I just disabled scores (upvotes and downvotes) and I think it's great!
It's freeing in a way, I don't have to do any extra processing in my head, and I can just see the posts and comments for what they are. You should try it too!
No dice, looking at the scores on recent comments I've made is how I microdose dopamine.
I’ve had downvotes disabled for over a year now. If someone takes issue with something I said, they can come and tell me directly - a downvote on its own carries next to no value, so I don’t even want to see it.
I suppose you could make the same argument for upvotes too, and I wouldn’t be opposed to hiding those from everyone either. But in my case personally, I don’t see any downside to them. It’s good to know that there are at least a handful of people who agree with my views. The main issue with visible upvotes on social media in my view is that it encourages saying stuff just for the applause. There's a ton of people here whose entire comment history is just snarky one-liners.
My whole instance has downvotes disabled, because of exactly this.
I never looked at or considered uovotes and downvotes, so, who cares if they are enabled or disabled.
You don't need confirmation from strangers online to feel confident...
It might be the case for you, but other people might be impacted differently.
Giving people the choice is good.
Not sure if other UIs have similar granularity, but in Tesseract you can also:
It's quite nice and refreshing indeed. I did it for a while, but then reactivated them to check how the posts I was making were doing in terms of visibility.
Definitely something that less active posters can do!
I'll have to figure out where to do that, it sounds like what I'm looking for. (Edit: Well, that was easy. Found it in the settings. Love that it's so simple.) I finally decided to let my reddit account drift off into the void a couple weeks ago, it was really hurting my mental health. I'd had the account for over 10 years and have high 6-figure post and comment karma, but like... I recognize that doesn't really mean anything, but the way it's gamified, whenever I'd make a controversial post or say something stupid or wrong and get even -1 karma, it'd ruin my day in a serious way. I felt tied to the platform, like I constantly had to "perform".
I was getting kinda lonely after leaving, since I also don't really have any social media outside an instagram that I just post my photos on, which is when I stumbled across Lemmy. I am feeling really nostalgic for the old days of forums, but sadly it seems outside super niche communities, forums are dead.
Anyway, very long story short, I'm a reddit castaway looking to just chill and talk with a smaller community of strangers for a bit. This casual conversation community seems nice.
I’ll have to figure out where to do that
If you are using something like a third-party client (may be an Android/IOS app that you use to access lemmy), it depends on the app.
If you use lemmy from a website, i.e the official https://lemm.ee/ site, you can navigate to your settings and disable it, just click on the settings button:
then scroll down and find these:
Edit: I see you've found it, Welcome to lemmy!
Thanks for the detailed response! I'm really looking to keep Lemmy as no-frills as possible to try and prevent myself from getting addicted to something again. The default web skin and interface is pleasantly bland, I'm liking it so far.
Welcome here!
!newtolemmy@lemmy.ca and !communitypromo@lemmy.ca have a few pointers to help you settle in.
I recognize that doesn’t really mean anything, but the way it’s gamified, whenever I’d make a controversial post or say something stupid or wrong and get even -1 karma, it’d ruin my day in a serious way.
Seems like you made the right decision by leaving it behind. Welcome :)
It sounds like Mastodon is more the experience you're looking for. The votes are integral to a service like Lemmy and it's a weird sentiment
On Mastodon, stars and reblogs are basically the same as votes. I agree that they're not integral to using Mastodon, but I don't think they really are to Lemmy, either. The discussion is what makes Lemmy, Lemmy.
I LOVE your username lol
nooo you're gonna make the downvote bullies feel all powerless, how could you!
Anyway, since this topic is back on let me get back on my soapbox:
comment score should be hidden by default, while the algorithm still works behind the scenes. This prevents dogpiling and karmafarming (even though karma doesn't do shit on Lemmy, but this could change in the future I guess) and would make for a more comment-centric experience instead of vote-centric.
I fully agree with this. There is no reason except for hive minding to have scores enabled by default.