I’ve been so used to judging a post just by its popularity on reddit, but it’s actually so much more useful to have an idea of the downvote ratio. I’m glad we have that here.

It was a scandal when it disappeared from YouTube, but I didn’t realize it was missing from Reddit too for much longer!

  • SpeedyCat2014@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Yes, servers can disable downvotes. Beehaw does that, for instance. I’m on lemmy.world which allows both. I prefer both because I think it helps silence bad faith participation with less active moderation, but I respect that some places don’t want it.

    • artaxadepressedhorse@lemmyngs.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      unfortunately, “bad faith” is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes I wish to very silently express my disapproval without alerting anyone that there has been disapproval. Everyone finds themselves holding a deeply unpopular/controversial opinion from time to time, bc the universe is a complex place

    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It also enables bad faith participation such as down-vote brigading.

      • BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        while that’s true, people will always find a way to be jerks. if people can’t be jerks with a downvote, they’ll express their jerkitude verbally, which is certainly worse. i just wish we could move beyond the point where a downvote (or a bunch) was enough to emotionally devastate a person-- or where people feel the need to do that to others.

        this is such a nice place now, but, then again, so was reddit in the beginning.

    • GospelofJohnny@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I’m definitely on the fence about it. I agree about the bad faith participation with downvote brigading, but I also feel that having downvotes is, overall, a good way to gauge community agreement.

      I think what I would like the most is a visible upvote/downvote percentage ratio. That way you could see not only the net upvotes - downvotes like on reddit, but the actual participation by the community.

      • UrbenLegend@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        You can see it by hovering over the counter and looking at the tooltip, but yeah having both upvotes and downvotes prominently displayed could be nice as well.