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Be a better ~~lemming~~ Motorhead

One of the things that sets Lemmy, and the collective fediverse apart from other platforms is its community. Recently, there’s been a large influx of new users (myself included; thus I apologize if this is not the right location for this post). A toxic trait associated with other platforms is the incorrect use of the downvote. Historically, this function was used to hide comments that detracted from the conversation; however, next to no one uses it as intended, and it’s primarily used as a I disagree with you button.

I don’t think we’ll ever change how the downvote is used now - it’s current use is too entrenched. Instead, I suggest that rather than just downvoting and moving on with something you disagree with, that users expand on why they disagree with the post or comment. Not only does this generate more content, but it also can take the conversation into new areas and offer new perspectives that the OP had not considered. You might even actually change a mind or two by doing so, thus bringing people around to see your side of the coin. Commenting (with civility) on stuff you don’t agree with is beneficial on all fronts. It promotes discussion, and it offers new perspectives. It also minimizes the likelihood of echo chambers forming. That last bit is what I’ve come to value here the most. Other sites are just massive echo chambers where there’s a rote response or opinion. This creates a stale environment for users, and deters people from commenting. Why comment, when you know what the answer will be, or that you’ll be jumped on at the first word of disagreement with the entrenched opinion?

But what if I don’t have time to comment to support my downvote? Simple - don’t downvote unless the item you’re downvoting truly detracts from the conversation (as per the functions original intent).

I realize this is a bit of a rant/ramble, but I think by actively putting more effort into our comments and downvotes, we can make lemmy an even richer community than it already is.

Thanks for taking the time to read,

  • Shovel
mo_ztt ,
@mo_ztt@lemmy.world avatar

So one thing I’ve noticed that I like quite a lot about Lemmy is that heavily downvoted comments still seem to show up when they’re embedded into a comment chain. I’ve had conversations here where I am accumulating 5-10 downvotes per comment, and it’s fine; everyone can still talk to me, I can still talk to everyone, yes I register your disapproval, but I still get to converse.

Track_Shovel OP ,

That’s the thing though. If they downvote and move on, then they aren’t adding anything to the conversation. If they downvoted, and then said why, it would spur more discussion. That’s all I’m getting at in this post. By talking about differences in opinion with civility in mind, we avoid echo chambers and all the other negative shit that goes with it.

Scew ,
@Scew@lemmy.world avatar

Lol, I tested this out live. Most people still like to ‘disagree button and run.’ I think it comes from the ‘debate me bro’ atmosphere that seemed prevalent on Reddit. A lot of folks would rather just show they disagree than expose their logic on why. This trend can then be manipulated by bots to strengthen the ‘unspoken disagreement’ with opinions that don’t jive with whatever agenda they’ve been created to support. And rather than talking out disagreements a lot of them devolved into ‘then just leave.’ Or even more venomously as ‘this community will be better when you’re gone.’ ^.^

Track_Shovel OP ,

think it comes from the ‘debate me bro’ atmosphere that seemed prevalent on Reddit

Fuck, seriously, tell me about it. I hated that part of reddit so much. Pedantic narcissists.

I agree with everything you said in your comment.

Nougat ,

I once had some knob trying to argue to me that "god is real" because "the Incas believed the sun was a god, and the sun is real."

everythingsucks ,

This comment to me is a perfect example of something that doesn’t add anything to the conversation. But should I downvote it or ignore it and it possibly branches off into another conversation about “lol Christians”?

Xylinna ,
@Xylinna@lemmy.world avatar

Another contributing factor is that as we have seen in media, especially in politics, if you try to present evidence to contraindicate or provide a different perspective folks will just put their fingers in their ears and talk louder. It can be very exhausting and sometimes it is not worth the effort.

Scew ,
@Scew@lemmy.world avatar

It can be very exhausting and sometimes it is not worth the effort

Don’t forget to include the list of Counterarguments^TM^ that spews out after their fingers are safely in their ears.

Xylinna ,
@Xylinna@lemmy.world avatar

The mental image this create just made me snort. Would make a fantastic political cartoon.

starlinguk ,
@starlinguk@kbin.social avatar

Bigots don't get the fun of a debate. It's "downvote and run" for prats like that.

Scew ,
@Scew@lemmy.world avatar

Who needs understanding when we can just spin everyone into cartoons?

mo_ztt ,
@mo_ztt@lemmy.world avatar

Yah I definitely agree with your main point, just bringing up one other area where I see Lemmy working better. I actually really liked the way Slashdot used to do it, where it made you categorize why you were upvoting or downvoting (“interesting” “insightful” “offtopic”) etc. Obviously you weren’t required to fall into their categories, and you could still just downvote stuff you disagreed with, but it at least made it a little more explicit that you were ignoring the system’s intent when you did that. I know many reddit communities used their CSS to limit downvotes or pop up a little warning when you hovered over the button, trying to accomplish the same type of thing.

rikonium ,

I believe this approach to be vulnerable to Sea Lions since “debating” facts with someone not tethered to, or respecting of reality is a lesson in futility since the time/effort wasted is the goal.

