking" or "disliking" content. I only downvote content that is not correct for the sub, bad-faith, or troll content, and I would really urge others to do the same.
  If you think of cause-and-effect, downvoting any time you dislike content is not a good system: Upvoting is the incentive to post that type of content, and downvoting is a disincentive to post that type of content. And Lemmy needs more content.
  For example, I see Gonewild, every male poster getting downvoted to oblivion. But male nudity is not against the rules if properly labeled. As a straight male, I have no interest in seeing male nudity, so I don't upvote it, and it's not bad-faith or rule-breaking so I don't downvote it. But it's clear most people are downvoting it because they "dislike" it. But maybe there are some non-straight-male people in the sub who would appreciate it, and they don't see it because it's been buried. The eventual effect is that the community becomes more insular, with more unwritten rules.
  
  I appreciate your verbalization of the issue at hand. I like to think of the vote system more along the lines of appropriateness upvote=appropriate/good, no vote=appropriate/neutral or not good, and downvote=inappropriate/broken/rule breaking.
  Not interacting with a post has about as much of an effect on the non-chronological sorting as a downvote does so essentially you're just going out of your way to make someone feel bad if it's an appropriate fit for the community and you use it as an "Ew" button. This behavior becomes especially problematic when it comes to non-promotional OC.
  It's not perfect, but I think removing the downvotes for a brief stint will have a pretty good impact on training user behavior to help facilitate growth until this place is at a point where there is enough core functionality to allow for better solutions.
  
  content that is not correct for the sub, bad-faith, or troll content.
  IMO, those things are bad enough to warrant reporting them to mods for removal.
  
  Gonewild
  Gonewild is a good example, if you don't like male nudity, a more positive way would be to not downvote it but campaign to have a gonewildmale or something. Would make sense to have that so that the people who do like it can still watch it.

Strongly agree with this decision to disable downvotes untill the community of active oc posters and commentors grows.
Look, i post nswf oc content because i like making and sharing my pictures. Gives me a thrill, i like the social aspect too. Alot of people here are focusing on the "user experience" but what about "posting experience"?
Its just not fun to post your oc content and immediatly get 5 downvotes cause some lurkers cant be bothered to customize their feed. Its driving active and contributing users away and is harming this relatively small community atm.
- Its just not fun to post your oc content and immediatly get 5 downvotes cause some lurkers cant be bothered to customize their feed. Its driving active and contributing users away and is harming this relatively small community atm.
  Agreed. My wife and I enjoy posting pix of ourselves. We do it because it's fun for us. The amount of downvotes we were getting was pretty discouraging.
  I'm excited for this change!
- Its just not fun to post your oc content and immediatly get 5 downvotes cause some lurkers cant be bothered to customize their feed. Its driving active and contributing users away and is harming this relatively small community atm.
  I can definitely see this being a much bigger issue for the Gonewild posters than anyone else, perhaps this change need only be applied to those communities?
  
