An update on our community regarding downvotes - eviltoast

Several people in the community have expressed frustration in regards to the fact that any post that fits the community it’s posted to but is slightly out of the normal post type like, for example, being more hardcore rather than softcore, get’s a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.

We have also had complaints that particular types of posts as a whole get more downvotes even if they are in the appropriate community and are the normal type of post for a community. This especially appears to be happening to male content.

Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don’t even want to see in the first place.

We understand some may not like some content of a particular post or community, but downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them in our instance and especially in other instances, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all.

After some discussion amongst the moderators and admins,because of the reasons above, we’ve decided to disable downvotes at least for the time being.

What do I do if I dislike a post?

  • We recommend those who would normally downvote a post they don’t like just, instead, block the user who created the post, or, if the community is a topic you dislike, block the community. That way, you no longer see those posts, but don’t effect those posts’ visibility to other members of the community and instance.

  • Additionally, you can view your “Subscribed” feed instead of “Local” so that you only see posts from the communities you are subscribed to.

What do I do if a post doesn’t fit the community it’s posted in or is spam?

  • Please report the post, either the mods of the community or an instance admin will remove the post if necessary, as soon as possible. We have admins and mods online almost around the clock, so these types of posts should be removed quickly.

Potential future post filtering on lemmy:

  • In the future it appears that lemmy may implement a tagging system similar to flairs on reddit. This request has piqued the interest of the lemmy devs, so keep an eye out sometime in the (maybe not so near) future for the implementation of that feature.

As @yay@lemmynsfw.com has said in the comments:

Downvotes should be used for posts you don’t like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don’t like.

When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.

But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.

Please put any comments questions and concerns in the comments below, we are of course always open to community thoughts and feedback, and want to work with you to keep this instance an enjoyable and entertaining place to post and browse.

  • fox_the_apprentice@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    get’s [sic] a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.

    That’s literally the point of the downvote system. To downvote posts you don’t like, or you feel are out of place.

    Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don’t even want to see in the first place.

    This seems to be the real issue you’re trying to fight. It seems like only permitting downvotes on communities that the user has been a part of for greater than 1/2/7/30/pick-a-number days would be the proper solution. If people in a community are downvoting a post, then it means they don’t think that post is worth sharing. No admin, moderator, community owner, etc. should be able to change that.

    I am strongly against removing downvotes.

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      get’s [sic] a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.

      That’s literally the point of the downvote system. To downvote posts you don’t like, or you feel are out of place.

      Sorry, but I hard disagree with you on the “point” of the downvote system. A downvote, to me, is not the same as “liking” or “disliking” content. I only downvote content that is not correct for the sub, bad-faith, or troll content, and I would really urge others to do the same.

      If you think of cause-and-effect, downvoting any time you dislike content is not a good system: Upvoting is the incentive to post that type of content, and downvoting is a disincentive to post that type of content. And Lemmy needs more content.

      For example, I see Gonewild, every male poster getting downvoted to oblivion. But male nudity is not against the rules if properly labeled. As a straight male, I have no interest in seeing male nudity, so I don’t upvote it, and it’s not bad-faith or rule-breaking so I don’t downvote it. But it’s clear most people are downvoting it because they “dislike” it. But maybe there are some non-straight-male people in the sub who would appreciate it, and they don’t see it because it’s been buried. The eventual effect is that the community becomes more insular, with more unwritten rules.

      • MaybeALittleBitWeird@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        I appreciate your verbalization of the issue at hand. I like to think of the vote system more along the lines of appropriateness upvote=appropriate/good, no vote=appropriate/neutral or not good, and downvote=inappropriate/broken/rule breaking.

        Not interacting with a post has about as much of an effect on the non-chronological sorting as a downvote does so essentially you’re just going out of your way to make someone feel bad if it’s an appropriate fit for the community and you use it as an “Ew” button. This behavior becomes especially problematic when it comes to non-promotional OC.

        It’s not perfect, but I think removing the downvotes for a brief stint will have a pretty good impact on training user behavior to help facilitate growth until this place is at a point where there is enough core functionality to allow for better solutions.

        • twelves@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          This is a Lemmy implementation problem - you need to vote to remove a post from your feed if you’re hiding seen posts. I’d much rather ignore posts that fit but aren’t for me, but there’s no other way to mark them read.

          • MaybeALittleBitWeird@lemmynsfw.com
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            1 year ago

            I actually wasn’t aware that the mark as read implementation required voting to register as I’ve never had it enabled. That does change my perspective quite a bit of true. I can see that being okay for general news or tech content, but when you add sex, which is largely going to come down to personal preferences, to that it certainly creates problems. Honestly a lot of the problems people are talking about in this thread come down to implementation problems in the end, but we just need to do the best we can with what we have for the time being.

          • Assdddffff@lemmynsfw.com
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            11 months ago

            A workaround for you: upvote twice (ie upvote and remove the upvote) to get the post marked as read.

      • phaytxik@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        content that is not correct for the sub, bad-faith, or troll content.

        IMO, those things are bad enough to warrant reporting them to mods for removal.

