Is it possible to have no downvotes on Blahaj, but do have downvotes on federated communities?

This would give Blahaj users the same perception of federated communities as other instances have and give us a safe space in Blahaj. It also means we can sort federated communities like normal and see what everyone else sees, while still having downvotes nonexistent in Blahaj communities.

I’ve never really wanted downvotes in Blahaj, but I’ve worried about not having them for other instances. It feels like I’m not on a “level playing field” when I can be downvoted by others on a federated communities, but can’t downvote anything myself. I’m also worried that with downvotes = 1/5, it would result in a skewed perspective of federated communities if Blahaj sorts federated communities that way too.

I don’t know what the code looks like (yet?) but I feel like denying downvotes only on local communities wouldn’t be a hard change to make.

Edit: I also wouldn’t mind if downvotes were 1/5 on Blahaj but 1=1 on federated communities, but I can see that being a harder change to make.

Edit 2: if this is a straightforward change I wouldn’t mind implementing it when I have time. I have some familiarity with Rust, TS, and JS so it wouldn’t be difficult to jump into.

Having been here for a couple of days I now feel that downvotes are a bad idea. They don’t add anything of value to the discussion that cannot be expressed by simply not upvoting. If they must be re-enabled (which I disagree with) I think they should be at least an order of magnitude different, 20:1 or even 50:1, just to make brigading harder. I don’t miss them from Reddit, and if they’re enabled at 5:1, I’d consider finding another instance where they’re just disabled - but hey, I’m new, so I might be missing something.

I personally think downvotes are unnecessary, because if there’s any constructive disagreements to be discussed, it’s better to get people talking rather than downvoting. Not upvoting is basically the new downvote, which would make sense if someone is flaming or trying to sow discord, they are basically ignored. Negative attention is still attention, and those types don’t deserve any.

Edit: To clarify, I think downvotes aren’t a good idea for blahaj but, as others ITT said, will put us at a disadvantage if other instances have downvotes enabled.

Downvotes are a useful tool for sorting content and unless they are being abused should be implemented with a 1:1 weight with downvotes.

I think that is a fair system! I still want the option to throw a downvote if something really needs it - but it keeps brigading or shit from happening.

I prefer not having them.

Some of the comments in the “kick tankies out” post on /c/196 says to me that we need downvotes.

Sounds like a really good compromise. “Rediquette” says it’s only to discourage spam and posts that add nothing to the conversation, but in practice, basically everyone uses it as an “I disagree” button. Gets used as a tool to discourage dissent and silence the actual unpopular opinions.

After seeing some contentious threads on here recently, it’s actually much nicer to read without seeing all the posts spammed with downvotes. Makes it feel a lot more friendly.

My preference is to keep downvotes disabled.

I love that we have the fidelity here to implement things like “downvotes are at 0.2x power” and stuff like that! That sounds cool, should totally try that out and see how it ends up feeling. I think people would ultimately be OK with a near-zero-power downvote, if that ends up negatively affecting conversations too much.

Would it be possible to enable this at the topic level but not the comment level? My thinking is that it makes sense for helping users decide what posts to read in the first place, but would still discourage low-effort negativity that doesn’t actually contribute to a discussion.

But even if the answer to that is “no”… I don’t strongly object to trying this out and seeing how it works for this community. 🙂 If de-weighted downvotes still lead to problems, the change could always be reverted. Thank you for exploring the options!

on hexbear they had issues with trans people being downvoted solely because they were trans even though it was a very trans accepting place. i suggest getting rid of downvotes to avoid the same issue.

I wouldn’t mind trying it but I also always disliked downvoting systems in favour of hiding or reporting/blocking (if it was incredibly out of line). I always thought that down voting was presumptive.

Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it should affect anyone else.

(Edited to say I’m not against it; if it were enabled, I’d be fine with it too. I do like the ability to weight them differently too, so that helps)

Totally fine with this, but I’m curious how weights/disabling downvotes works? Like does the 5:1 downvotes weight apply to downvotes everywhere, even on other instances that have normal weights? Or is it just for communities that are hosted on blahaj.zone?

I think this is a really good idea. That said I think it’s important to revisit this at some point and determine how it alters the vibe relative to other instances. A post with equal upvotes/downvotes would be hid in one system and platformed in another. Unfortunately there are lots of awful takes (read transphobia) that could easily reach a 50/50 split. In particular, I think this may become an issue when we inevitably see a conservative corner of lemmy rise up.