Track_Shovel OP ,

sea lions

That’s an amazing analogy. I love it.

jaydev ,
@jaydev@lemmy.world avatar

I had to think about it for some time. Then I imagined arguing with a barking sea lion. :)

TheAndrewBrown ,
@TheAndrewBrown@lemmy.world avatar

In these cases, I give them the benefit of the doubt and try to provide a rational argument why I disagree with them. It either sparks a discussion/debate or they’re obviously trolling and I downvote and move on. But some people that seem like trolls are really just ignorant and showing them why you disagree can help them shape their opinion.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

While I agree with the idea of everyone getting the opportunity to be heard and form an opinion, I disagree with your rationale.

relevance to a conversation is a subjective and decided on the fly depending upon how much you know about a subject you or how well you understood what someone was saying.

How someone communicates is defined even more subjectively with more unique flare, accents, lingo, etc which can further obfuscate intended meaning.

Etc etc. idk why we’re trying to categorize and make point systems for fucking everything. I would much rather have a comment section with a sort by controversial button to see where the most “debate” is going on rather than trying to prioritize one comment over another. The bulk of the post is the information, the comments are for communication and discussion and shouldn’t be taken as factual or anything other than subjective anyway.

Track_Shovel OP ,

While I agree with the idea of everyone getting the opportunity to be heard and form an opinion, I disagree with your rationale.

See, Lemmy, we can do it! this guy did it right here!

idk why we’re trying to categorize and make point systems for fucking everything.

honestly. Yay internet capitalism? Humanity must be sum zero.

stevedidWHAT ,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

I think that’s a bit too pessimistic also, it’s quite common for man to use quantifiable means to assign value, seems like a no brainer statement but…

If we put our “value” on things that are countable rather than their utility then it’s no wonder we’re left with quantity over quality.

25 counts of votes is no different from having 25 soldiers in your army. It doesn’t actually reflect qualitative value, only quantitative value.

Idk man it’s a tough problem. When we make judgments of something, it seems like we must condemn the others or put them in a placement that is inferior to others which makes it inherently vulnerable to inaccuracies, bias, etc.

Are we better off filtering the chaos as it comes in or searching for what we want within it?

TawdryPorker ,

Another thing to note is that downvotes are, in effect, public. One hopes that this will have a chilling effect upon individuals and groups who have been gaming the karma/visibility system over on reddit for years.

Track_Shovel OP ,

The other thing that I appreciate about this community, is that it effectively doesn’t really track karma/visibility. Yeah, my comment got 300 upvotes - what a rush. I can’t ‘build’ an entire identity online because of how many upvotes I’ve got though.

Nougat ,

Downvotes used to be public on reddit, too. They changed that, and further "fuzzied" the visible total vote count, because reporting those numbers perfectly accurately and publicly made it easier for astroturfers and spammers to game the system. They were able to see the effects of their sneaky efforts, which helped them identify what worked and what didn't, which then allowed them to know which sockpuppet accounts were shadowbanned in some way.

bbsm3678 ,

Thanks for sharing this! As a new lemmy user I did not know this. The page you linked to says any admin in the federated universe has access to this information. What’s to stop someone from making their own server to get access to this information?

TawdryPorker ,

If you’re able to follow instructions then you can set up a server. For the purposes of this conversation then, as things stand, anybody is allowed to set up a server and then an instance and then see that data.

mremugles ,
@mremugles@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think that this is the correct way to address this problem. While I agree that downvotes shouldn’t be used indiscriminately, simply urging people to use it in another form isn’t going to do much. If people were better, the world would be better. The problem is that people aren’t better, and so we have the problems at hand.

I don’t know, I think a systemic approach to problems is usually a better way to a solution. Just to give a quick idea, which might be a bad one at that, I think that Lemmy could, by default (with the option to toggle the option), ask the user to give their opinion whenever they downvote. It’s simple and small, but could be the push that people need to actually engage in conversation rather than lazily pressing good and bad buttons. I’m not sure it would work, but I think it’s a step ahead of simply yelling to people “Be better!” and expecting things to change. Just my two cents, though.

Track_Shovel OP ,

Another commentator mentioned that this used to be built into slash dot. Downvoters were given a default list to choose from (with option to expand upon) why they were downvoting.

