I came from Reddit where they definitely did matter. They don’t seem to hold any real weight here. Is this true for some or all instances? If they don’t matter, what are they for?
I treat them differently than on Reddit. I upvote content that I want other people to see.
Bc there are different ways to sort your feed, I want to highlight content that adds value to whoever else’s might log on later, even when I might not like it (news for example).
On Reddit, upvotes/Karma were indicative of your value as a poster to that community. They are more like Facebook likes/dislikes for algorithm purposes.
On Lemmy, I see that as the value of the post itself.
They fill the role nonverbal cues do in real life. Whenever I go back to old-style forums I miss them, because everyone ends up arguing with a few trolls/nuts that would look like they’re being taken seriously otherwise.
deleted by creator
Give me your internet points!!!
It’s a democratic way of judging posts. Democracy is good.
Developed further, voting could replace moderators. I’d like to see that happen.
Voting could replace mods in some ways, but in others it would be less effective (I know, not all mods are effective).
For instance, combatting spam; more users would have to see the spam and downvote it to have it removed (presumably in this system, a post could be removed when it reaches a certain downvote threshold? Not sure how else it would replace mods).
Additionally, content moderators and admins do actually do at least one other good thing; they look at and remove illegal or seriously upsetting material. Unfortunately, Lemmy has had several issues with csam being posted by presumably bots – good, active content moderators remove this as quickly as possible, protecting more of the users on their instances than a downvote threshold.
Outside of having some sort of threshold, I’m not sure I have a good picture of how downvotes could replace mods? Human oversight is really key to a lot of accurate and effective decision making; I’m sure we’ve all dealt with fully automated systems and know the pain of that.
The Democratic system of forum management to which I refer would work basically like this.
You choose who to speak to. You keep a list. Rating, flagging and tagging other forum members. (as opposed to having it done for you by a moderator)
This list can be something that you personally create. It can also be gotten from a friend or somebody who’s opinion you respect. It could be provided as a service, thus emulating the role of moderator. It could also be dictated to you, in the case of legally forbidden stuff. The list that you use might be the sum of several lists, tweaked over time to suit you.
(One term I’ve heard for this is “a system of silos”. Though I don’t really get the reference.)
It’s an idea that’s going around.
Oh, that’s an interesting idea. It’s more nuanced than just relying on upvotes, and sort of democratises the role of moderator! I was thinking maybe reporting would come into it somewhere but I see that the idea you’re describing has more depth than I was picturing. I’d be up for using a system like that, I think!
Re this, though:
It could also be dictated to you, in the case of legally forbidden stuff.
Is that just admins? Does that decision sort of shift mod responsibility upwards, leaving a good majority of decisions in the hands of the public but ultimately leaving a few powerful people with more global “modding” capability still? Not trying to nitpick or be antagonistic, this sounds like a cool system to use, I’m just trying to understand
However you slice it, if mandates are handed down by the legal authorities, this is the form (black lists, added to local lists, informing filters) it would probably take.
Ah yeah I hadn’t thought about legal authorities. I guess that would entail local police forces monitoring Lemmy and blacklisting and subsequently investigating specific users or bots once they post something illegal, which seems not so feasible sadly. But, definitely up for a more democratised system of modding generally!
How are legal mandates handled in lemmy presently?
No idea honestly mate, but what I meant when I brought up the illegality was really that it’s usually very disturbing content, which mods catch and remove before loads of people have to see it.
If it’s a new account posting that stuff, I don’t know how the system we’re discussing would prevent loads of users having to see it - altho I guess if those blacklists of users were collaborative and the person or team whose list you’ve “subscribed” to catch it, maybe that solves the issue?
This is just a block list system. You can already do this now.
It’s a bit more than that but ya, it’s pretty simple and tested technology. But of course the magic is in the network.
It would effectively mean that someone new to a widely used community would potentially immediately run into spam, trolling, abuse and child porn and have to manually block a bunch of users before it looks normal.
There are other ways to get the list than manually creating it. You could get it from a friend or a list providing service. Or both. All or in part. And then optionally tweak it later.
Yes, so you mean people can simply import other users block-lists. That’s the only difference. But if someone new arrived, and didn’t know of one - they would be met with a wall of spam and abuse.
Moreover, I’d also add that websites have a legal requirement to remove child porn.
Your system just converts communities into hashtags. It’s in opposition to what this site is.
Voting can’t replace mods, because the instance owner is legally responsible for what’s posted to their instance.
They are bound by law to remove illegal content immediately.
Also, mobbing is a form of democracy, too.See details on that “development” to which I referred, elsewhere in this thread.
How could it replace moderators developed further?
By providing a way to filter spam, trolls and whatever else you like, without the need for a central authority.
people can already do this via blocking, but no-one regards that as sufficient.
I have not seen a forum that does it this way. Do you have a link to it or a failed experiment?
The up/down vote system directs the ranking algorithm on how to order posts and comments, and it visually signals to the user the relative popularity of a comment.
This, imo, is a wildly underappreciated mechanic for combating a lot of the harmful issues people associate with social media.
Most people recognize that discourse on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. is designed to divide and inflame people. the reddit-style downvote is remarkably effective at addressing this:
It does two key things in particular:
-
Downvoted comments are down ranked and hidden, so people are exposed to less toxic content.
-
If people do engage with unpopular comments, the negative score influences how people engage with them. On Facebook, commenting to defend Biden’s Israel policy will get elevated and create viscous fights. On Lemmy, it will get flagged with a virtual dunce cap. You can dunk on it, but there’s no point in arguing with it: we can all see that the argument is already over. Laugh and ignore.
