what if you are only granted 1 downvote per 2 upvotes you assign-- this would have a triple effect of promoting a more positive site-wide image and make downvotes twice as meaningful while also preventing abusive brigading of users-- just a thought- is the idea even feasibly applicable?
Nah.
Nobody should care that much about fake internet points anyway.
except that it affects sorting and thus visibility-- it does matter, after all. it doesn’t even have to be 2:1 you could go 1:1 and see folks who do nothing but downvote suddenly have to engage and support growth
Then sort by New. That way you see everything regardless of the score.
oh i do… when anyone is allowed to target someone with a hundred downvotes, literally clicking through their post history to do so, just dilutes and damages the data / meaningfulness of those actions. believe that each instance has an interest in that data, whether you do or don’t.
I think if someone is sad and obsessive enough to go through a user’s post history to give a hundred down downvotes… Then they’d probably also be fine with scrolling through All and up voting two hundred posts first.
I would imagine my ratio is at least 20 upvotes per downvote, but I still wouldn’t want it throttled. A lot of my down votes are when I think something doesn’t belong in a community, and I feel like I’m contributing positively to lemmy by downvoting inappropriate or dreadful things. If they were rationed I’d be tempted to just avoid contributing to 'save them".
If there was going to be a weird rule about downvotes, I’d be more tempted to limit them to members of the communities. That way people on All don’t downvote some niche post that isn’t to their tastes but is perfect for the little community it was posted to.
so if i were to post something in ‘world news’ but there is a very clear and decisive groupthink that doesn’t allow different positions air to breathe, what then? again, that’s ‘WORLD’ news
Yeah, as far as I understand it the way that fediverse communities work is that whoever makes and moderate them get to decide what they’re for, what rules, etc. and then there’s a level of emergent culture that arises depending on what users actually engage in the community, even if it doesn’t live up to the name.
I can totally sympathise with frustration about what different communities end up being like, and being told “why don’t you make your own c/globalnews?” isn’t a simple solution. But as others have said, perhaps it’s not as bad as it feels to you right now. If you’ve been the victim of online bullying (which is what someone going through your post history and blanket down voting everything is) of course that’s going to feel awful, but the actual down votes are a very small part of the issue. Lemmy doesn’t have that many posts, so I come across loads of low (and even negative) rated posts. If there’s groupthink that leads to some of your posts being down voted to oblivion, it’s not nice to see, but plenty of folks are still seeing your posts. And when I see something in negative votes I will often check it out just to see what’s up, and sometimes it’s something dumb and awful, and sometimes it’s just a unpopular opinion. So while banning down votes might feel nicer, because it would mask all the people disliking your posts, it probably wouldn’t find lots of people who suddenly agree with you.
its just a casual suggestion, i am more curious about what it would look like- what it would do to promote a different behavior… while the stuff about being singled out and targeted is something i’ve experienced- if i were truly thrown off by that tactic, i’d leave, but i don’t see why this conversation must be about that and not the suggestion itself- do you think a system like that would work in the way i picture it? can you see any reason it would not work in a small testable environment? not looking for counseling, not trying to change the world to my preference, not on a crusade to punish people-- but it seems i’m easily caricatured as ‘caring too much’ or being ‘weak/soft’ in so many words.
I’d upvote shit I don’t care for just so I can downvote shit I dislike.
Make the ratio 2 down per up at least.
I think you obsess too much with that non-issue.
its not a huge issue, but its not a non-issue… you don’t have to be so black and white with your dismissives.
As someone on an instance without downvotes… it’s a non-issue. I don’t even think about downvotes until people start whining about them.
its not a huge issue, but its not a non-issue…
Well, it’s not an issue for me and I also think it’s a non-issue. Hopefully, you will allow me to have my own opinion on a question or should I ask for your permission first?
And btw by ‘obsessing’ I was only reacting to the fact that out of the two discussions/threads we participated in you and I in the last couple days (threads you initiated) both were about your very personal issue with people apparently heavily downvoting you. I could suggest you go back reading my answer in that first thread, but I’m starting to realize you may not want to discuss my suggestion and would rather be told you’re right. Which I think you’re not, if that was not obvious. See? I don’t need to downvote you to share the fact I don’t agree with you.
you don’t have to be so black and white with your dismissives.
Black and white? I’m not and I would even suggest that it would help (you) if you stopped making a personal attack out of any remark that doesn’t fit your narrative. Was I supposed to write a 40 pages essay to make my opinion more acceptable to you? Fine, I will do it after I read your own 40 pages.
But worry not as I won’t bother you with that ever again or with any suggestion that you would gain a lot by focusing your energy and time (think how precious time is) on things you can act upon, and learn to live with the world around you and people not being perfect (that means all of us, you and I included). If you really want to believe that fighting the ‘issue’ of Downvotes will make your life better, by all mean keep on doing it.
And be assured I did not Downvote you, and only tried to suggest you may be adventuring yourself in some kind of a dead-end and, once again, that you may be wasting some real precious time, time you will never be able to get back the day you realize you could have spend it on something worthwhile. Have a nice day.
edit: clarifications.
I don’t see how this could be enforced. There’s no requirement for each instance to run the same software ad others to require this.
As open source, someone could create a private fork and just not do it.
There could also be communities where up vote and down vote farming could occur so save them for other communities.
Now for the good news. If you were a school or uni or some other organisation, you could make your own instance and have to software changed to enforce this and not federate as the organization controls the servers used and the code on it.
it would be an interesting environment to experience… i’d be curious to see where people put their rarefied downvotes-- how they adjust their button pressing economy :P
Hmm… as an alternative, what if the weight of a given user’s downvotes on a given server were divided by the number of downvotes that user made over the last (say) week?