      • Miauu@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Gonewild

        Gonewild is a good example, if you don’t like male nudity, a more positive way would be to not downvote it but campaign to have a gonewildmale or something. Would make sense to have that so that the people who do like it can still watch it.

  • Violet@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    Strongly agree with this decision to disable downvotes untill the community of active oc posters and commentors grows.

    Look, i post nswf oc content because i like making and sharing my pictures. Gives me a thrill, i like the social aspect too. Alot of people here are focusing on the “user experience” but what about “posting experience”?

    Its just not fun to post your oc content and immediatly get 5 downvotes cause some lurkers cant be bothered to customize their feed. Its driving active and contributing users away and is harming this relatively small community atm.

    • WooBoy@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Its just not fun to post your oc content and immediatly get 5 downvotes cause some lurkers cant be bothered to customize their feed. Its driving active and contributing users away and is harming this relatively small community atm.

      Agreed. My wife and I enjoy posting pix of ourselves. We do it because it’s fun for us. The amount of downvotes we were getting was pretty discouraging.

      I’m excited for this change!

    • LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Its just not fun to post your oc content and immediatly get 5 downvotes cause some lurkers cant be bothered to customize their feed. Its driving active and contributing users away and is harming this relatively small community atm.

      I can definitely see this being a much bigger issue for the Gonewild posters than anyone else, perhaps this change need only be applied to those communities?

      • Violet@lemmynsfw.com
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        11 months ago

        First, love what you are contributing/posting. The ai art, sharing prompts and even helping other user finetune the process. A+

        Now onto the issue at hand, i wanna make clear that im def not supporting to get rid of the downvotes forever. I just think that atm they are harming this instance and should be disabled for a while untill we have more people who post original content or untill fediverse users have gotten into the habit of curating and browsing only in subscribed communities of interest as most redditors have learned to do, due to the sheer volume of content there.

        I think the real problem is that alot of new users are used to reddit and how it works. Lemmy operates different, i had to figure it out and get used to it too.

        On reddit gonewild, you post something and only users who sort through new get to see your post (new accounts of course, subscribers is something else) and vote on that post. Its a sorting process thats rather low profile, the more people like it, the more exposure it gets, you go from new to rising to frontpage. Users sorting new are different folks then users scrolling the frontpage. New page are people trying to sext or cam or are just lonely and wanna talk. You can thrive and have fun in just that section of the sub. Even if you never get the upvotes to get to rising or frontpage, its a fun experience. If you do get the upvotes for frontpage, along come the rude disrespectfull messages, its part of the internet and comes with high exposure. But at that point the poster already has 100’s of nice messages and the self esteem boost that comes with reaching the frontpage. In other words the downvotes from that group are pretty harmless emotionally.

        On lemmy new posts go up almost immediatly after posting so your exposure is biggest when first posting. If you get lots of upvotes you can keep that exposure longer. But as i just explained high exposure means rude assholes and on lemmy thats right at the start before the validation. Immediate bad repsonses and only the fun experiences later on or maybe never at all.

        You have to realize that posters of nude selfies are putting themselfs out there, not a prompt or a (very beautifull) artpiece. The reactions/comments are way more personal and confronting. Its not always easy to deal with it and atm the downvotes on that content is leaving those posters with nothing. No fun experiences at all. So they give up and leave, or check this place see the negative comments and just never try.

        For me personaly, its about building a community here, i dont post to sell or for validation (anymore). Maybe its a bit cheesy but when i first started in this world, i met some amazing and very helpfull people, it kinda changed my outlook on life. I wanna return that favour to the internet by helping to build something positive here.

        Ok enough written. Im very interested on why downvotes are so important for you and your community. Cause not only gonewild is affected, every community that has nude oc content is experiencing this problem.

        • LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          im def not supporting to get rid of the downvotes forever. I just think that atm they are harming this instance and should be disabled for a while

          If this is the case then that’s perfectly valid, but temporary becomes permanent without a set end date.

          On reddit gonewild, you post something and only users who sort through new get to see your post.

          Yes, but as you say it’s different on lemmy and both users and creators need to grasp that. Both upvotes and downvotes count as activity and raise a post. A post with 200 upvotes is just as ‘active’ as a post with 100/100 or 200 downvotes.

          Content doesn’t go away just because people disagree with it, and if it receives enough engagement to be seen by the wider community of course it’s going to see wider scrutiny.

          The only way to prevent that is to limit access to the content from the wider community which stifles growth and engagement, or limit the wider communities ability to negatively influence the content, as in this case by removing downvotes, which also stifles growth and engagement.

          Now I agree that for the sake of gone wild posters this could be beneficial, both to the sensitivities of contributors and may help the growth of the community by making contribution more encouraging, but it won’t actually change the engagement the greater community has with the content. At the end of the day you have to be controversial before you become accepted and my advice there would be to focus on having the popular vote, not all the votes.

          You have to realize that posters of nude selfies are putting themselfs out there, not a prompt or a (very beautifull) artpiece.

          Yes, which is why I think that this could be beneficial for those posters, but they are also just a fraction of the total content on lemmynsfw.

          For me personaly, its about building a community here, i dont post to sell or for validation (anymore).

          I agree. And I’d say we face similar challenges with the general community even if our perspectives are different. Both gonewild and AI creators face backlash when presented to the gen pop for reasons outside of their control.

