I’ve seen a good bit of debate on Kbin surrounding downvotes, so what are your thoughts? Should they exist? Should they be shown separately? Should you be able to see who downvoted?
I personally like downvotes and especially like that they’re shown separately. You’re able to get a much better idea of how people feel about something, and you can more easily express a minority opinion. Of course, there are downsides (e.g., brigades), but I think the pros outweigh the cons.
They should absolutely exist. Negative feedback is feedback, and expression of only one side of the emotional spectrum is a strange and unrealistic facsimile of actual life.
I was completely opposed when e.g. Youtube essentially removed downvotes. They’re a pretty important indicator of when someone is full of shit, even though there’s an obvious abuse potential as well. As a kbin user, I understand there’s a limited federation of downvotes. I actually think it’s nice, whether or not it’s representative of the rest of the fediverse.
I try to limit my downvotes to irrelevance, spam, intentional douchiness and bad faith participation - as far as I can figure out what’s what. At least while the community seems worth it. Unlike, for example, Reddit, where the proportion of bad faith participation was huge, and the general tone was quite hostile. I like the fediverse better.
Unlike, for example, Reddit, where the proportion of bad faith participation was huge, and the general tone was quite hostile.
Also, sometimes they downvote comments they apparently don’t understand, or can’t be bothered to read closely.
Or for fun randomly, spamming downvote functionality on every recent post (back at some subreddits on Reddit), and that sucks.
I fail to understand why people dislike them and why sites remove them.
Imagine giving a fuck about strangers on the internet disliking you…
@ThatOneKirbyMain2568 they only work if people care about it, so double edged sword.
The poster doesn’t need to care about it. Just the ones looking at the posts to see which ones are a waste of time. Hell, the algorithm might already be doing that anyways so even they don’t need to care about it.
I like the existence of downvotes. They help separate content the community has no feeling about from content the community actively dislikes.
I love that they’re shown separately. This helps separate controversial opinions from ones the community doesn’t care one way or the other about.
I like that you can see who downvoted. Looking at their profile can give some insight as to why they didn’t like the content.
They should exist.
I like having downvotes and I like being able to see who downvoted. It makes it feel more like a community.
This is community-evaluated content, and downvotes are a tool used for evaluation. So I think they make sense.
That being said, I don’t believe they should be public by default. People are nuts these days, especially online, and I don’t want to catch an online stalker or some nazi sliding aggro into my DMs because I downvoted their post.
I’m going to go against the grain and say I don’t like them - I think they can reduce quality of discussion (i.e., encouraging laziness, much easier to hit the down button than explain to someone why they’re wrong and risk getting downvoted yourself).
If we have them though I think you should be able to see who gave them out, the facelessness of it is the biggest problem.
I don’t love the idea of seeing everything anyone downvotes. It seems ripe for abuse if someone gets a little too salty.
I think there are benefits to being able to see downvotes. By looking at the posts & comments of someone who downvoted something, you can come up with an idea of why. Additionally, it can make people think more before handing out a downvote — if you know that people can check that it was you who downvoted, you’re more likely to consider whether you can actually justify your downvote.
But of course, someone could go harassing people who downvote them (e.g., in DMs), and that possibility can make people less likely to downvote at all. I think that with a good block feature, harassment from downvotes won’t be that big an issue, but there’s definitely good reason to hide who downvoted something. I don’t strongly lean either way.
(And as a side note, I really like being able to see who upvoted something as well. It’s just neat info to know tbh, especially in smaller communities.)
I agree. And I have already seen it. People going to inspect the vote history on all their own comments, then complaining that another person is going around downvoting them. Because I am exceptionally nosy, on 2 occasions I actually went to check to see if it was true. In both cases it did seem to be the case although neither downvoter was really vigorous. Like half the commenter’s recent posts were downvoted by the same person.
OTOH my understanding is that it is required in order for votes/boosts to propagate in federation. If there was a technical workaround that people felt confident in, I think it would be better hidden. For that % of people where it really just makes them crazy and they can’t resist checking.
We should have downvotes, but we also should be able to see who up- and downvoted.
If you’re on kbin you can. On whatever comment you just hit more -> activity. Although for whatever reasons the ‘upvotes’ are labeled as ‘favorites’.
Oh, I didn’t know that, thanks for the heads up.
I imagine the “favorite” name is to match with Mastodon’s favorites. Still not a huge fan of the name tho.
Taking away the anonymity of downvoting could make the people think twice before they do, I think.
I’d like them to exist but require and extra step to get to.
I want a community that values feedback. Downvotes are a form of feedback (low response effort too!) that anyone who is a part of that can choose to engage with, even people who don’t want a comment history at all. I have used them in the past to reflect on myself, and the community I was a part of as well.
They’re disabled on this instance and I prefer it that way.
A slightly different opinion: I think you should have them but not show totals anywhere, that way they can still be used to sort popular posts and comments and to filter out terrible ones, but people don’t judge the quality by the number next to it or obsess over their imaginary internet points.
I always loved sorting by controversial, so I would keep them, but not to hide them as Reddit does.
Also, I would remove the Activity button.