  First, love what you are contributing/posting. The ai art, sharing prompts and even helping other user finetune the process. A+
  Now onto the issue at hand, i wanna make clear that im def not supporting to get rid of the downvotes forever. I just think that atm they are harming this instance and should be disabled for a while untill we have more people who post original content or untill fediverse users have gotten into the habit of curating and browsing only in subscribed communities of interest as most redditors have learned to do, due to the sheer volume of content there.
  I think the real problem is that alot of new users are used to reddit and how it works. Lemmy operates different, i had to figure it out and get used to it too.
  On reddit gonewild, you post something and only users who sort through new get to see your post (new accounts of course, subscribers is something else) and vote on that post. Its a sorting process thats rather low profile, the more people like it, the more exposure it gets, you go from new to rising to frontpage. Users sorting new are different folks then users scrolling the frontpage. New page are people trying to sext or cam or are just lonely and wanna talk. You can thrive and have fun in just that section of the sub. Even if you never get the upvotes to get to rising or frontpage, its a fun experience. If you do get the upvotes for frontpage, along come the rude disrespectfull messages, its part of the internet and comes with high exposure. But at that point the poster already has 100's of nice messages and the self esteem boost that comes with reaching the frontpage. In other words the downvotes from that group are pretty harmless emotionally.
  On lemmy new posts go up almost immediatly after posting so your exposure is biggest when first posting. If you get lots of upvotes you can keep that exposure longer. But as i just explained high exposure means rude assholes and on lemmy thats right at the start before the validation. Immediate bad repsonses and only the fun experiences later on or maybe never at all.
  You have to realize that posters of nude selfies are putting themselfs out there, not a prompt or a (very beautifull) artpiece. The reactions/comments are way more personal and confronting. Its not always easy to deal with it and atm the downvotes on that content is leaving those posters with nothing. No fun experiences at all. So they give up and leave, or check this place see the negative comments and just never try.
  For me personaly, its about building a community here, i dont post to sell or for validation (anymore). Maybe its a bit cheesy but when i first started in this world, i met some amazing and very helpfull people, it kinda changed my outlook on life. I wanna return that favour to the internet by helping to build something positive here.
  Ok enough written. Im very interested on why downvotes are so important for you and your community. Cause not only gonewild is affected, every community that has nude oc content is experiencing this problem.

I ran a forum with 30k active users before saying F that. One thing I learned during that adventure is that you can't force people to behave the way you want. It doesn't matter what you type, the up/down votes will mean exactly what the user wants. Trying to force conformity or censoring their contributions (down votes) will only end in frustration and lower user count.
tldr: Your team is behaving like it's their first moderating experience.
- Another opinion from someone with 0 posts and 0 comments on lemmynsfw
  Trying to force conformity or censoring their contributions using down votes will only end in frustration and lower user count.
  That is what has been happening the past 6 months on lemmynsfw. I'm very glad a change is being now to right this ship.
  
  I mean the account is 5 months old.. who cares how many comments and posts they have? Maybe they have the account to vote and mostly just lurk until now?
  
  Harden up buttercup. I'm on world so I don't have to worry about changes to lemmynsfw voting, but I agree with the others that removing downvotes ignores that the viewer knows what the viewer wants to see. If a certain type of content is being outright rejected by the community who are you to force them to view it? Downvotes help tell us creators what is and isn't working for the community and encourages us to lift our game.
  Now go through my history and try that bullshit line:
  Another opinion from someone with 0 posts and 0 comments on lemmynsfw
  I just looked at your posts, how about creating content instead of reposting it. They have bots for what you do, go let one of them do it so you can stop being sad that no one likes Amy Schumer.

"downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all."
Isn't that literally the point of down voting? To discourage posting that doesn't fit the community so that it isn't seen by as many people... ESPECIALLY since the focus on this instance is NSFW then more discouragement of posts that don't fit should be the goal so that users subscribed to those communities surface the appropriate things they want to see. You've removed users' agency to shape their communities and caused waaaaaay more work for moderators.
This also takes away our ability to down vote posts across the entire federation it appears?!
- I understand what you're saying, and while I personally like downvotes I've also seen how posters who fully fit the topic of a community are discouraged from posting because they were downvoted by people outside of the community
  Moderators have talked about this for a few weeks now, this decision won by a majority after we got several complaints.
  If something doesn't fit a community that can be brought up to the mods in a post and a discussion can be had. However as of right now, with the size of this instance and to promote more growth downvotes haven't really been helpful.
  
  "posters who fully fit the topic of the sub are discouraged from posting because they were downvoted by people outside of the community"
  Ok. I hear that. I guess maybe that proves the community itself should be discouraged? I don't like that sentiment necessarily but... The inability to down vote federated posts means I'm going to bounce to another instance probably. I liked being able to curate my NSFW subscriptions and not risk being defederated from the entire lemmynsfw instance but can just change accounts now and again I suppose.
- Agree that the point of down voting is to discourage posts that don't fit with the community, which means the the community is voting for what it does and does not want to see in a community.
  Someone being passionate about something that doesn't fit with what the community wants to see getting frustrated should not over ride what the community has voted for. They should instead find or create a community that fits their passion and not try to change a community to fit their passion.
  