          Im very interested on why downvotes are so important for you and your community. Cause not only gonewild is affected, every community that has nude oc content is experiencing this problem.

          I think it comes down to understanding the community and the expecations you have for it.

          If you want a community for the creators to have a safe place to create and enjoy the you can’t have it open to the public, they’ll ruin it as we’ve seen pointed out here, in which case I agree entirely that limiting outside influence is for the best. Turn the community into a zoo rather than an interactive exhibit.

          If you want a community for the public, you have to accept their judgement. For us artists it’s less of an issue because we can change our style to suit the community, but if we want to express ourselves we still have to accept that not everyone will agree.

          And this is where our perspectives begin to differ due to the nature of our content.

          I’ve been a digital artist for 25 years and AI is just a new tool. It’s of no benefit to me or AIgen to shy away from the public engagement, quite the opposite, our content needs to become so normalised and abundant that misconception can be scraped off the social consciousness, and ignoring the opinions of those outide of the immediate community goes against the goal of developing acceptance.

          Often the things we hold closest and most dear are those that are too delicate for sharing.

          I’m not against the goal of limiting downvotes, but I do have serious concerns about the scope. On an individual community level this prevents our users from voicing displeasure with content that may still yet need to be determined as acceptable or otherwise, and removing that community regulation would easily result in the creation of content that wouldn’t be beneficial to the growth of our community or its integration with the rest of lemmy but might not be against the community guidelines.

          A perfect recent example is that we had a new community pop up for “deGenerative” AI content, this came about because a contributer had something they wanted to post but no other place to post it. The community decided through downvotes that that content didn’t vive with the existing community and showed a gap for a new one.

          Had that user only seen their upvotes they’d still be posting unpopular creations rather than operating a community catering to their style.

          So overall, not against limiting downvotes for gone wild, but I also think it’s the only portion of lemmynsfw that is unfairly brigaded to the extent that it’s necessary, and I think the change will be detrimental to the less personal creator communities.

          • Violet@lemmynsfw.com
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            11 months ago

            Thank you for taking the time to write this down and explain your pov so polite and articulate. Breath of fresh air.

            Honestly, you make excellent points and i see no reason to not reinstate the downvotes in the AI communities except maybe technical? Its definetly worth to explore the option.

            You also seem to grasp that there are real problems atm with attracting new oc posters and forming a positive envirronment for them to fool around in. The irony of the case is, despite lemmy’s pretty rough handling of sellers that is just what lemmy will end up with. They are the only ones willing to put up with the mean comments, downvotes, lack of community and overal negative vibe, cause they have monetary reasons.

            I can take my content anywhere online and go have fun pretending to be a pornstar in my free time. As an oc poster other sites offer me more protection from harrasment, im here cause i actually believe in the project decentralization, federation, open source… its the future. I didnt know that 200upvotes did the same as 200downvotes exposure wise btw.

            There are other tools that could help the situation too, 2way blocking would be nice or the ability to make private and invite only communities, to be able to control the audience a bit while the community can develop. There is strength in numbers for this kind of thing and once the groundwork has been layed, those posters will have the support they need to move on to the wider lemmyverse. Just an observation but i think the ai community on lemmynsfw seems to already be in the next stage, which is good of course.

            Well time for some coffee here. Still in pyama and all :D

            • LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              You’re welcome, thank you for taking the time to read my diatribe. I agree 100% with the issues that gone wild posters face, and I definitely think that any means we can to support and encourage them should be implemented, but a very practical side of me thinks there’s a reason this has never been solved and that’s simply because the wider market has no interest in the good natured, interpersonal erotic community because 95% of people only engage in this content for the function of self pleasure. I think the only way that those communities can function well is indeed to severely limit outside influence while also working to ensure that gone wild posts can rise high enough to reach the gen pop so as to encourage community growth.

              So in all sense I agree that the gonewild communities need this, but it’s a double edged sword that will just change and redistribute the harm in other ways to the other communities. I would think there is probably a technical limitation to having their votes turned off separately from the entire instance and should be something that lemmynsfw community leads should push for with the lemmy devs for the health of all our communities.

  • Lewd Ian@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    “downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all.”

    Isn’t that literally the point of down voting? To discourage posting that doesn’t fit the community so that it isn’t seen by as many people… ESPECIALLY since the focus on this instance is NSFW then more discouragement of posts that don’t fit should be the goal so that users subscribed to those communities surface the appropriate things they want to see. You’ve removed users’ agency to shape their communities and caused waaaaaay more work for moderators.

    This also takes away our ability to down vote posts across the entire federation it appears?!

    • lemmyposter212@lemmynsfw.comOPM
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      1 year ago

      I understand what you’re saying, and while I personally like downvotes I’ve also seen how posters who fully fit the topic of a community are discouraged from posting because they were downvoted by people outside of the community

      Moderators have talked about this for a few weeks now, this decision won by a majority after we got several complaints.

      If something doesn’t fit a community that can be brought up to the mods in a post and a discussion can be had. However as of right now, with the size of this instance and to promote more growth downvotes haven’t really been helpful.

