Downvotes can be a useful tool to shape a community, but one of the main issues brought up in the post I made is when several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in. Which I want to emphasize is NOT the correct way for downvotes to be used.
First id like to start off with an apology to those who are upset about them being enabled. It may seem very clear to you that downvotes weren't wanted, but as an admin I get complaints for basically every decision made on this site, so what the “right” choice is, 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 the initial 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 think the best option is 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.
So with all that said, downvotes have been disabled again. Sorry for all the confusion and back and forth.
Of all the points you could pick, you pick the anti-bullying one. The point of local, which is the only place where this would apply, is where all the posts which gain a large number of votes in their own communities are put. It is a place where even everything nsfw, as long as it does not break sitewide rules, is also welcome. The only reason to downvote such a thing rather than browse subscriptions instead or ignore the post and move on, in practical terms, would be acting on going out of your way for making sure they don't exist. To tell those posters to just fuck off and go away, even when they didn't decide to put it outside the community.
And this dude seriously argued that point under the argument of morality hahahahaha. Hahahaha hahahahahahahaha.