  Yes but my point is it's usually people outside a community. We've seen posts get more downvotes than a community has subscribers. If we could limit downvotes to just those subscribed to a community, we would, but unfortunately that functionality doesn't exist right now.
  Additionally upvoting does also work to shape a community, posts with more upvotes will still rise to the top of a community
  
  Maybe it's just me, but this feels like a double standard.
  Let's say I create a community that allows male and female content. But a lot of users join the community who dislike male content and consistently downvote it as a way to discourage it, then those downvoters are the ones trying to change the community. To me, it is the downvoters who are trying to, in a sense, hijack the community and make it something it wasn't intended to be.
- Maybe in theory but that's not how they get used
  All my posts in the Any Schumer get down voted despite it being on topic
  and caused waaaaaay more work for moderators.
  Hard disagree as a moderator of a bunch communities
  
  Terrible community to use as an example. It's not NSFW so not sure what it's doing on this instance. The down votes kind of prove the community itself shouldn't exist...

I fully understand why you guys did this and it is certainly a solution to the problem above.
That being said, I really do not like this change.
I would go into detail about the reasons why, but I feel like this topic has been hashed out a few times before. So everyone should know why people are for and against this change.
(I am only posting this comment because the other way to show disapproval has now been removed.)

I disagree that blocking users or communities covers everything. Upvotes are for good content, neutral (no action) is for most posts that you just scroll past, but downvotes are for 5 second clips without sound that technically don't break any rules of the community. But maybe other people might disagree, and that's good, in that case they can upvote and the net value of the post is clear. If not, the OP gets a clear signal that the number of downvotes is higher than the number of upvotes and they can fuck right off with those posts.
Especially if they also post other, high quality content, you can't expect me to just block the user who has done nothing wrong, or report their post that breaks no rules.
Or do you expect me to upvote literally everythingI scroll past (except the posts I would have downvoted)? I'll gladly do that if I can autmate it, otherwise ain't nobody got time fo that shit.
- Yeah that's honestly been my biggest issue here is the fact that I can't properly filter out certain content/users because it technically fits the community or the user posts in many communities.
  Like the hentai community is one of my most viewed yet people will post niche hentai stuff that I have no interest in whatsoever and even though there's already a specific community for that niche it's still not breaking the rules by being in the main community.
  It's the same with users who post exactly the type of content I like while also posting content I abhor. I can't block them without also losing out on a lot of the content I actually want to see
- Don't tell me what to do, I'll downvote everything I dislike. I don't care what you think is good, neutral or poor content. And that's exactly the issue, I see the all feed and downvote most of the content and only upvote what I actually like, and many people do the same.

I disagree with removing downvotes..
I prefer to jump on here and browse local by New posts. I don't shoehorn myself to specific communities, I like to see what all is out there. If it's not in my interest I block the community, I don't interact with it.
But the ones I don't block I'm interested in, not enough to join because to me that takes away my intent to just browse it all. After all that's why I joined this instance, to not have to hunt down communities to subscribe to but to get it all straight from the horses mouth..
- Yeah, I totally agree. I like to see all new posts and downvote everything except the few posts that I like. If everybody did the same, and there were only a few posts that actually got upvotes after all the downvotes, then too bad for the posters. It's not like I care about how they feel after getting downvoted to oblivion, if they feel bad they can get the fuck out of here for all I care. /s
  
  The problem is that their fans will have a hard time (pun not intended :) ) to find their content if it's a niche interest.
  A downvote should be for something that crosses a line IMO. If everyone starts downvoting stuff they don't like that they see in their feed, the more niche communities get dumped into the pit and they deserve a place too. Like the top post says, just block a community you're not interested in and you won't see it anymore.

