There is a pull request which adds a new setting show_downvotes with these settings:
- Show (current behaviour)
- Hide (all downvotes hidden in ui)
- ShowForOthers (only downvotes on other user’s posts are visible)
Importantly the last option would become the new default, which means that users wont be aware that their post or comment was downvoted unless they manually change the setting. This may be good for mental health, but may also make it harder for users to realize that their content is unpopular. What do you think about it?
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I think disabling downvotes totally for the user’s content by default would be a bad idea, because it is important for a user to know if what they are saying is unpopular.
Here’s an approach I have taken for my app (for all posts and comments).
- If downvotes are <= 5, downvotes show as 0.
- If downvotes <= 5%, downvotes show as 0.
Remember, the reasoning for this is a mere hypothesis and not results obtained from an experiment.
The 5 percent rule aims to prevent fringe opinions from downvoting. This solves issues like, “why do I have 3 downvotes on a picture of my cute puppy?”.
The 5 downvotes rule prevents downvoting bias. I have observed this happening on Reddit a lot. If a comment has 3 upvotes and 2 downvotes, people tend to downvote more (just because of the downvote counts and not the content itself). 2 downvotes in a 5 total votes sample size is too small to make any decision about the quality of content.
In my opinion, cases like these are where the downvotes serve more as a mental health destroyer rather than decentralised content moderation.
So to answer your question, I think having the current as default would be better, I.e., option “Show”. However, if you’re open to refine this even further, I would suggest the 5-5% idea.
I really like your solution!
I think it’s a neat option to have, but personally I would make it opt-in rather than opt-out
Yes. As a hexbear user where down votes are disabled I find the experience is much more enjoyable. Ideally down votes off would be the default for servers.
This setting is only about how downvotes are displayed. They still exist and will be visible to other users, but not to the post creator. Disabling downvotes entirely as default is a separate discussion.
Oh, for sure, I understand the distinction. Not seeing downvotes on your own posts is a good measure for reasons stated. I’m just saying also support a more aggressive stance, which is making downvotes off for new server instances, that’s all.
would be interesting to compare results
Giving feedback from the other side of the comradeship wall, you hardly have downvotes on your comments anyhow. Even libs downvote you less than lemmy.ml and lemmygrad users
Yeah, generally downvotes are pretty minimal across the board for sure.
To elaborate on why I’d like to add this, from the original issue:
This is to enable a user being able to still show downvotes for other people’s posts/comments, but hide downvotes to their own content.
Adding this exception for your user alone, is to promote a positive experience, and for users to not have their mental well-being negatively affected by downvotes to their own content.
To mitigate the mental health negatives of downvotes, many instances already have downvotes entirely removed (meaning not only are downvotes not shown, but its impossible to downvote anything).
Disabling downvotes globally (not just for your user), has a lot of negatives, such as:
- Highly negative / low score comments seem to still be upvoted, and so encourage twitter-style rage-bait engagement (instead of just downvoting and moving on).
- These combative threads then keep getting bumped to the top of the active sort, making hostile comments seem the norm.
- You don’t know which comments are actually unpopular or not, so like twitter, you have to “check the ratio”, of replies to upvotes, to see if something is actually unpopular.
By making
ShowForOthersdefault, we mitigate the downsides above, while also promoting positive mental health.Just to clarify:
- This is not removing the ability to downvote.
- This is only about adding a setting to hide downvotes to your own content.
- Users can always re-enable showing downvotes to their own content at any time in their settings.
I get why you want to add the option, but why are you proposing to change everyone’s settings by changing the default on something almost nobody changes?
If you insist this is a better default, at least have the courtesy to only change the default for new users, and ensure any DB migrations don’t change existing users’ settings.
I was not aware of the issue that downvotes negatively affect mental health.
56 comments in 5 years huh? maybe that’s why lol
I agree a little with the post tbh. So I generally hold pro AI views (where I admire the tech, believe it can make the future a lot better, while being against it being owned by oligarchs and for profit corpos).
