And IMO a comment is far better than a vote. A vote says “I clicked a button,” whereas a comment says, “I cared enough to express myself.” I only downvote w/o commenting if another comment communicates what I wanted to, in which case I upvote that one.
Oh, heavily heavily heavily disagree. The fediverse is going to fall apart if it commits to getting rid of votes, because the website it is copying all of its formatting from was explicitly designed to self filter community content with votes.
Not being able to filter content without detailing expressly why will fill the site with garbage, because few people have the free time to waste commenting on every post, but quickly saying “yes this belongs here / no it does not” is much easier and doable while browsing.
Votes also help communities self moderate, a problem front and center on lemmy with the current situation of abysmal mod tools and worse average mod quality than reddit had. (No offense to passing mods.)
But the fediverse seems dedicated to learning this lesson the hard way, so we either need to hold on and hope the ship doesnt sink or start swimming to a better boat.
I never said we should eliminate votes, just that comments are more useful than votes alone. If you down vote, leave or upvote a comment that explains why.
The problem with votes on their own is brigading, as in people down vote stuff because it’s unpopular (at least to a very mobilized and motivated group). The vote itself doesn’t explain what’s wrong with the content, only that a lot of people clicked the button.
So I’m in favor of requiring the user to either leave or upvote a comment for the down vote function to count.
I dont really agree that you need to explain what was wrong with the content. And brigading happens with comments too, arguably to a worse end.
Explaining every vote you make, or requiring a yes vote before you allow a no vote, also defeats the purpose of voting at all. I get it can feel bad to have a comment downvoted but… Like… Its really not a big deal. Especially in a system that has even less weight on karma. Sometimes the group didnt agree with you, and thats a normal part of community interactions. You shrug and move on.
That’s not the point at all though. The point is that it hides good content that a motivated group wants to silence. We had precisely this problem earlier in Lemmy’s history where posts critical of China were heavily down voted, not because of quality, but because the group didn’t like the message.
Requiring a comment gives context to the negative reaction. It’s not a silver bullet, but it should increase the barrier to hiding content, hopefully enough that good, controversial content stays visible.
I’m actually working on a Lemmy alternative that uses a web of trust instead of votes to prioritize and moderate content. Reddit has shown the limitations of voting, and I’m more interested in interesting content than content the majority likes.
And IMO a comment is far better than a vote. A vote says “I clicked a button,” whereas a comment says, “I cared enough to express myself.” I only downvote w/o commenting if another comment communicates what I wanted to, in which case I upvote that one.
Oh, heavily heavily heavily disagree. The fediverse is going to fall apart if it commits to getting rid of votes, because the website it is copying all of its formatting from was explicitly designed to self filter community content with votes.
Not being able to filter content without detailing expressly why will fill the site with garbage, because few people have the free time to waste commenting on every post, but quickly saying “yes this belongs here / no it does not” is much easier and doable while browsing.
Votes also help communities self moderate, a problem front and center on lemmy with the current situation of abysmal mod tools and worse average mod quality than reddit had. (No offense to passing mods.)
But the fediverse seems dedicated to learning this lesson the hard way, so we either need to hold on and hope the ship doesnt sink or start swimming to a better boat.
I never said we should eliminate votes, just that comments are more useful than votes alone. If you down vote, leave or upvote a comment that explains why.
The problem with votes on their own is brigading, as in people down vote stuff because it’s unpopular (at least to a very mobilized and motivated group). The vote itself doesn’t explain what’s wrong with the content, only that a lot of people clicked the button.
So I’m in favor of requiring the user to either leave or upvote a comment for the down vote function to count.
I dont really agree that you need to explain what was wrong with the content. And brigading happens with comments too, arguably to a worse end.
Explaining every vote you make, or requiring a yes vote before you allow a no vote, also defeats the purpose of voting at all. I get it can feel bad to have a comment downvoted but… Like… Its really not a big deal. Especially in a system that has even less weight on karma. Sometimes the group didnt agree with you, and thats a normal part of community interactions. You shrug and move on.
That’s not the point at all though. The point is that it hides good content that a motivated group wants to silence. We had precisely this problem earlier in Lemmy’s history where posts critical of China were heavily down voted, not because of quality, but because the group didn’t like the message.
Requiring a comment gives context to the negative reaction. It’s not a silver bullet, but it should increase the barrier to hiding content, hopefully enough that good, controversial content stays visible.
I’m actually working on a Lemmy alternative that uses a web of trust instead of votes to prioritize and moderate content. Reddit has shown the limitations of voting, and I’m more interested in interesting content than content the majority likes.