Ok, I get it: the majority of users on Lemmy are browsing by “all”, which puts a lot of content on their feeds that they are not interested in. I’ve already got in many arguments to try to explain this is kind of absurd and everyone would be better off if they went to curate the communities they are interested in. But I also understand that this feels a bit like saying “you are holding it wrong”.

But can we at least agree to a guideline to not downvote things in communities you are not an active participant, or at least a subscriber? Using downvotes to express “I don’t like this”, “I don’t care about this”, or “I disagree with this” is harmful to the overall system. It’s not just because you don’t like a particular topic that you should vote it down, because it makes it harder for the people that do care about it to find the post.

Downvotes should be used as a way for us to collective filter out “bad” content, but what constitutes “bad” content is dependent on the context and values of the community. If you are not part of the community in question, then you are just using up/down votes as a way to amplify/silence the voice of majority/minority. By downvoting in communities you don’t participate, you end up harming the potential of smaller communities to grow, and everyone’s feed gets dominated only by the popular/lowest-common-denominator type of content.

Instead of downvoting, a better set of guidelines would be:

  • If you don’t care about the post, leave it alone.
  • If you don’t want to see content from a specific community, just block it.
  • If the content is actual spam and/or not according to the rules of the community, report it.

Another thing: don’t forget that votes are public. Lemmy UI has a very handy feature for moderators that shows everyone who upvotes/downvotes any post or comment. I’m tired of posting content to different communities and be met of a pour of non-subscribers on the downvote side. Yeah, I think we should make some improvements in the software side to have a more flexible rule system for scoring downvotes, but until such a thing does not exist, I’m seriously considering creating a “Clueless Downvoters Wall of Shame” community to mention every user that I see downvoting without a strong reason for it.

  • CTDummy@lemm.eeEnglish
    611·
    9 months ago

    If I can see it and I view it as bad content it’s getting downvoted. Especially since such content usually is inflammatory political post from niche politic subs that have no problem espousing their politics in a “either you agree with us 100% or you’re wrong/the enemy”. The rest of the time it’s weird fetish porn.

    I browse by all because it’s a good way to see communities/content I wouldn’t otherwise see if I stuck to a curated community list. Not being part of the community doesn’t matter because I’m still seeing the content and still behaving consistent with using the downvote button to collectively filter it out.

    I think a better option is these communities opting for the post not to get sent to all. Which won’t happen because a lot of previously mentioned post; the target isn’t the community who already likely agree with them, it’s everyone else. Better yet these communities could implement rules against post that are clearly inflammatory/flaming but then where would they grandstand?

      • CTDummy@lemm.eeEnglish
        7·
        9 months ago

        Yeah that does suck but unfortunately people using downvote as a disagree button was a problem on reddit despite the guidelines against doing so. So the same people would likely ignore OPs suggested guideline too. Again, I wouldn’t consider that bad content and not in the criteria for my prior post. Though it does make me wonder if lemmy has implemented vote fuzzing if it’s getting downvotes that quickly? Most likely people are just dicks though. My previous partner was a vegan so I am unfortunately familiar with people getting offended by them just existing.

          • CTDummy@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            9 months ago

            Fair, my point was not everyone downvoting things when they aren’t in a community is because they don’t like it. Good news, some instances have implemented “show upvotes only” so the displayed count is unaffected by downvotes. So you’ve already got a means/precedent to do so.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
            2·
            9 months ago

            Hm, that may be the instance owners only, I know I have a “View Votes” option, but I’m an admin. Would be a good thing for mods if they don’t, I know my communities get a lot of trolling and I keep tabs on them.

            • hamid@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              9 months ago

              Interesting, thanks for that and what you do to make the fediverse a success!

              I really would like to migrate my communities to my own instance now that I understand how this all works. I think the big change of understanding is that no single instance is reddit replacement but that the communities are subreddit replacements and it would be better to have communities on small well maintained instances all federated with each other than having a massive instance like .world. I’m grateful for Ruud and his team for setting it all up and am not criticizing anyone, just how I understand the architecture to work best.

              • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
                2·
                9 months ago

                That’s exactly what I thought too, that’s why my instance is poptalk.scrubbles.tech, on Reddit we had several communitise based around pop music and I figured rather than just spamming .world and .ml with them that it’d be better to have an instance around them (especially because of the trolling around these communities). Plus with federation then it’s just easier, if X defeds from Y I’m out of the drama because I can fed/defed from anyone I want.

    • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      I think a better option is these communities opting for the post not to get sent to all.

      Is this even an option? If it is, it must be fairly hidden. I’ve certainly never been prompted to not send a post to /all when creating a post.

      I also don’t think this is a good solution, as it would further stifle the growth of small communities.

    • rglullisOPAEnglish
      616·
      9 months ago

      I put some examples on another comment: I’m talking about the most inane, sports-related posts.

      Also, if you think that your policing is going to help the other communities you think are “bad”, then why not just block the posters or the whole community and solve the problem once and for all?

      • CTDummy@lemm.eeEnglish
        121·
        9 months ago

        I don’t view inane content as bad. So that rules me out for that case.

        Me using functionality of a website in its intended fashion isn’t “policing”. I usually do that afterwards if it’s bad enough but usually a sub has to have a pattern of doing it before I filter it. I know sport subs that were just match/race titled would cop downvotes on reddit, which again sounds like an issues better addressed by the community it’s being posted too.