I just want to say that I think the admin here is awesome. You seem to really want to accommodate both users and posters. I decided to no longer post here because many of the users are negative. The downvotes felt awful even though I have a thick skin. That’s great they are disabled, but there are also negative comments. I have a thick skin, but I get treated better on other social media. There are great users here, but the trolls are too prominent for me. It seems like many users have high expectations yet don’t want “pros”. The stock images look like sex dolls. Idk. I just want to be treated well. Thanks for the users that supported me. There are awesome people here.
- Hey Annabelle, don't leave yet.
  I absolutly know what you are talking about. I also have had accounts on multiple platforms and agree with your assesment. Toxic and negative users all around. Whining about their "right' to downvote. For starters, from this thread its pretty obvious who the downvoters are. So i blocked them all. Those are 5 or 6 six jerks less to deal with. Dont wanna support the creators, you know the one who actually get out their comfortzone and contribute, not gonna see my content. Negative comment, blocked too.
  But i really wanna support this instance and help make it thrive. There are wonderfull people behind the screens, with good intentions. Dont give up yet, take a break sure but come back to check for progress on this issue.
  
  Thanks @Violetpsychosis@lemmynsfw.com.
  Question for you and admins here: Does blocking someone work here on LemmyNSFW work the same way now as on Reddit (i.e. they can't see any your content posts). Previously on Reddit before they made the change, blocking was only one way, which didn't work well.
- We all love you. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
  I am usually just an upvoter and do not engage in any other way. I know that a lot of people are like me.
- Hi Annabelle, Wrt negative or harassing comments, you can report them for actioning by mods/admins. I am quick to ban trolls and toxic folks who don't add value to communities, and I believe most mods would agree with me and do the same.
  
  Its not anybody specific. Maybe just a general culture. Maybe ill change my mind after i get some space

Sounds like we're only allowed to upvote and anything whatsoever that gets posted is considered valid content? So... basically just a shitty Instagram for nudes?
- Another commenter with 0 posts and 0 comments in this community complaining about not being able to downvote posts.
  and anything whatsoever that gets posted is considered valid content
  Where did you get that from? There are mods in each community who set guidelines, remove off-topic posts, remove spam, etc. If you see inactive mods in a community you can request to take over the community.
  So… basically just a shitty Instagram for nudes?
  No one is forcing you to be here. If you don't like parts of it you can submit posts, create communities, give constructive feedback to improve this place.

Fck it, I'm begining to look for a new nsfw server. Normal people need both down votes and upvotes equally. That is called freedom of opinion and a free exchange of freedom of opinions. The comunity is a comunity then it is not a walled garden of enforced hapy smiles only. If someone doesn't like getting down votes, the problem is in them, they have a chance to correct, adjust their content, but all is lost if they are just blocked. You'll lose comunity faster this way. And so, your decision to remove functionality is plain wrong. Oh, and vote me down, if you do not agree ;) you fcks.
- Its too bad that I can't downvote you lol 😅
  Our goal here is not to take away the downvote feature, believe me, but to protect the posters. Please see our good intentions.
  
  Yes 😂 you can't any more. From now on everybody will have to play a stupid game of adding aditional comments with "I don't like it", "I like it" and then upvoting one of them. That's just silly. I see your good intentions, but don't agree with the means. The only efect it will have on sorting is that the post will be counted as equaly active in both cases. Comunity will not be able to rise and drown posts to their liking.
- Says the person with 0 posts and 0 comments after 5 months.
  What have you contributed to build the community here?
  
  I've voted ;) P.S. and I have multiple accounts on several lemmy instances. This one is just for watching, voting, collecting (in favs) of nsfw. Same as I did it before on reddit. I don't mix my content between my users, that is very convenient and saves privacy.

