Thanks for being open and honest with the community. I'll admit I'm disappointed by the decision. But you did the right thing by communicating and letting the community help shape the decision.

I voted to enable downvotes due to an increase in bad faith comments and posts in some communities, and removing downvotes allows trolls and sealions to artificially appear neutral when in fact they are rightfully buried. It also discourages commenters when those bad-faith debates eat up comment sections.

That said, I completely understand the rationale above and it convinced me that I voted the wrong way. Makes total sense that most people misuse downvotes, and I agree with disabling for now.

Thanks for involving the community in the decision.

It's nice to see active admins on our instance.

After I participated in the other thread, I thought of a couple more scenarios where downvoting is useful:

• "this post is low effort"

Downvoting is a useful feedback tool to say hey OP, I have given your post an amount of my time that your low effort post did not earn. Try harder next time.

• "we don't need yet another community for this topic"

If a person creates a new community for a topic that already has one (or more), to get around the community blocks that users have already put up, that's functionally very similar to ban evasion. I'm tired of blocking repeat communities. If I see a person make a new community for a topic that is practically identical to one that exists, a downvote is warranted.

I'm not telling you my opinion should overrule the other arguments here, but it's better to have all sides present so it's not just an echo chamber.

Isn't voting a way to participate? Is there a way to semi-lock the community instead so random drifters don't come in a vote bomb?

I've been blocking communities for around 300+ so far. The communities that I'm not interested. I've been doing this since day 1 and still keep checking new communities every day. For either subscribe or block.

I just want for people here having fun without getting downvotes so much because they're not interested in such content per se.

I want to thank you lemmyposter212 for this fair minded decision. I know that we'll probably revisit this subject in a number of months and then maybe the decision will be different and I shall probably bow out gracefully at that point rather than mount a protest.

I also want to thank the other posters and commenters who showed up to support each other, particularly @lnsfw3@lemmynsfw.com @Rtc@lemmynsfw.com @Clevererhans@lemmynsfw.com @NodachiDicc@lemmynsfw.com and @b9999998@lemmynsfw.com Edit: also @Samdell@lemmynsfw.com

But for right now I have another problem which is how to go about restoring the posts I blanked out. What I intend to do is to go through and try to match the titles to their original picture and then I shall make a weekly digest post of the ones that have been restored so that the people who haven't seen them before can enjoy them.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Thank you for leaving them disabled. I think that it’s ultimately the correct choice to foster growth on this platform for now

Not that I have a solution but engoraging people to use "blocks" and "filters" is the way to go I think.

I'd like to create a homepage but Lemmy moves too slowly for that, so I do find myself on "all" a lot. So blocking users/communities/instances and filtering keywords are how I craft a positive experience here.

When EH was around I'd waste endless time trolling/downvoting them, which I now realise was time wasted. It didn't help me; made Lemmy more toxic; and gave bad actors the legitimacy and attention they want.

I think my comment in the poll was fairly comprehensive, so I'll leave it at that. Except to add good job LemmyNSFW admins you constantly handle controversy well. From instance bans, instance drama or this current downvote issue, no notes.

You could ask the devs to add a new admin feature that controls down votes per community with the option to (1) disable for the whole community or (2) enable for subscribers only or (3) enable for everyone.

Really disappointing decision. I'm tired of blocking so many niche (to say the least) communities polluting the local feed.

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.

Says who?

If you don't want people voting in a community, then maybe change the community to block voting by non-members. I don't know if this is technical option right now, and frankly I don't care. If that's what you want in your community, then that's for you to address. Not just come on here and act like Mr. Dictator and tell people how to use communities.

At a minimum what you're doing is ineffective, nut it's also adversarial. I didn't even read past this sentence, and I have no intention of going back and reading the rest. Why should I when you've shown how you view everyone else, as merely pawns to be told how to behave.

And why would I want to join a community when you're so condescending to people?

Sheesh.

Why don't you disable upvotes too, then? Or at least hide the vote count--it is meaningless when it's one sided.

This is the right decision. I did not want to add an opinion and leave the majority decide, but the issue is downvotes are not used correctly.

... several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in

Could you elaborate what you mean by that? Does "participating" mean subscribing? Commenting? Posting?
Also what does "downvoting communities" mean? People go in and downvote every post?

Just to say something in opposition to criticism expressed in other comments... No matter what you choose there will be upset people in comments, and as an admin you can make decisions you see fit here as you are the one doing most of the work. There will always be people upset with the decision, but so far I believe you are doing great job!

You are doing (well not gods work) but still great work!

I Agree, it is basically impossible to make everyone happy.Personally I would like to have a possibility to display my discontent with something, in a more clear, immediate and concize way than a comment. Yet it is clear that Lemmy does not have the tools necessary to keep it being fun while people aren't playing along.

Are you saying entire communities can be downvoted? I didn't even realize that. But it seems entirely unnecessary because people can block communities they don't like.

I was personally on the fence anyway, but I really appreciate your work and explanation for decisions. You don't have to do that but it means a lot!