        • rglullisOPAEnglish
          811·
          9 months ago

          Look, I’m upvoting you here because you are at least trying to have an open conversation about the post. I don’t even necessarily agree with you, but I don’t think your post is something that should be silenced or pushed away from view of other people.

          On the other hand, you:

          • downvoted this post
          • started your argument based on an incorrect assumption.
          • accepted that some people end up misusing the voting system
          • did not retract your downvote

          Do you see the problem here?

          • CTDummy@lemm.eeEnglish
            91·
            9 months ago

            I appreciate the first part of your comment and the overall candour. However:

            1. Which post? Because I only downvoted the OP because you essentially imply all people downvoting content In communities they aren’t in are doing so because they just don’t like it. I’m asserting people sometimes do with reason, like the flaming I mention. Also the OP isn’t really asking a question(imo), it’s stating your views with the question in the title as a means to do so. The rest, even you disagreeing with me I have not.
            2. What assumption? My initial reply is explaining why people may downvote content when they aren’t in the community in cases outside the ones you’ve provided.
            3. I don’t see how this is worth mentioning that I accept the reality that people don’t use vote mechanisms as they’re intended? Edit: if this is in regards my sports post on reddit remark that was me essentially saying “yeah sometime people don’t use it correctly which sucks” not “deal with it”. Though again said communities could avoid it by not allowing post that are just match titles etc.
            4. Why would I when my issues with the OP still stand? Edit 2:
            5. Definitely not advocating for downvoting content you just don’t like. For me content I don’t like doesn’t means it’s inherently “bad”. Bad for me means inflammatory, trolling, rule breaking, low effort etc.
            6. The one vote against OP is offset by my upvotes of your other comments and engagement with the post; and is likely weighing it up more than down at this point.
            • rglullisOPAEnglish
              411·
              9 months ago

              So you are downvoting because you disagree with something, or because you don’t like how I phrased it.

              You really don’t see that is exactly (part of) the problem I am describing?

              My point is: the votes on a post are not a poll. Downvoting the post does not work as a way to signal you object to the content. By downvoting my post, you are just trying to silence this conversation down and make it harder to reach other people that might be interested in it.

              • CTDummy@lemm.eeEnglish
                71·
                9 months ago

                I mean if you want me to be specific then unfortunately I can do so. It’s more than I just disagree with you. It’s that I think your reasoning in the OP is very flawed and misrepresents the situation you are attempting to portray. Which felt dishonest initially but given your attempts to engage people who disagree I now assume misguided, sorry to say. Also I think people stating their views under the pretence of a question should be discouraged due to proximity behaviours like concern trolling (not implying that’s what you’ve been doing, just an example). Lastly, I super strongly oppose being shown content on a site like this that I can’t interact with. For your case it may make sense but I can super easily see it being abused by the cases in my example; where people can grandstand shitty politics(again as an example) but then the onus is on me for some reason to not engage with said content.

                • rglullisOPAEnglish
                  38·
                  9 months ago

                  I’m a proposing a guideline, not a law. I don’t want to forbid you from doing anything. I’m just saying “hey, Lemmy doesn’t have any type of recommendation engine based on your voting history, so maybe consider the context of the community where the post is coming from before voting on whatever it is?”

                  If you think that you are gaining anything by voting “shitty politics”, ok. You do you. But when there are people saying “our non-english community has a bunch of downvotes from english-speaking people”, and you understand that this might be an issue, perhaps it would be a nice gesture if you voted this up to help this message reach others?

                  • CTDummy@lemm.eeEnglish
                    4·
                    9 months ago

                    That’s fine and I’m saying that it is not a good idea to do so. I had figured my providing you with examples how intended voting behaviour can violate your proposed guideline would demonstrate that. Non English communities getting downvoted for… not being English is not intended or desired behaviour and deserves a more direct fix than a guideline.

                    No because that has nothing to do with why I downvoted the OP. Also, as I pointed out in an edit, my engagement with this post has likely driven it up in this specific instance anyway. Even if it doesn’t this went from being engaged by 2-3 people to a lot more real quick despite the OP largely neutral votes for the first hour, and now being -10 so clearly it doesn’t just drop the post off the face of the planet due to downvoting and probably other factors are considered.

                    Anyway, throughout this I’ve done my best to address every point you’ve brought up. Yet I’ve had multiple questions, some even asking for clarification, go ignored. So I think now is probably a good time for the old “agree to disagree”.

      • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
        12·
        9 months ago

        Perhaps it’s because they think there are too many of them in the all feed?

        This is a guess, I don’t use the all feeds so I haven’t seen any of them.

        • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          Perhaps it’s because they think there are too many of them in the all feed?

          That’s not the fault of the all feed. That’s the fault of the user for either not subscribinng to communities they are interested in or not blocking communities they are disinterested in.

        • rglullisOPAEnglish
          49·
          9 months ago

          Either people browse by all because there is not enough content in the communities to follow, or there is already “too many” of the things that they don’t want to follow on all, and they should start curating their feed by browsing their subscribed communities.

          Which is it? You can not have it both ways.

          • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
            32·
            9 months ago

            You are trying to enforce rationality on inherently irrational humans. It’s not going to work.

            • rglullisOPAEnglish
              42·
              9 months ago

              It’s even worse, because I’m not enforcing anything. I can not enforce it. I am saying “The current way of doing things seems bad. How about trying something different?” and instead of trying to take a look, people are responding by doing exactly the bad things that they deny to exist.