      • Lewd Ian@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        “posters who fully fit the topic of the sub are discouraged from posting because they were downvoted by people outside of the community”

        Ok. I hear that. I guess maybe that proves the community itself should be discouraged? I don’t like that sentiment necessarily but… The inability to down vote federated posts means I’m going to bounce to another instance probably. I liked being able to curate my NSFW subscriptions and not risk being defederated from the entire lemmynsfw instance but can just change accounts now and again I suppose.

    • Backtrack3241@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Agree that the point of down voting is to discourage posts that don’t fit with the community, which means the the community is voting for what it does and does not want to see in a community.

      Someone being passionate about something that doesn’t fit with what the community wants to see getting frustrated should not over ride what the community has voted for. They should instead find or create a community that fits their passion and not try to change a community to fit their passion.

      • lemmyposter212@lemmynsfw.comOPM
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        1 year ago

        Yes but my point is it’s usually people outside a community. We’ve seen posts get more downvotes than a community has subscribers. If we could limit downvotes to just those subscribed to a community, we would, but unfortunately that functionality doesn’t exist right now.

        Additionally upvoting does also work to shape a community, posts with more upvotes will still rise to the top of a community

      • fodderoh@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Maybe it’s just me, but this feels like a double standard.

        Let’s say I create a community that allows male and female content. But a lot of users join the community who dislike male content and consistently downvote it as a way to discourage it, then those downvoters are the ones trying to change the community. To me, it is the downvoters who are trying to, in a sense, hijack the community and make it something it wasn’t intended to be.

        • iorale@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          If you create a community for X, Y and Z, users who like X, Y and Z will join, from there the ones who are majority will favor Y because that’s what they like, if they dislike Z then it will get buried under Y and X. That’s why it’s encouraged to creat a community for X, one for Y and one for Z. If someone from Y posts on Z because they think “it also fits in Z”, then it might get liked or disliked, either accept that or don’t post outside Y.

          Now if it’s a federated place, users that like A, B or C, but that absolutely dislike X, Y or Z will make it known one way or another when that content reaches them (not IF, only WHEN), there’s no way around that, either deal with it or consider moving that community that deserves so much protection to a closed space.

    • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Maybe in theory but that’s not how they get used

      All my posts in the Any Schumer get down voted despite it being on topic

      and caused waaaaaay more work for moderators.

      Hard disagree as a moderator of a bunch communities

      • Lewd Ian@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Terrible community to use as an example. It’s not NSFW so not sure what it’s doing on this instance. The down votes kind of prove the community itself shouldn’t exist…

        • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          Just FYI Celebs communities are allowed content here and there are NSFW/nudity posts in that community.

          Again proving that downvotes are getting misused.

          • Lewd Ian@lemmynsfw.com
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            1 year ago

            You are conflating allowed with desired.

            I think maybe that’s the problem with this entire discussion and people approaching it from two different stand points. Some see up votes and down votes as organic democratic processes to shape the instance, and the federation as a whole.

            Others see them as impediments to their… ego?, popularity?, that’s the part I am not getting. Why are posters so intent on posting things in public that people clearly don’t want? Keep those images on your own hard drive. Make your own instance and defederate lemmy.world and the like. Make this instance defederated and folks can find a different nsfw instance for more of the western mainstream desired porn stuff.

            But whatever. I’m audi

            • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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              1 year ago

              No one is telling you to like everything here.

              If you don’t like a particular community don’t subscribe to it and you can also block it from appearing in the all feed.

              There’s a lot of categories of porn and a lot of fetishes out there. Your downvotes are just ruining it for other people.

              • Lewd Ian@lemmynsfw.com
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                1 year ago

                You can check my down vote history I’ve heard. Please do. You’re barking up the wrong tree and blaming the wrong people

                • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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                  1 year ago

                  You can check my down vote history I’ve heard. Please do.

                  I don’t think I can unless I’m an admin.

                  You’re barking up the wrong tree and blaming the wrong people

                  Given your desire to downvote people’s posts who actually put in the work of posting here I think I am talking to the right person.

  • TickledPickle@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I ran a forum with 30k active users before saying F that. One thing I learned during that adventure is that you can’t force people to behave the way you want. It doesn’t matter what you type, the up/down votes will mean exactly what the user wants. Trying to force conformity or censoring their contributions (down votes) will only end in frustration and lower user count.

    tldr: Your team is behaving like it’s their first moderating experience.

    • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Another opinion from someone with 0 posts and 0 comments on lemmynsfw

      Trying to force conformity or censoring their contributions using down votes will only end in frustration and lower user count.

      That is what has been happening the past 6 months on lemmynsfw. I’m very glad a change is being now to right this ship.

      • LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Harden up buttercup. I’m on world so I don’t have to worry about changes to lemmynsfw voting, but I agree with the others that removing downvotes ignores that the viewer knows what the viewer wants to see. If a certain type of content is being outright rejected by the community who are you to force them to view it? Downvotes help tell us creators what is and isn’t working for the community and encourages us to lift our game.

        Now go through my history and try that bullshit line:

        Another opinion from someone with 0 posts and 0 comments on lemmynsfw

        I just looked at your posts, how about creating content instead of reposting it. They have bots for what you do, go let one of them do it so you can stop being sad that no one likes Amy Schumer.

        • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          I find your use of name calling disrespectful and your tone condescending. If you want to have a conversation with me do so in a respectful way.

          • LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I find your use of name calling disrespectful and your tone condescending.

            That’s rich. Coming from the person saying:

            Another opinion from someone with 0 posts and 0 comments on lemmynsfw

            Maybe take your own advice instead of being a condescending hypocrite.

            If you want to have a conversation do so in a respectful way.

            • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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              11 months ago

              Me pointing that the feedback is coming from people who have no stake in getting their posts downvoted. Isn’t the same as your name calling, condensing behavior. It seems like you are lashing out at me more than trying to get your points across.

              • LemmysMum@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                You refusing to acknowledge my point because you intentionally ignored the content of my post is a you problem.

                If you don’t want to behave properly don’t cry when you get treated the same.

                Me pointing that the feedback is coming from people who have no stake in getting their posts downvoted.

                Just as you have no stake in your posts being downvoted because you didn’t create the content.

                • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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                  11 months ago

                  I’m refusing to acknowledge your points because of your uncalled for name calling. Until you apologize I have 0 interest in talking to you.

  • Nubbly@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I fully understand why you guys did this and it is certainly a solution to the problem above.

    That being said, I really do not like this change.

    I would go into detail about the reasons why, but I feel like this topic has been hashed out a few times before. So everyone should know why people are for and against this change.

    (I am only posting this comment because the other way to show disapproval has now been removed.)

  • NisaFawo@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I disagree that blocking users or communities covers everything. Upvotes are for good content, neutral (no action) is for most posts that you just scroll past, but downvotes are for 5 second clips without sound that technically don’t break any rules of the community. But maybe other people might disagree, and that’s good, in that case they can upvote and the net value of the post is clear. If not, the OP gets a clear signal that the number of downvotes is higher than the number of upvotes and they can fuck right off with those posts.

    Especially if they also post other, high quality content, you can’t expect me to just block the user who has done nothing wrong, or report their post that breaks no rules.

    Or do you expect me to upvote literally everythingI scroll past (except the posts I would have downvoted)? I’ll gladly do that if I can autmate it, otherwise ain’t nobody got time fo that shit.

    • StuffinButts69@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Yeah that’s honestly been my biggest issue here is the fact that I can’t properly filter out certain content/users because it technically fits the community or the user posts in many communities.

      Like the hentai community is one of my most viewed yet people will post niche hentai stuff that I have no interest in whatsoever and even though there’s already a specific community for that niche it’s still not breaking the rules by being in the main community.

      It’s the same with users who post exactly the type of content I like while also posting content I abhor. I can’t block them without also losing out on a lot of the content I actually want to see

    • BubblyAssignment655@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Don’t tell me what to do, I’ll downvote everything I dislike. I don’t care what you think is good, neutral or poor content. And that’s exactly the issue, I see the all feed and downvote most of the content and only upvote what I actually like, and many people do the same.

  • PutangInaMo@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I disagree with removing downvotes…

    I prefer to jump on here and browse local by New posts. I don’t shoehorn myself to specific communities, I like to see what all is out there. If it’s not in my interest I block the community, I don’t interact with it.

    But the ones I don’t block I’m interested in, not enough to join because to me that takes away my intent to just browse it all. After all that’s why I joined this instance, to not have to hunt down communities to subscribe to but to get it all straight from the horses mouth…

    • BubblyAssignment655@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I totally agree. I like to see all new posts and downvote everything except the few posts that I like. If everybody did the same, and there were only a few posts that actually got upvotes after all the downvotes, then too bad for the posters. It’s not like I care about how they feel after getting downvoted to oblivion, if they feel bad they can get the fuck out of here for all I care. /s

      • Miauu@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        The problem is that their fans will have a hard time (pun not intended :) ) to find their content if it’s a niche interest.

        A downvote should be for something that crosses a line IMO. If everyone starts downvoting stuff they don’t like that they see in their feed, the more niche communities get dumped into the pit and they deserve a place too. Like the top post says, just block a community you’re not interested in and you won’t see it anymore.

        • faede@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          Then create a community for your niche interest that isn’t popular in the more general communities. I mostly browse my subscribed, but some communities have some content I like and maybe a few I don’t. If i’m the only one, then it won’t make much difference. But if more people on the community down vote some content and up vote others it may just tell people a split in the community is necessary.

  • 💕💕Annabelle💕💕@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I just want to say that I think the admin here is awesome. You seem to really want to accommodate both users and posters. I decided to no longer post here because many of the users are negative. The downvotes felt awful even though I have a thick skin. That’s great they are disabled, but there are also negative comments. I have a thick skin, but I get treated better on other social media. There are great users here, but the trolls are too prominent for me. It seems like many users have high expectations yet don’t want “pros”. The stock images look like sex dolls. Idk. I just want to be treated well. Thanks for the users that supported me. There are awesome people here.

    • Violet@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Hey Annabelle, don’t leave yet.