When I started using Lemmy in 2023, everybody here was ABSOLUTELY AGAINST AI. Any post/comment mentioning AI in a slightly positive tone was downvoted to oblivion.
It was really depressing to see stuff like this, because the concept of downvoting on Lemmy and irl works very differently I suppose. No one irl just randomly shows up, shows you a thumbs down and leaves, right? Most conversations like these offline tend to be a lot more developed than a “thumbs down”. In my experience, people offline are also a lot less meaner compared to online, as they are talking to a real human being rather than a profile picture.
I suppose this platform makes you a little thick skinned too. Sometimes you have to say, “I am right, even if this large group of people thinks I am wrong” and accept that sometimes the majority does not share your opinion, no matter how correct you think it is.
Now about disabling downvotes for your own post- I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. Doing so prevents getting feedback from others. There are times where I have been a dick (mostly unintentionally). The amount of downvotes told me that what I said was wrong, and I needed to do better. If downvotes were disabled, then I wouldn’t have access to this feedback.
Agreed 100%.
As someone with some unpopular opinions that I think are backed by good data, I get down votes on a number of my comments. I find that changing the way I present ideas goes a long way toward changing perception. My natural way of presenting things is to give the TLDR at the start and justify it after, but a lot of people don’t read past the TLDR. So when presenting something controversial, I’ll change my tactic to reference something popular and demonstrate some tweaks I’d make to arrive at my idea.
For example, I’m a fan of a Negative Income Tax. Most people don’t know what that is, and I used to start by saying it could replace welfare, which is unpopular (I have good reasons to want that end goal). Instead, I pitch it as UBI, but not going to wealthy people, and that’s a lot more popular, amd then down the thread I can show how it could make welfare more accessible (i.e. replace it) by eliminating the complex application process.
If I didn’t see downvotes, I wouldn’t be able to make that correction.
Fudging data to protect feelings of bad posters is how you get more bad posters.
I have to say I really appreciate not seeing downvotes when I am on hexbear I think they got a good thing going on over there.
Absolutely not. Sometimes you say something stupid, and people make you feel bad about it. That’s healthy, that’s good.
Sometimes you say something unpopular but correct… You need to recognize that it’s unpopular, and learn to package the idea in a more palatable way or approach the topic less directly.
You should feel bad for rage baiting… Even if you’re unambigiously right, you need to read the room and meet people where they are if you want to change minds. You don’t need to change your views, but you need to adapt your framing or you’re just rilling people up
Negative social responses are a good thing, it’s required for a community. Social rejection hurts so bad because we so rarely feel it, and that’s sickness. Most people can have few or no negative interactions, because when money is involved, people will smile and take your money
It’s such a little thing, but it’s a very gentle form of rejection… Avoiding it is not good, and so from a public health perspective we should default to showing it
I could see it being a “softer” way of a community enforcing good behavior, especially for things that don’t rise to the level of mod action.
I’m not on an instance with (visible?) downvotes though, and I do think that makes me more comfortable voicing opinions.
The hexbear mods/admins will probably have gotten community feedback and done a poll, so might be worth checking with them?
Hexbear does not have downvotes at all. The option isn’t hidden we just can’t downvote. The reason was transphobic harassment/downvote campaigns against our comrades by cowardly piss babies
Transparency everywhere should be the ultimate goal. Save the social engineering for the capitalists.
No
As others have said, I think it should be opt in instead of opt out, but it is probably good to have as an option.
However, if the intent is to improve mental health - I would recommend making it an option to hide all votes in their entirety. One can hide their down votes, but that may just change some peoples perspective from “high number of down votes” to “low number of up votes” which to them may be functionally the same as far as mental health is concerned. Therefore I think that it would be good to have the option for each/both.
For me this would have another benefit as well - it would allow me to think about and respond to all content in a more objective and honest manner.
I really like that
Sure. An off by default option would not hurt.
You might as well. If it goes poorly then surely you can just get rid of it later, right?