I just want to go on record saying I do not like this change, though I do understand the good intention behind it.
It seems there was a simple and elegant solution discussed earlier in this thread - only allow downvotes of you are subscribed to the community where the post is. I know this would need to be implemented by the lemmy devs; is there someplace we can request or vote on such features? A whole tagging system may be nice, but it's overkill for this problem.
Meanwhile, genuine question, how do I hide posts that I have already seen that I would have downvoted? I have already joined a bunch of communities, and I only look at my Subscribed feed. I have lemmy set to not show me posts I've already voted on. Thus, my feed is always kept fresh, and when I log in I just see what's new in those communities to which I've subscribed.
So, now I see a post that I feel doesn't live up to the standards of a particular community. It doesn't break any rules per se, and it's not report-worthy, it's just not a good post. Normally I'd downvote and move on, and I'd never see it again. So now what do I do to ensure I don't see it every time I log in? Lemmy doesn't have a 'hide' or 'mark seen' feature (another good feature we should have), and I don't want to upvote the post because it's a bad post. I also don't want to block the poster, because their next post might be great! What do I do here?
I hate to make this post any longer, but I'll just provide an example. Within the last couple days, I saw the same post uploaded to both gonewild and to adorableporn. I upvoted the gonewild post and downvoted the adorableporn post, because at the end of the day it was a pretty average nude picture, perfectly reasonable for gonewild. But not, IMO, anything that could be called adorable. That, to me, seems like specifically the kind of situation that calls for a 'downvote and move on' response. So now how do I hide that post without blocking that user, who is otherwise posting good content?
- This is a temporary hammer solution, until we can get dev resources and attention to implement some "simple elegant" solution that quite a few others have also expressed (which begs the question, why wasn't it done then in the first place, but that's a totally different topic), and which should take your very valid use cases into account.
  Please hang in there for now.

Welp, guess the bot content and spam-posting will always rise to the top now :/
- Only if those things get upvoted. And if those things get upvoted the community probably wants to see that content. In that case it's only "spam" to you. If you don't like those people who post "spam" you can block them.
  
  Just like many downvotes come from outside a community, many upvotes do as well, so I'm not sure upvotes means that's what the community wants to see. It might make things trend to more generic which kinda defeats the whole point of separate communities...

Thanks for keeping us in the loop! While I agree that downvoting can be problematic for smaller nicher communities, I'm not a fan of removing the downvote button. I think a better option would be to remind users (in a post like this) that they can block communities whose content they don't want to see on their client
- I agree with you for the most part but the issue is with that is that because of size of this instance, pretty much all the communities here are about the size of niche reddit subs. That's why I said for the time being. In the future we may re-enable downvotes once communities grow.
  Additionally we mods and admins have expressed that we wish downvote disabling had more granularity, like limiting downvotes to those subscribed to a community or something like that so that those who are interested in something can shape their community, but unfortunately that doesn't exist at this time.
  
  I hope it works! Or, if it doesn't, it gets reverted. I've noticed a downtick in content creation (especially non redgif content) from a couple months ago. Whatever will encourage more people posting content is probably best for this instance to grow. I think the useful feedback aspect of downvoting is really attractive, especially on a nsfw (ie porn) instance. The instance is so small that it's easy to skim all posts uploaded in 24 hours in less than 10 minutes, so the idea that downvoting limits visibility of (relatively) small communities doesn't seem too relevant to this instance to me. Thanks for all your great work!

Just a reminder that it is ok to propose different solutions and also disapproval of the change here, we know this is not a perfect solution.
- I don't think recommending blocking users is a good idea. It could have effect of creating "holes" if a user posts in multiple communities. It seems best to block the community to remove the majority of content you aren't into. That way you still see a users posts in a community that you do like.
  
  Fair point

Believe me, I didn't want this decision either, but the posters were being downvoted for their posts in even accordance with the community.
Downvotes should be used for posts you don't like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don't like.
When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.
But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.