      I absolutly know what you are talking about. I also have had accounts on multiple platforms and agree with your assesment. Toxic and negative users all around. Whining about their "right’ to downvote. For starters, from this thread its pretty obvious who the downvoters are. So i blocked them all. Those are 5 or 6 six jerks less to deal with. Dont wanna support the creators, you know the one who actually get out their comfortzone and contribute, not gonna see my content. Negative comment, blocked too.

      But i really wanna support this instance and help make it thrive. There are wonderfull people behind the screens, with good intentions. Dont give up yet, take a break sure but come back to check for progress on this issue.

      • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Thanks @Violetpsychosis@lemmynsfw.com.

        Question for you and admins here: Does blocking someone work here on LemmyNSFW work the same way now as on Reddit (i.e. they can’t see any your content posts). Previously on Reddit before they made the change, blocking was only one way, which didn’t work well.

        • MaybeALittleBitWeird@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          Blocking is only one way here as well. If you block a user then their comments and posts will no longer appear for you. If there is a comment by the blocked user in a conversation it shows up as ‘There is no record of this comment’ the same as if it was removed by mod action or if it’s the end of the comment chain you just can’t expand it (At least on Jerboa). Blocked communities don’t show in your feed and won’t show up in a search if you try to manually go to it either.

          Your own comments and posts will still show to the blocked user however.

          • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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            1 year ago

            Bummers - that what I thought… Reddit finally did something right when they made blocking both ways so that people you have blocked can’t see you.

            • MaybeALittleBitWeird@lemmynsfw.com
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              1 year ago

              I actually prefer the one-way ban personally, but I’m not a poster generally. I would imagine that the people who are enough of a problem to require the two-way ban would just ban-evade with another account anyway.

              • Violet@lemmynsfw.com
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                1 year ago

                Nah if i block someone, they can fuck right off. It means i dont wanna engage anymore and i dont want them to have the opportunity to comment and ruin the vibe in my comment section either. Or follow me around and downvote everything im doing.

                Its my effort, my content and i wanna be able to disinvite them fully. They can go spew their negative bullshit somewhere else.

                I had a few who indeed made other accounts to come back and annoy me again. Blocked those accounts too. Wake a mole and all. They give up after a while. And a new post wont trigger them to start the harrasment again cause they cant seeeeee them.

                Can you put a community on private here?

                • MaybeALittleBitWeird@lemmynsfw.com
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                  1 year ago

                  I’m not sure about private communities, but maybe someone else can chime in. I know you can disable comments and posts at the very least.

                  I understand where you’re coming from with your opinion and I don’t think it’s incorrect in any way, but I still personally disagree. A conversation requires two people and if you block off one end it’s no longer that. Just like you mention, they will tired eventually and move on. I’m not sure if Lemmy allows blocked users to comment on posts by users they’ve been blocked by actually though. I would hope not at least because that is a situation I absolutely do not think should be allowed.

            • Violet@lemmynsfw.com
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              1 year ago

              Dammit :D

              Well at least i dont have to look at their bs anymore.

              Should be changed though. If i block someone, i dont want them stalking my profile

    • unwoundgills@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      We all love you. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

      I am usually just an upvoter and do not engage in any other way. I know that a lot of people are like me.

    • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Hi Annabelle, Wrt negative or harassing comments, you can report them for actioning by mods/admins. I am quick to ban trolls and toxic folks who don’t add value to communities, and I believe most mods would agree with me and do the same.

        • Rainbow_Spit@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          As someone who also used to post OC and Mod on here, I can say looking back on things that the “general culture” I think you’re talking about is one wherein the community at large has allowed for the (mostly women) OC posters on here to feel unvalued/undervalued, or in some cases outright disrespected.

          In terms of unvalued/undervalued, I mean that it comes as a real issue for any forum (or whatever) of this size to cover both the niche and general. I have since leaving here switched primarily to discord groups for the sort of OC posting I want to do, entirely because I have better interactions that way. For someone to see a pic of me they can’t just be browsing through /local. In those groups, I (and others) are sought out and enjoyed rather than tossed in with a mix of professional pornstars, hentai, and everything else. And remember, OC posters aren’t just doing this because they would like the honor to be included in your special jerkoff session. We do it because we want to enjoy the experience as well. I honestly have no advice for fixing this other than time and size, though in reflection I’d like to apologize to the Admins here for potentially having made them feel same way. Y’all deserve better than you’ve been treated.

          And as for the outright disrespect @b9999998 , Annabelle’s most recent post proves exactly what sort of shit is being let slide:

          Don’t let the door hit you 👋👋👋

          is the top comment on a post saying goodbye to the few likeable men on here when she decided it was time to move on. ANNABELLE BROKE NOT A SINGLE RULE and STILL, she is currently being allowed to be disrespected over a policy the Admins and Community agreed on: “Self-Promotion is only okay as long as the community you are posting in allows it, and you don’t spam it.”

          Fuck y’alls absolutist need to say the first thing that comes to mind for once, and start thinking about how to develop a community that’s not entirely comprised of men with last weeks shit stuck to their balls. The silent rule #1 of any mixed gender group is “don’t bother the women (and queer folk) or they won’t come back”.

