this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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To be quite frank, I don't know why you're even doing this. We had a discussion about it last year and all the same points were raised after which you turned them off, only to turn them on and have another debate a few weeks later and you then had to turn them off again. I think you know that you will probably have to turn them off again at some point. So how about you level with us, what is it about downvotes that you find so compelling?
Downvotes can be a useful tool to shape a community, the issue comes in when several people start downvoting communities they don't even participate in. Which is one of the main issues brought up here.
It may seem very clear to you that "no one" wants downvotes, but as an admin I get complaints for basically every decision made on this site, so what is the "right" choice is sometimes hard to determine. I've been getting complaints about downvotes being disabled for awhile now, so it wasn't clear to me. Even now, the opinion is still very split. Which is why I enabled them quietly to see if it would cause any issues. It did, so I made this post to see if people think the issues created by downvotes outweigh the benefits, and what peoples' other opinions about them are.
This is my opinion based on what I've read and the results of the poll: I think at a later time when lemmynsfw is larger, downvotes may be viable, especially if lemmy implements a custom home feed so that not everyone sees the same posts. This would help mitigate the issue of people not in communities downvoting posts. But as it stands, I'm leaning towards disabling them again. Frequent posters, which are kind of needed for this site to survive, don't seem to like them, and the poll is split almost 50/50. I have to try to balance enjoyability of posting and enjoyability of consuming content on the site, and it just seems like downvotes really hurts posters and only marginally helps consumers.
I'm leaving the poll up for a few more days and am going to continue to read the comments, but, if nothing changes, that's probably what's going to happen.
All this seems very fair. I'm under no illusion as to the popularity of downvotes, I would say that damn near all of them want to be able to downvote.
The question I have asked you and have asked @CombedSpaghetti is what motivates me or any of your other regular posters to post when they know that all their efforts can be nullified, for any reason you can think of, by someone pushing a button at the wrong moment.
And you can't. Not unless you cut us in on that sweet crypto action 😜
Like I said I understand what you're saying, my answer is it's not always as simple as doing something that makes one group of people happy, I have to weigh the options, which is why I made this post.
Also, I don't get paid to do this, they crypto money goes 100% to paying for hosting the site to my knowledge. All the admins have day jobs.
I know, it was a joke because we can all see what the finances are.
Truth is, as I think you already know, that you couldn't pay me enough to overcome this issue.