In the meantime, my shitty little plea to the fediverse is all I got; a mouse fart trying to shift the path of a cultural hurricane

Windex007 ,

To follow on from the last commenter:

As the creator of a major subreddit, I can say that the collective masses can absolutely not be swayed from whatever the zeitgeist is… ESPECIALLY if the action is secret.

So, with that: since Lemmy is free and open source, I think bringing that discussion and possibly systemic solutions there (GitHub?) Would be the most practical way to affect tangible change.

Part of the solution might be to just accept that behaviour, and instead focous on how to mitigate the practical effects. User downvotes without corresponding comments maybe don’t effect the “net upvottedness”. Maybe sorting options that don’t include downvoting at all. If the concern is how naked downvotes affect visibility, maybe the resolution is in the visibility algorithms themselves.

HopperMCS ,

Yeah, I think that would be a good way to start. It may exacerbate flamewars, however.

rosatherad ,
@rosatherad@kbin.social avatar

I didn't find it very hard to change how I downvoted comments. Of course what counts as contributing to a conversation is subjective, but I don't think that should stop people from using it to decide whether to upvote or downvote. I downvote low effort comments, inflammatory comments, rude comments, and comments that spiral into tangents about unrelated topics. I upvote comments using my own judgement to encourage healthy discussions where people contribute differing ideas. I may not agree with every comment I upvote.

OutrageousUmpire ,

One thing that helps here is that I can see exactly how many upvotes and how many downvotes a post/comment has, instead of an aggregated amount. It adds a level of responsibility, I think?

Also if you don’t like it, there are instances like Beehaw that don’t even allow downvotes.

Track_Shovel OP ,

Solar punk is experimenting with their return, or at least considering it. I don’t have much of an opinion, provided that context is provided, or at least they are used as originally intended.

Scum ,

Agree. And I’ll add that part of the reason I lurked Reddit for so long was getting downvoted for no known reason. I know I shouldn’t care, and some people are just inconsiderate, but could you imagine how that would be IRL? Imagine you’re at a party where people are chatting and laughing, you try to get in to the conversation and say something relevant or funny. One person looks at you coldly and gives you a thumbs down and the rest of them shrug and continue talking. Fucking ouch. At least tell me why, or maybe pause for a sec you’re having a knee-jerk reaction and consider your motive, and desired outcome.

Track_Shovel OP ,

I’m pretty sure I have this reoccurring nightmare.

fiofiofio ,
@fiofiofio@kbin.social avatar

Counterpoint: a lot of people on Reddit complain about “you’re just downvoting because you disagree with me” when they’re being downvoted for spreading misinformation, being unnecessarily hostile or condescending or holier-than-thou, posting blatant dogwhistles, or sealioning.

I’d rather see people in general take a step back and stop taking downvotes so personally. You will get downvoted sometimes. It’s not always an ideological attack.

Bishma ,
@Bishma@social.fossware.space avatar

Disagree with me if you want but I think we should be referred to as Motorheads.

Track_Shovel OP ,

How the hell do I upvote you more? That’s an amazing perspective.

xc2215x ,

Downvoting is fine if you disagree but not just for the sake of it.

yip-bonk ,
@yip-bonk@kbin.social avatar

On that other post about downvoting yesterday, I was told it is specifically NOT fine to downvote if one disagrees. Which is precisely how I’m used to using it.

I disagree with that interpretation, but, y’know, I didn’t downvote it. Because - ?

norgur ,
@norgur@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

You know those discussions that go further down, so get less and less votes because ppl don’t read the whole damn thing, until they become a back and forth between two people? Remember how many of those end on a single post with 0 upvotes. I hate those. I hate when the Downvote is only used to express “I have nothing to say, but I vaguely disagree”-downvotes.

Roggie ,

I think downvoting to say “I disagree with this is valid in certain cases,” like when u/spez says some stupid shit. Or when bigotry pops up, I don’t want to engage with racism or bring more viewers to it. I want to downvote and move on.

Roggie ,

Edit; should be “I disagree with this” is valid in certain cases, …

inverimus ,

I will just downvote and move on with things that I don’t really want to see in a community like low effort posts. Also, if there is already a good response on why some post is wrong I will just add votes since adding my own reply doesn’t add much.

Zathras , (edited )

Agreed. I only downvote if the comment is truly offensive, purposely unhelpful, or an obvious troll. Unfortunately, as you mentioned, old habits are hard to change. Everyone will have different opinions, and communities are a means of expressing them. As a whole, I believe the fediverse is trying to foster healthier conversations than other social media platforms which often encourage toxicity.
Thank you for bringing this subject matter to light.

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