I’ve been thinking about the impact of downvotes on LemmyNSFW and whether it’s worth having them enabled. Here are some pros and cons I’ve come up with:
Pros:
- Downvotes can be used to lower the visibility of low-quality content that doesn’t break the rules, although this content would have low visibility either way.
Cons:
- Since there are more males than females, male nudes tend to get buried with downvotes, even on communities that accept both male and female content, like gonewild.
- People often use upvotes/downvotes for things they like or don’t like instead of for relevance, as they’re supposed to be used.
- Downvotes make content from one instance less visible in other instances.
- Receiving downvotes may discourage users from posting content, leading to less overall content.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this matter. What are the pros and cons of having downvotes in your opinion? Do you think downvotes should be reconsidered for LemmyNSFW?
I feel this too
Very discouraging
I understand not everyone likes niche celebrity posts or certain people but constant down votes makes me want to not post anything at all
Would be best to disable them imo
The daily active user count is going down from like ~220 to like ~110 people, people constantly down voting posts isn’t going to help this community grow
💯 - it’s not just in the communities you post in, it’s almost everywhere. Downvotes are increasing and engagement is decreasing. 3rd party clients will always support this, I think, so it may not even be possible to remove downvotes. I think I prefer the separate upvote/downvote count option, or make folks votes public like kbin.
Side note: Do you know that active user count in lemmy is based on posts/comments rather than up/down votes?