So for instance the downvotes of a user who downvotes a hundred posts will have a tenth the weight of a user who downvotes ten posts.
that is sort of what my notion amounts to- it creates weighting-- doesn’t prevent people from upvoting, but prevents them from obviously malicious downvote sprees. when you see someone with a lot of downvotes, it would mean something more.
Right—I was just thinking that limiting or scaling downvotes based on quantity rather than upvote/downvote ratio would address the criticism that it could be gamed with fake upvotes.
My opinion is still that Lemmy needs reactions in addition to, or instead of, voting. Voting should be reserved for “this is something that should be seen / is not interesting,” but it doubles as “I dis/agree with this”. It’s ambiguous. Lemmy needs reactions – Github is a good model.
The real problem with having only voting and not reactions is that ambiguity. When someone makes a comment that I think is interesting and well thought-out, but I don’t agree with… do I upvote it? I think it is worth reading, but I don’t want to imply I agree with it. Same with posts: “Donald Trump orders the execution of all homeless people.” On the one hand, I want to upvote the fuck out of that because it needs to be seen and bubbled-up by the algorithm; on the other hand, I don’t want to imply that I agree with it.
Reddit used to always preach this: upvote content that needs to be seen, not based on agreement – although it never worked out that way, because people want a way to express their opinion about a post or comment. If voting is the only mechanism for expressing dis/agreement, that’s what it’ll be used for. If Lemmy had reactions, then it’d allow people a fast way to express their opinions about comment without having to resort to voting, or in banal responses that don’t contribute anything to the conversation.
If I could make one change to Lemmy, I’d get rid of voting altogether, and just have reactions. You can still sort: there are obviously positive and negative reactions (thumbs-up/down), and most reactions can probably be grouped into one of three categories: positive, negative, and neutral. You don’t need to support all emojis; again, Github is a good model. You have a half-dozen or a dozen choices, each of which falls into one of the three categories. The current sorting by vote could be done by subtracting negatives from positives; maybe you add the neutrals to the positives, because if someone bothered to react, it probably counts as being worth sorting up. That’s a debatable detail, though, not a blocker. But so often I see a comment where I just want to say, “I agree with this” without implying that it’s worthy of sorting up; or I want to say “you need to see this” without implying that I agree with the content. My current choices are: upvote or downvote with an ambiguous implication, or a reply saying “This!” that only muddies the thread.
Voting is ambiguous, and limited, and easily abused. It should be tossed out and replaced with reactions – or at the very least added to supplement voting. Then I could at least upvote important news to get it to the front page, but add a thumbs-down to show I don’t like it.
well there’s the implementation angle-- i would think one is a lot more complicated to put together than another- naturally i prefer my idea and you prefer yours, but there is elegance in simplicity and it could be a place to start- no reason both ideas can’t be explored.
Then just let the poster change the votes or remove the downvote
This just results in random upvotes for folks that want to up their downvote tank. I would love to see whats happening with trust cafe to get federated but im not sure what their plans are. The thing im refering to is 0-100 rating system where everything defaults to 50 until the user decides to rate it. Essentially 0 is block and 100 is subscribe.
Ooooh! We’re doing alternatives! Oh boy!
Okokokok: so, you get one vote point every week for every comment or post that has a net positive of upvotes by other subscribed users in the community. Every net negative post or comment loses a point. You can use those votes either for an up or down, in any community, but you have a balance reflected by your positive contributions as determined by your peers.
This is a horrible idea in many ways, but also a great idea in some ways:
Positives:
- New accounts have very little voting power. Established users have voting power proportional to their positive contribution to their communities, as determined by their peers.
- It would stop the practice of creating a throw-away accounts only for the purpose of harassing via voting. It would require an extra step of creating a post or comment that at least one other user upvotes. If a user used one of their other accounts just to upvote a comment by another of their accounts, it’s a zero-sum game: they’ve spent a vote just to get a vote.
- Established, positive commenters and posters would have proportionate voting power.
- It would encourage constructive, positive engagement.
- It’s entirely relative to the community, and would encourage content relevant to and popular with that community.
Negatives:
- Established, positive commenters and posters would have proportionate voting power. This would in theory be encouraging an oligarchy, although since voting is post-scarcity, and since voting is one-time per account, it can’t really be translated into exercise-able “power.”
- It would encourage constructive, positive engagement. In other words, it’d discourage dissent or unpopular opinions, reinforcing the echo chamber.
- It’s entirely relative to the community, and would encourage content relevant to and popular with that community. Same as above: it encourages pandering.
- Someone could still have bot accounts that only have to post or comment such that they have a net positive “income,” and then can just sit there and accrue voting points over time, accumulating enough points to still perform voting harassment.
- It’s biased against lurkers; some people aren’t social, and shouldn’t be punished for it. This would take away their voices.
I think some of the negatives could be addressed; e.g., vote accrual only happens for comments or posts that are under a month old: you can only accrue a max of 4 points per post or comment. This would address the first and fourth negative. However, I don’t think anything could resolve the echo chamber, or the other negatives. Anyway, there’s my bad idea.
twitter has something like this that hides you away until you’re ‘established’ by reposting and following x users… ostensibly to curb botting-- it feels shitty though and could drive a lot of users away.
Yeah. It’s a crappy idea, and I hate it. We’re trying to fix the wrong problem.
Or what if we had a limit of ten of each a day?
yeah, there’s all sorts of interesting ways to take it- i’m sure they each have their own merits and pitfalls… i once dreamed of a social media site where you could only POST one thing per day :P what that would do to the quality and length and decisions related to topic… but that would promote more botting