          So riddle me this anyone: how the hell are you supposed to keep women around when users can criticize (physically), disrespect, belittle, harass, or mock the women who would like to be part of this community? If a new woman joins and sees those sort of comments directed towards a likeable woman who’s followed all the rules, do you think she’s going to want to become an OC poster on here?

          • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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            1 year ago

            And as for the outright disrespect @b9999998 , Annabelle’s most recent post proves exactly what sort of shit is being let slide:

            As I said in my reply, this type of toxic trolling is what needs to be reported to admins (since the comment you referred to is in Annabelle’s own community, we mods on other communities can’t do much outside of our communities - but admins can take action via instance-wide rule 2

            Of course, the disgusting part is that many other trolls up voted that comment, and I’m truly saddened by that.

            I can say for myself that in any of the communities i mod (including at Reddit), a comment like that toward some OC poster like Annabelle in this context will be deleted and member banned from community when reported - caveat, it does require bringing stuff like this to mods and admins attention.

            [Addition] @Rainbow_Spit@lemmynsfw.com, I don’t know what your experiences were, but I hope you"ll share with admins some of your own specifics. Also, if you look at the sidebar/rules of https://old.reddit.com/r/ButterflyWings, and https://old.reddit.com/r/DangleAndJingle, you can see how I started those subs and the culture of zero tolerance for trolls and rude members, and have encouraged many OC posters to post in harassment-free communities for 4+ years now.

            • Rainbow_Spit@lemmynsfw.com
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              I appreciate Admin(s?) who stepped up to have those TOS violating comments removed, but it says something deeply wrong that those comments were able to stay up for 7 hours during the most busy part of the day without a single user reporting them. If this is SOP, the users here might need some prodding to get them to use the report. Sorry to say, but anyone who reads toxic comments directed at a woman they like and doesn’t report them, but instead chooses to write a nice comment, is the real issue. Though on the bright side, they are probably some of the most capable of improvement.

              And while the initial responsibility is on her to manage the comments in her community, it can be tough to remove comments (especially when finances are involved) as women can be perceived as “too bitchy” or “can’t take criticism”, especially when someone is speaking about their person. Some form of a more robust system could be developed; maybe a few trusted volunteers who could offer Mod assistance on “self-communities”, an Admin assigned to overlook the biggest “self-communities” (she is after-all still your #2 post of today), or other system that can enable the community and admins to take action rather than the singular OC/Mod.

              Sorry for dumping this on you Admins btw. I know there’s many things you’re working on to improve the whole experience here, but after having time to digest my experience here and seeing another woman go right as i’m coming back, I just thought I’d say something. Btw, removing downvotes will definitely help foster a better and more respectful community that keeps women and queer folk around. It’s actually why I decided to log back on, so count me as proof it’s working.

              • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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                1 year ago

                The truth is that mods and admins don’t have advanced monitoring tools yet like automod to detect certain behaviors and derogatory words/phrases and to filter. So yes, We do need help from the rest of the instance’s members to help identify/report unwanted behavior.

                I don’t know who the admin is that removed the post you referenced, but IMO it would have sent a stronger message to ban that member (and ask questions later)

                maybe a few trusted volunteers who could offer Mod assistance on “self-communities”, an Admin assigned to overlook the biggest “self-communities” …

                Admins/mod teams definitely could use lots more trusted volunteers and help. Can we count on you to help/advise? 😊

        • hjkl@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          It’s definitely not the culture but a loud (and jerk) minority. You may even meet someone obsessed with downvoting you, when you see someone like that just report them. It’s sad to see you going, but we need to stick together if we want this platform to get bigger.

          • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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            1 year ago

            The one side benefit of disabling downvotes is that this minority of trolls and haters have to be more overt in public view via their comments, and responsible members can help by reporting such to admins for instance-wide bans.

  • xL3moN@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    Fck it, I’m begining to look for a new nsfw server. Normal people need both down votes and upvotes equally. That is called freedom of opinion and a free exchange of freedom of opinions. The comunity is a comunity then it is not a walled garden of enforced hapy smiles only. If someone doesn’t like getting down votes, the problem is in them, they have a chance to correct, adjust their content, but all is lost if they are just blocked. You’ll lose comunity faster this way. And so, your decision to remove functionality is plain wrong. Oh, and vote me down, if you do not agree ;) you fcks.

    • yay@lemmynsfw.comM
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      1 year ago

      Its too bad that I can’t downvote you lol 😅

      Our goal here is not to take away the downvote feature, believe me, but to protect the posters. Please see our good intentions.

      • iorale@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Protect them from what? Themselves? Their own ego?

        This is a terrible change and should have been discussed with the people who has an account inside the instance because this impacts every user, not just the few posters.

        If their content is getting downvoted because people don’t like it, they either change it, move somewhere else or suck it up, that’s how the Internet works. Now we are just another fucking Beehaw.

        This won’t magically make everyone accept their content, this will just open the door to people leaving negative comments and won’t really stop other instances from downvoting them (this only impacts us).

        Also now we can’t downvote federated posts to protect a few posters whose ego got hurt, good job.

