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this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
3 points (80.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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I disagree. Downvotes rarely add anything of value to the discussion that can't be expressed simply by not upvoting. There's no nuance to a downvote, and they're so often misused to the extent that I'm glad not to have to worry about them.
I have a counter example where downvotes are very useful. In r/askphysics we would downvote any comment that had errors or was completely wrong. A post didnt have to be around long before it became clear what the consensus answer was. This was much more helpful to the asker than just showing them a bunch of answers, and responses to those answers, and leaving them to discern who is most credible.
In that case, just not voting wouldn't help. And if you have downvoting, you can still just not vote when that's more appropriate. That's what I do for opinions I simply disagree with.
Downvotes have a very important function. They are meant to suppress irrelevant discussion, trolls, and hate.
The problem is people on reddit stopped following reddiquette many years ago, and they became dis/agree buttons.
But if there is an off-topic post and there's no downvotes possible, that irrelevant content cannot be properly suppressed by downvotes, and is more likely to rise.
This causes the boundaries/purpose of a specific community to become muddied. I can't tell you haw many subreddits I saw devolve into nothing but shitposting memes. Not having downvotes just makes that problem much worse.
Downvotes are important for the site to function properly. Even right here, idiots are downvoting you simply because you have a dissenting opinion. It is not a disagreement button. I upvoted your comment even tho I wholeheartedly disagree, because you are contributing healthy discourse.
And for the people in instances like yours who I see saying how refreshing it is to be able to comment without fear of downvotes, you're being too sensitive... It's imaginary internet points. That should never be the basis for your self-worth and self-confidence. That's only going to make your shell even more fragile. Hypersensitivity isn't healthy. It's okay to disagree with each other.
Respectfully, I am aware of the intended function. My point is nothing to do with the intended function, it's to do with how downvotes are misused in practice. I already knew that people would misuse the downvote function simply because I disagree with the majority opinion.
Fortunately, it's not a binary choice. There is a place for people on the fediverse who like to have downvotes. There is also a place for people who do not. :)
And that is a beautiful thing!
I respectfully disagree. Downvotes add a way of gauging the percent of people who support/don't support a comment. Let's say I'm asking for advice about which product to buy. With an upvotes-only system the upvote count is biased towards the earliest comment, whereas with an up/down vote system, the ratio helps you detect comments with heavy bias or blatantly wrong facts. So an upvote/downvote system makes it easier to tell the credibility of a comment, basically allowing you to indirectly gauge the opinion of the community rather than the one person who commented.
I see your points, and they do make sense, but I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. My reasoning is that, from my experience, a downvote has no nuance. A reply saying "this is wrong and here's why" with a hundred upvotes is useful. A downvote is basically the equivalent of flicking a peanut.
The thing is that people usually won't take the time to write that reply and in case of trolls, they shouldn't be wasting their time.
YouTube's dislikes used to be great for telling useful content apart from useless spam at a glance without even clicking on it. They removed them, so now we have to read the comments before watching a video if we want to avoid wasting time.
In this day and age, information flows so fast there isn't always time for nuance. The downvote isn't perfect and misused often, but it does serve a purpose.
does a comment/post really need hundreds of comments saying similar things it also helps to hide spam content and trolls
No, why would you think that?
You remove the downvotes you juat get people more people in the comments with "you're an idiot" or whatever instead of just a downvote.
It's not like those kinds of comments are really that nuanced or helpfull either.
I haven't noticed that so far.
Also, even if that were an issue, please forgive me but I'm not entirely convinced that the problem of people posting comments that are lacking in nuance could be solved with a tool that has no nuance.