Several people in the community have expressed frustration in regards to the fact that any post that fits the community it's posted to but is slightly out of the normal post type like, for example, being more hardcore rather than softcore, get's a lot of downvotes by people who simply don't like that particular post.
We have also had complaints that particular types of posts as a whole get more downvotes even if they are in the appropriate community and are the normal type of post for a community. This especially appears to be happening to male content.
Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don't even want to see in the first place.
We understand some may not like some content of a particular post or community, but downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them in our instance and especially in other instances, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all.
After some discussion amongst the moderators and admins,because of the reasons above, we've decided to disable downvotes at least for the time being.
What do I do if I dislike a post?
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We recommend those who would normally downvote a post they don't like just, instead, block the user who created the post, or, if the community is a topic you dislike, block the community. That way, you no longer see those posts, but don't effect those posts' visibility to other members of the community and instance.
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Additionally, you can view your "Subscribed" feed instead of "Local" so that you only see posts from the communities you are subscribed to.
What do I do if a post doesn't fit the community it's posted in or is spam?
- Please report the post, either the mods of the community or an instance admin will remove the post if necessary, as soon as possible. We have admins and mods online almost around the clock, so these types of posts should be removed quickly.
Potential future post filtering on lemmy:
- In the future it appears that lemmy may implement a tagging system similar to flairs on reddit. This request has piqued the interest of the lemmy devs, so keep an eye out sometime in the (maybe not so near) future for the implementation of that feature.
As @yay@lemmynsfw.com has said in the comments:
Downvotes should be used for posts you don’t like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don’t like.
When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.
But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.
Please put any comments questions and concerns in the comments below, we are of course always open to community thoughts and feedback, and want to work with you to keep this instance an enjoyable and entertaining place to post and browse.
I just want to say that I think the admin here is awesome. You seem to really want to accommodate both users and posters. I decided to no longer post here because many of the users are negative. The downvotes felt awful even though I have a thick skin. That’s great they are disabled, but there are also negative comments. I have a thick skin, but I get treated better on other social media. There are great users here, but the trolls are too prominent for me. It seems like many users have high expectations yet don’t want “pros”. The stock images look like sex dolls. Idk. I just want to be treated well. Thanks for the users that supported me. There are awesome people here.
Hi Annabelle, Wrt negative or harassing comments, you can report them for actioning by mods/admins. I am quick to ban trolls and toxic folks who don't add value to communities, and I believe most mods would agree with me and do the same.
Its not anybody specific. Maybe just a general culture. Maybe ill change my mind after i get some space
It's definitely not the culture but a loud (and jerk) minority. You may even meet someone obsessed with downvoting you, when you see someone like that just report them. It's sad to see you going, but we need to stick together if we want this platform to get bigger.
The one side benefit of disabling downvotes is that this minority of trolls and haters have to be more overt in public view via their comments, and responsible members can help by reporting such to admins for instance-wide bans.
That makes sense.