      • xL3moN@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Yes 😂 you can’t any more. From now on everybody will have to play a stupid game of adding aditional comments with “I don’t like it”, “I like it” and then upvoting one of them. That’s just silly. I see your good intentions, but don’t agree with the means. The only efect it will have on sorting is that the post will be counted as equaly active in both cases. Comunity will not be able to rise and drown posts to their liking.

    • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Says the person with 0 posts and 0 comments after 5 months.

      What have you contributed to build the community here?

      • xL3moN@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        I’ve voted ;) P.S. and I have multiple accounts on several lemmy instances. This one is just for watching, voting, collecting (in favs) of nsfw. Same as I did it before on reddit. I don’t mix my content between my users, that is very convenient and saves privacy.

  • DelvianSeek@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I just want to go on record saying I do not like this change, though I do understand the good intention behind it.

    It seems there was a simple and elegant solution discussed earlier in this thread - only allow downvotes of you are subscribed to the community where the post is. I know this would need to be implemented by the lemmy devs; is there someplace we can request or vote on such features? A whole tagging system may be nice, but it’s overkill for this problem.

    Meanwhile, genuine question, how do I hide posts that I have already seen that I would have downvoted? I have already joined a bunch of communities, and I only look at my Subscribed feed. I have lemmy set to not show me posts I’ve already voted on. Thus, my feed is always kept fresh, and when I log in I just see what’s new in those communities to which I’ve subscribed.

    So, now I see a post that I feel doesn’t live up to the standards of a particular community. It doesn’t break any rules per se, and it’s not report-worthy, it’s just not a good post. Normally I’d downvote and move on, and I’d never see it again. So now what do I do to ensure I don’t see it every time I log in? Lemmy doesn’t have a ‘hide’ or ‘mark seen’ feature (another good feature we should have), and I don’t want to upvote the post because it’s a bad post. I also don’t want to block the poster, because their next post might be great! What do I do here?

    I hate to make this post any longer, but I’ll just provide an example. Within the last couple days, I saw the same post uploaded to both gonewild and to adorableporn. I upvoted the gonewild post and downvoted the adorableporn post, because at the end of the day it was a pretty average nude picture, perfectly reasonable for gonewild. But not, IMO, anything that could be called adorable. That, to me, seems like specifically the kind of situation that calls for a ‘downvote and move on’ response. So now how do I hide that post without blocking that user, who is otherwise posting good content?

    • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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      This is a temporary hammer solution, until we can get dev resources and attention to implement some “simple elegant” solution that quite a few others have also expressed (which begs the question, why wasn’t it done then in the first place, but that’s a totally different topic), and which should take your very valid use cases into account.

      Please hang in there for now.

  • MrJameGumb@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Sounds like we’re only allowed to upvote and anything whatsoever that gets posted is considered valid content? So… basically just a shitty Instagram for nudes?

    • rustling_leaves@lemmynsfw.com
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      Another commenter with 0 posts and 0 comments in this community complaining about not being able to downvote posts.

      and anything whatsoever that gets posted is considered valid content

      Where did you get that from? There are mods in each community who set guidelines, remove off-topic posts, remove spam, etc. If you see inactive mods in a community you can request to take over the community.

      So… basically just a shitty Instagram for nudes?

      No one is forcing you to be here. If you don’t like parts of it you can submit posts, create communities, give constructive feedback to improve this place.

  • chloespanked@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    Thanks for keeping us in the loop! While I agree that downvoting can be problematic for smaller nicher communities, I’m not a fan of removing the downvote button. I think a better option would be to remind users (in a post like this) that they can block communities whose content they don’t want to see on their client

    • lemmyposter212@lemmynsfw.comOPM
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      1 year ago

      I agree with you for the most part but the issue is with that is that because of size of this instance, pretty much all the communities here are about the size of niche reddit subs. That’s why I said for the time being. In the future we may re-enable downvotes once communities grow.

      Additionally we mods and admins have expressed that we wish downvote disabling had more granularity, like limiting downvotes to those subscribed to a community or something like that so that those who are interested in something can shape their community, but unfortunately that doesn’t exist at this time.

      • chloespanked@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        I hope it works! Or, if it doesn’t, it gets reverted. I’ve noticed a downtick in content creation (especially non redgif content) from a couple months ago. Whatever will encourage more people posting content is probably best for this instance to grow. I think the useful feedback aspect of downvoting is really attractive, especially on a nsfw (ie porn) instance. The instance is so small that it’s easy to skim all posts uploaded in 24 hours in less than 10 minutes, so the idea that downvoting limits visibility of (relatively) small communities doesn’t seem too relevant to this instance to me. Thanks for all your great work!

  • lemmyposter212@lemmynsfw.comOPM
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    1 year ago

    Just a reminder that it is ok to propose different solutions and also disapproval of the change here, we know this is not a perfect solution.

    • bsgtftw@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      I don’t think recommending blocking users is a good idea. It could have effect of creating “holes” if a user posts in multiple communities. It seems best to block the community to remove the majority of content you aren’t into. That way you still see a users posts in a community that you do like.

  • yay@lemmynsfw.comM
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    1 year ago

    Believe me, I didn’t want this decision either, but the posters were being downvoted for their posts in even accordance with the community.

    Downvotes should be used for posts you don’t like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don’t like.

    When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.

    But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.