It's a sad day when something like this happens. Unfortunately with how the Lemmy's All works it's possible a huge amount of the initial downvotes are regular people not wanting to see the content, as downvotes are federated. This constituted as part of my original choices for disabling it when I started my instance. We had the gripes people are displaying here and it probably constituted to a lack in Reddthat's growth potential.
There needs to be work done not only for flairs, which I like the idea of, but for a curated All/Frontpage (per-instance). Too many times I see people unable to find communities or new content that piques their interest. Having to "wade through" All-New to find content might attribute to the current detriment as instead of a general niche they might want to enjoy they are bombarded with things they dislike.
Tough problem to solve in a federated space. Hell... can't even get every instance to update to 0.18.5 so federated moderation actions happen. If we can't all decide on a common Lemmy instance version, I doubt we can ask our users to be subjected to not using the tools at their disposal. (up/down/report).
Keep on Keeping on!
Tiff - A fellow admin.
- I very much agree with your comment, we did this as not a permanent solution, we did this as a bandaid for an issue with how lemmy works as a whole, and we plan to adjust accordingly when there are more options to fix the issue.
  
  A very good option here it would be a functionality to show two stats – a comunity members up/down votes and everybody's up/down counters. And add an aditional sort options, e.g. hot in community. This way votes could be localized usefully and used as a tool to rise best content in comunity without manual moderation, and a global functionality also wouldn't be lost.
  P.S. Someone add a ticket for lemmy developers to work on it. I'm not on their repo.

Thank you for this. I found it really discouraging to spend hours making something only for it to be downvoted immediately. I hope this will encourage more active participation now.
- Yeah I think "I don't like this" shouldn't mean a downvote if it belongs in the community. If you don't like cocks for example, then don't view c/cocks. Block it or just not subscribe to it.
  
  Just when I think all cocks have been blocked someone creates a new cock-mmunity that's even stranger. lol
  Sometimes, a NSFW post that fits the community description perfectly is just low brow trash, lacks any kind of creativity, or is a picture so poorly taken it deserves a down vote. It's not just people being petty, it often is, but not always. How does a community police itself if the only means we have are to report to a mod?

I have no problem with downvotes . I have problem with users who downvote and comment " WTF is wrong with people/ Why you degrade like this?" on a SPH community! Rules and description are on the sidebar! People see something and dont even bother to check what community they are commenting on. What I am supposed to post on SPH / Femdom comminity ? - Minnie Mouse praising them?
- Are the people writing those comments subscribed to the community you're posting in? Might also be a problem of people from the local feed commenting on those posts?
  
  Non subscribers only, but surely they can see the community name - subbed or not.

I agree with this.
Going through the comments some people say downvotes are important for ____ reason, which is actually correct. But that's not how I see it playing out.
And interestingly some comments, especially when you squint and read between the lines, actually show how people are misusing downvotes (I hope I'm not reading into it too much).
In any case when you look at how downvotes actually played out, perfectly fine posts (for their community) were being significantly downvoted. This is the right path, at least until things grow to be larger.

Just wanted to comment that I also agree with the decision. Lemmy has a lack of OC amateur porn so I really feel like anyone breaking the ice and posting their own content shouldn't receive any downvotes.

This is a great decision and I applaud the admins for listening to feedback.
Nothing worse than having your posts down voted especially by people who are submitting no posts of their own.
- I don't like your content. It is useles as nsfw on a nsfw server, cause it's is not a nsfw, just some boring celebrities default photos promoting for them not to become forgoten. Do you think I'll begin to think that your content is in the right place (server) just because you take voting down off? Shit in a wrong place is shit in a wrong place. Concurency of ideas, opinions, random content has to be free and it has to have all means of expressing those opinions and having a way to know opinions of others is esential tool.
  
  -1 toxic
  
  At least I'm posting content on here. And contributing to building a community here.
  What I'm not doing is spending 5 months downvoting everybody's posts (and making 0 of my own) then making my first comment to complain about not being able to do that anymore.
  And if you don't like the content I post then you can block it.
  
  But there are people who do like them. Just block the community and you won't see them anymore.

