I’ve been on lemmy for over a year now, and I just realized I used to read all those HackerNews articles + their comments, I haven’t done that in probably 6 months because the discussion here has gotten much better. What’s changed for you with Lemmy over the last year?
I’m fine with seeing things I don’t like or agree with if it is a fully formed thought, but I still think downvotes are a nice trap for lazy inarticulate people to feel like they are doing the equivalent of dropping a low effort flame comment while actually doing basically nothing. I have display of vote scores disabled and don’t have to know or think about the approval of people who are only voting, which is nice. If they had something to say that isn’t already fully communicated by the downvote button, maybe they would say it instead despite downvoting being an option.
I’d be fine with the downvotes if they were used as you described, but as there is no realistic way to stop people using them as an “I disagree/I don’t like that” button which is in reality the way they are mostly used. I think we’d be better without.
Yep, downvotes are usually an “I don’t know how to counter what you’re saying but I don’t like it” button.
But what I’m saying is, they are good because they likely deter toxic thoughtless comments.
They also deter good comments that go against the grain for an instance. Labeling comments as “toxic” even if they are fine but controversial isn’t good. Such toxic comments can be reported and removed anyways.
I mean they deter comments from the people leaving the downvotes. Anyone wanting not to be deterred by downvotes can adjust settings to not see them.