Taken together, these discourage people from feeding trolls, and in doing so reduce the incentive to post something uncivil or stupid. It’s a remarkably powerful tool to address a huge problem, and I wish more people understood this.
Votes also make it very obvious when people react based on their wishful thinking — when a comment is factually true but is downvoted anyway, or vice versa. A good barometer of the sentiment in a community.
Yes, yes and yes. Unless it is overrun/diverted by bots & shills, which is a corruption silently allowed by reddit to serve its corporate agenda. Reddit, being proprietary and closed-source, does not disclose the specifics of its voting system, which grants it some plausible deniability in the face of accusations of bias. Lemmy and Kbin etc have the advantage of being opensource, transparent, forkable, etc. whether or not you’re in line with its creator’s political standing.
Wonderful explanation! I will continue to up/down vote posts and comments as I see fit. 😊
-
There is no such thing as karma here, it’s more so to express approval/disapproval
I like the lack of karma. Generally I’m using the up/down vote options to express my dis/approval, just like you’ve stated they’re for. Given how different things can be across instances it seems I’ll just have to relearn how I view and interact with Lemmy over Reddit.
Aside from the much smaller user base and communities, I prefer Lemmy 100%. I’m learning to enjoy the smaller user base since it’s also lacking the huge amount of bots and trolls.
I thought up/down wasn’t for approval/disapproval, but to vote if the post was worth reading. In other words, a well written, factual article about a topic you disagree with should have a good number of up votes.
It’s supposed to be that way, but Lemmy doesn’t always follow that system.
I’m fine with or without a voting system. It does seem to me that the instances which don’t allow downvotes seem a little bit better behaved though.
Theory and practice quite frequently don’t align in reality and humans are spiteful.
Hey, fuck you. I’m not spiteful!
Well then your username checks out
Upvoted because it’s an imprtant contribution, not because I agree with it.
it influences the hot sorting
They just signify if a comment or post is good or bad. They do have some impact on how high up a post or comment is displayed within their list, ie a lot of upvotes will show up better on active or hot sorting, but that’s about it. Some instances like Hexbear.net disable downvotes, to force discussion if you disapprove something.
It’s been my experience on Reddit that you only ‘win’ a difference of opinion by not engaging people. And what you “win” isn’t Internet clout, it’s your sanity, continued semi privacy, and peace of mind.
Curious to see how Lemmy works out. Searching for a place you can actually engage in respectful disagreement or exchange of ideas. Even if someones’ ideas are different than your own, they help you think and explore, and if you come to the same decision, cool.
In general, you can’t normally convince your interlocutor, but instead onlookers. I talk a lot about Marxism-Leninism, and in my experience it isn’t the ones I talk with that change their minds, but those who see the convo as an outside observer.
Thanks! This helps my understanding a good deal.
There are still some sensitive mods who can see your vote history (within comms they mod) and ban you because they don’t like the way you interact with their comm. Conservative comms especially, they seem to think they deserve a captive audience.
Also note that anybody can use lemvotes.org to view post/comment/user votes in most cases.
Lemmy doesn’t enforce anything, but there’s no accounting for small people with an ounce of power.
There are also some sensitive users who just go thru and downvote everything a poster posts, just because they have a personal grudge with poster.
Plenty of people on Lemmy agree that serial downvoters being banned from a community isn’t a bad thing.
If one doesn’t like a community, they can always just block it, rather than make it a mission to downvote every single thing in that community. IMHO, some people take lemmy way too seriously and get kinda unhealthy about it.
Like anything, a system can be used for good or used for bad.
Everyone please disregard DonaldJMusk, he forgets what account he’s signed in to. The old man thinks I’m out to get him like he’s not mocking me in his profile or anything. This is his sock puppet, one of many keeping the conservative comms astroturfed. Just look how soft he is, watching my voting habits in communities he doesn’t even run. He’ll probably post my vote history off lemvotes.org like I’m somehow denying downvoting this asshole, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Go ahead Donny, tell the world my sins.
What are you talking about? Was that reply meant for someone else? I didn’t bring anything up about donald trump or astroturing. I saw a discussion and posted a comment about up/down votes. Not sure what you are talking about.
I always thought his “tickle the quantum machine” was some right wing dog whistle.
I sent you a DM. Let’s compare notes.
Also interesting. I’m not opposed to my voting being public, although I have noticed I’ve accidentally hit the vote button without intending to and have no idea if I’ve done it without noticing. I’ll have to audit my own votes sometime to see.
Removed by mod
They never mattered. Its a psycological trick to steal your attention. Some instances disable downvotes or voting at all
I’ve read about the disabling of voting and find it interesting. I enjoy the voting system because it gives me an easy way to interact with a post without having to comment. I usually only downvote if the post is low effort/slop, or the poster/commenter is just being a troll.
Thanks for your input.
they mattered on reddit? how?
Votes = karma. Low karma can keep you from being able to post in places and can get your post/comment hidden.
i haven’t heard of any place on lemmy restricting one’s ability to post based on your vote total, but i’d never encountered it during my many years on reddit, either.
if you get a lot of downvotes, and someone is sorting by “top” or “hot”, your post or comment will be further down the list though, and vice versa for upvotes. (though personally, i almost always sort by “new” on lemmy, or sometimes, “new comments”.)
They matter in the original intention of votes: visibility.
Votes get used to sort content.
They release a little burst of dopamine in my brain
Yes they are used to sort comments and that’s great. You also know if you’re getting into a circlejerk or a controversial discussion.
