In our previous announcement, we announced that we closed downvotes.
Some people found it right, some people hated it, some people hesitated. At the end of the day, since we are on a disorganised platform like fediverse, I find the decision we took right. However, I was also annoyed by the lack of downvotes. So I searched for a solution.
I think the planned post flair support will be a good improvement in this regard. But it seems to take a long time to develop.
What do you think about limiting downvotes to only members of that community? I see it as the optimal way in the current situation.
Please vote with empathy, not just as a user, but assuming you are a poster user. Is it right decision?
Poll: https://strawpoll.com/DwyoDBooDnA
Result: done.
My problem with downvotes is that people are using downvotes to downvote that things they don't like.
I have observed people heavily downvoting the following things:
This leads to
This is why I am in favor of disallowing downvotes.
Having upvotes is enough to determine which is "good" or "great" or even "bad" content in a community. Because the upvote count relative to other posts in the community tells how it was perceived by the community.
Having a more "targeted" home page may help people find things that they like instead of an endless stream of a big jumble of random content.
Reddit doesn't have this problem because no one browses the entirety of NSFW content by new instead there is an "all" but even that had NSFW content removed from it. So really people are browsing only by the things they have subscribed to meaning if someone were to downvote a post they don't like they would have to go out of their way to see it.
I mean...what did you think downvotes were for?
Downvotes should be reserved for things like spam, links that lead to malware, posts that are off-topic, etc. Things that mods would normally remove.
That's why the report button exists.