I agree with the decision but disagree with the reasons. And I believe a community poll should have been held before the change.
The actual reasons I think downvotes shouldn't be used are those mentioned in Is it worth having downvotes?: because it discourages people from posting content, especially if they post their own nudes and receive downvotes, and it makes the content from this instance less visible in other instances. Those two result in less content overall.
- Those are the reasons I presented, maybe I didn't word them well. As far as a community poll, well, there have been a few posts about it in different communities, including the one you linked, and discussion amongst mods for weeks. The majority of feedback from the community we've seen is that they are in favor of it.
  Edit: I've updated the post to make it more clear.

Good move, I can only upvote this decision. Jokes aside this is a good move.
The discussion is old and tired so I won't rehash it. But, I did want to vocalise my support as people are more likely to speak up about things to complain which can shift the perspective.
- But, I did want to vocalise my support as people are more likely to speak up about things to complain which can shift the perspective.
  Thank you. You are totally right with your observation.

This kinda bs is why I hate anonymous forums.
On my reddit account I had 20 followers.
At least 5 of them followed me to downvote EVERYTHING I posted. I think one of them was on some kinda macro because within minutes of me posting I'd be downvoted. EVERY TIME
up and down votes should be weighted.
You're a lurker who never up or downvotes? Finnaly see a post you upvote? That's worth 1 per day you havn't voted.
You downvote 100 posts a day? Each one of those is worth 0.01. Be a downer somewhere else.

I think it's a good change for now, prevents people feeling demotivated! Thanks for the update.

Because you don't nlike something, that does not mean others want like it, the more you downvote, the more down it goes, so people who like the content won't see it.
It's a NSFW instance, people expect to see mainly NSFW, if you don't like something, block the community that it came from, you don't have to downvote every post , day after day. I learned the hard way, that SFW posts in the community that I made, are big NO, so I stopped posting SFW.
It's a big community and people should be free to d upvote and downvote, but there are users who only downvote ! Which is not the only use of the downvote.

While not directly related related to the upvote/downvote issue mentioned, I've noticed a lot of the Lemmy nsfw posts are just...weird?
Too much AI, yiff futa stuff (I mean hey, if that's your thing, then you do you), and mildly nsfw content that looks like it was taken from a 1998 Hustler magazine.🤷🏼‍♂️
- Lemmy is a bunch of Marxist-Leninist furry Linux users. Have you not noticed?
  
  You just said 'Linux users' three different ways /s
- That's why we need a way to organize communities into different genres like softcore, hardcore, celeb, anime, etc.
  And people can pick what their default feed has
- If you would look at all of the posts from reddit nsfw subreddits then a lot if them would seem very weird to you. It just doesn't make sense to drink from the firehose of all the nsfw subreddits, would be way too many posts, you just look at your subscriptions or a specific subreddit. Because lemmynsfw is way smaller, overall post count is maybe measured in posts per hour instead posts per second, most people seem to primarily look at /all aka /local. I think the web UI also defaults to /local instead of /subscriptions, which doesn't help the issue.
  This leads to many people downvoting posts in coms that they aren't part of. The long term solution would be improvements to lemmys filtering system. Also the option to only allow voting in coms that you're subscribed to looks promising. But this needs dev time and capacity. I'm positive that downvotes will be activated again once lemmy improves for lemmynsfw's use case.

I wonder if Lemmy could/would ever get the ability for only subscribers of a community to downvote its content?
- I sure hope it does, perhaps we could develop a patch for it like with the nsfw viewing option, nothing like that exists yet though

I absolutely fuckin hate this. It's almost the equivalent of YouTube removing the dislike button.
I am leaving this account behind because of this change, which is incredibly frustrating to have to do, since I had many saved posts and I already had been blocking the communities I don't like to see rather than downvoting their posts, so I have to redo all of this on a new instance.
Downvotes are an integral part of a voting system, and are especially critical in low population environments like this. I don't care how many "likes" a post has, what matters is the up/down ratio. Now lemmynsfw has lost that.
- and are especially critical in low population environments like this.
  I would argue that downvotes are actually part of the reason why we have a low population environment in the first place. Downvotes are causing people who post to leave and not come back. There are certain categories of porn like MILF which I saw get downvoted and now that is completely absent on the website.
- I hope you'll read through the post and rest of this thread about the reasonings and temporary nature of this change until we can technically implement a longer term reasonable solution (TBD) to properly reflect your statement
  what matters is the up/down ratio
  Do you have any suggestions?

