Currently downvotes are enabled on a trial basis, this was done by me to see if they can be enabled to prevent spam from rising to the top of communities, along with the fact that is another form of interaction/feedback.
However I’ve gotten some pushback for this and so I’d like to see the general consensus of this decision. Please put any comments/concerns in this thread, and please vote here: https://forms.gle/zqDxemJCiTAXJi5i9
the results of this poll and the comments will determine if we keep or remove downvotes again
Probably about a week, just to make sure everyone is able to see the poll
A poll isn’t a good way to decide this. Regular posters suffer from downvotes more than others, and they drive our community. Their opinion should count for more.
Currently three regular posters have complained about it:
Yes I definitely understand that, that’s why the comments here and the poll are being taken into consideration
To be quite frank, I don’t know why you’re even doing this. We had a discussion about it last year and all the same points were raised after which you turned them off, only to turn them on and have another debate a few weeks later and you then had to turn them off again. I think you know that you will probably have to turn them off again at some point. So how about you level with us, what is it about downvotes that you find so compelling?
The stated reason is spam. We’ve been getting a lot of that recently, so I get admins are looking for a way to deal with it. But the spam is being upvoted, so I don’t think it’s working.
Yeah this time spam. This is admin Yay talking about it last year:
https://lemmynsfw.com/post/4962186
Then he said this a few months later:
https://lemmynsfw.com/post/7152586
“Annoyed by the lack” and “:/” sounds like the admins just want downvotes. Well, it is their instance and they will have what they want.
Downvotes can be a useful tool to shape a community, the issue comes in when several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in. Which is one of the main issues brought up here.
It may seem very clear to you that “no one” wants downvotes, but as an admin I get complaints for basically every decision made on this site, so what is the “right” choice is sometimes hard to determine. I’ve been getting complaints about downvotes being disabled for awhile now, so it wasn’t clear to me. Even now, the opinion is still very split. Which is why I enabled them quietly to see if it would cause any issues. It did, so I made this post to see if people think the issues created by downvotes outweigh the benefits, and what peoples’ other opinions about them are.
This is my opinion based on what I’ve read and the results of the poll: I think at a later time when lemmynsfw is larger, downvotes may be viable, especially if lemmy implements a custom home feed so that not everyone sees the same posts. This would help mitigate the issue of people not in communities downvoting posts. But as it stands, I’m leaning towards disabling them again. Frequent posters, which are kind of needed for this site to survive, don’t seem to like them, and the poll is split almost 50/50. I have to try to balance enjoyability of posting and enjoyability of consuming content on the site, and it just seems like downvotes really hurts posters and only marginally helps consumers.
I’m leaving the poll up for a few more days and am going to continue to read the comments, but, if nothing changes, that’s probably what’s going to happen.