I do warmly welcome that change! Are other instances able to downvote our posts anyways, tho?
- Yes but they won't reflect on the upvotes I believe

I'm happy to hear that the overall consensus was for disabling downvotes for the time being. I don't think this is something that should be in place forever, but for now it's a step in a positive direction. I'd like to note that other instances can still downvotes posts and comments that are federated so we still might see some issues in that regard.
People seem to want to treat Lemmy as a platform exactly like Reddit, but the reality is that things just don't work the same here. There is no algorithm filtering things out in the background to ensure you have a homogenous feed and keep you engaged. It takes a little bit of work to curate your feed to be what you'd like to see and just because something is outside your personal preferences and kinks doesn't mean that it is bad.
I've seen people mention multiple times in this thread that they downvote all the "weird" stuff they don't like. All the same "weird" things exist on Reddit in their own communities, but there is a greater volume of other content posted to the point where you likely won't see it. This is a place that is starving for content and downvoting someone because they are curvier or don't like the same kind of hentai as you only dissuades people from posting anything else. You can't encourage growth by telling people to not post.
Edit: Forgot to mention that I appreciate you mods and admins! I don't envy the firestorm that this change may cause.

Thanks for giving this a shot!

As someone who likes male content as much as female content, I support this change.

I'm happy to continue posting and helping grow communities. 😊
Just highlighting a rule/advice I have on sidebar of !adorableporn@lemmynsfw.com (and applicable at any of other communities I mod)
Please don’t engage with Trolls and those being disrespectful to community/members. Report such to mods for ban action. Zero Tolerance.

It's a tricky situation with the instancing. I just filter users/subs I don't like, but with the global down votes idk. Everyone has a right to be seen, but at the same time you wanna filter the bots/spam/promotion etc.
Good luck, and hail boobies.

honestly wouldn't it make sense to defederate from every non-NSFW instance? then people would not see porn unless they come here.
- Well that would hurt our growth quite a bit, we have to strike a balance between good user experience and still being accessible otherwise this instance will just die. We will implement other solutions once they exist, but until then, this is a "happy" middle ground
- I imagine some people want their main instance account to include porn. Not how I would (and do) operate, but simplicity would be a reason.
  For example I have my phone set up with Island to duplicate my apps for porn use separately from the direct installs. It's a hassle. I can totally imagine wanting to just not bother if one's life situation allows for that.

It's now over a week and it seems things generally have improved. A lot more different posters, but niche content and OC have not increased much yet. A lot more postings of popular redgifs links by non-OC reposters.
Just some unscientific observations - based on my own posts into small niche focused communities:
more people seem to have switched to viewing own subscribed feed.
not excessive amounts of upvotes, to be expected for small communities and small number of subscribers. I want my niche communities to be small and intimate of mostly interested/engaged subscribers, not just passersbys.
some haters seem to have started abandoning LemmyNSFW (or blocked me/my comms which is totally good, as that's the way its supposed to work for stuff one has no interest in seeing)

Is there any chance of setting all the downvote numbers to zero?
It's weird seeing a post with only an upvote arrow, but with a negative reaction score.
- I don't think that's possible no, but you shouldn't see any posts with a negative reaction score anymore, only posts that existed before the change should have that

Unfortunately I can't see your guys posts except mod posts. Not sure what kind of NSFW you're posting here
- Sound like you need to enable nsfw posts in your app or in lemmy settings
  
  I can see NSFW post from other NSFW communities, except yours
  
  I tried it, and it did not work

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