Do you want downvotes? (POLL)

Yes I like having downvotes. I use downvotes to notice trends of spam so I can better identify who to report/block.

That site sabotages the back button, fyi.

ALSO the downvote disabling feature never worked as intended. It only blocks lemmynsfw accounts from downvoting anything, lemmynsfw or otherwise. THIS account could already downvote anything federated.

I'm 50/50 on this, so I'll not vote, but I want to at least share my thoughts.

On one hand I generally like downvotes, because it makes it easier to identify bad actors & trolls. However, on an instance that's all about nudity and sex, it could become a tool for harassment towards original content creators, which could discourage them from actually participating here. And I think OC is something we'd generally like to see more of, right? Or if we go with people who may be not quite the model standard body type, or do content that may not be the most vanilla kink out there, then they may be discouraged simply by people being not a fan of it, and it being very visible to them. It's one thing to not get many upvotes, another to receive a lot of downvotes.

If this was a regular instance I'd easily vote for the downvotes, but here I'm rather leaning towards "nay".

I was for disabling down votes the last goaround wrt this topic, and I'm of the same opinion.

LemmyNSFW hasn't grown much more in the past year and this will just drive away more posters (of which there aren't much left) imho

Additional - I'd prefer that others block me (so they don't have to see what I post) or block/don't subscribe to various communities I mod that they don't want to see ad part of their feed, rather than have them downvote individual top level posts.

Enabling downvotes wrt comments, I'm okay with...

I feel downvotes are fairly useless.

They're used as a disagree button. Ok but why do you disagree? Leave a reply and let's discuss. Gain saying has little value and that's all a downvote to disagree is.

They're used to report spam. Spam should be reported so I don't think that's a valid argument for them. Downvoting spam leaves it up, reporting spam gets it taken down. We have a better solution to spam than downvotes.

They are used by bad actors, with the removal of downvotes bad actors have to spend more effort in making a comment and it becomes far more obvious in who they are, report and block them.

Finally downvotes are a way to yuck someone's yum, I'm mindful of the instance we're on. I don't want our communities to become like Reddit where only one genital configuration and body type are allowed.

I really don't think anything has fundamentally changed with the community or platform since the decision to remove downvotes in the first place. I just don't think the population of Lemmy as a whole is large enough or mature enough to use them in a responsible manner and it will continue to be used as a "this isn't my fetish" button rather than any indication of quality or community relevance just like before.

I agree that the spam problem has gotten worse over time, but I really don't see downvotes doing very much to fix that. Most of it is from content sellers. They only need one post to do well to get their visibility and they almost always get at least that much so they still end up rewarded for the behavior in the end.

I changed my mind. I was pro downvote but I just looked at the new community list, saw one I liked, and then saw that a lot of the posts that fit the theme just fine have been downvoted for no reason. The mod is clearly upset about it also.

So yeah, please turn downvotes back off.

Downvotes have some advantages over blocking. They:

• Indicate trends of spam (as @morphballganon@mtgzone.com pointed out).
• Allows minimizing exposure to unwanted content from a given account without blocking out exposure to all that account's content. (Accounts may post a mix of content I do and don't like. Blocking throws out the baby with the bathwater.)
• Help disambiguate the popularity of content vs. reach of content. (Relatively few upvotes compared to other posts could be due to community obscurity, or posting at a poor time of day. It doesn't indicate whether the community likes the post, or how you should adjust your posting habits to increase appeal. Counting downvotes helps you understand how many total people viewed a post, and the percentage of those who appreciated it.)
• Are lower friction. (They take fewer clicks.)

I'm for them in theory but I feel like they get abused. Like if someone posts a dick in gonewild. Nothing wrong with that, but most people don't wanna see dicks.

I don't suppose you can leave it up to the sub-lemmy to decide? (Sub lemmy? Wtf are we calling these?)

No downvotes. People use it as a "this isn't my fetish" button and everything even slightly niche gets sent to oblivion. Especially bad for gonewild posts where people's self image gets involved.

Also using a Google doc for this poll seems like a bad idea since people who aren't from this instance can vote

Nope. I'm seeing male posters getting downvoted, which sucks. Everyone should be welcome in all communities unless the community states otherwise or a post is off-topic.

I feel that downvotes serve an important purpose both in keeping out spam, but also in preserving the many-niches architecture common in porn. Without downvotes even more work will be put onto mods in order to make sure the content posted is relevant to the communities its being posted too. Take c/Hotwife which has recently had a few postings that have 0 to do with hotwifing. Allowing downvotes is an imperfect solution, but I think an important one.

I think it's better to have a button to report spam, harassment, etc , rather than using downvote. Downvote is too ambiguous.

Enabled downvotes and place immediately got more argumentative and a bit more toxic. No, not want.

I too, as a person who has no feelings for men, have clicked posts for gay porn by accident. I too have come across posts which I did not prefer, even if they were concerning women. I, too, have seen some things which in general I do not like. In these cases—

I simply became more careful and started taking a look at the community name first. Secondly I started looking for communities whivh fit what I like better. Niche ones without exposure. A good sign. For the last, there are a number of ways for me to deal with it, like simply moving on. Blocking where maliciousness exists. Finding other communities. Et cetera.

Maybe it's just me, but after enabled I seem to get much higher quality content on the local page.

Liked having them gone. Not sure I'll keep posting if they stick around.

Ability to downvote is an important part of these communities, it's a self control mechanism. I surely don't want to block some users just because I don't like some of their posts, downvote should suffice.

Thank you for involving the community in the decision :D I generally like downvotes because it allows scrolling top posts to see the most generally liked content. It's still easy to view New posts to see things without being affected by downvotes, like looking at a niche topic.

I think vote up is to "like" a post and down vote to "dislike" a post. If the intent is to use down votes to prevent spam that is what a report button would be for.

I personally believe downvotes can be of use, but that would require a much, much larger userbase than what Lemmy - as a whole, and also LemmyNSFW - has. Maybe the biggest stances could afford to have downvotes (though from what I'm aware, plenty of them don't) but in NSFW I could easily see a few people with bad intentions deciding what gets or doesn't get seen in smaller communities.

The average activity in non-niche communities of NSFW is also much smaller than their Reddit counterparts, plus the fact that - from my experience - there's quite a few mods missing, inactive for several months to +1 year, and I'm not sure what one would do in case of brigading.

Unfortunately you can't really stimulate people to comment, which really would've been a boon to uploaders

When is a decision expected?

I think a lot of responses were correlating downvotes with censorship which is something I can agree with. I personally don't want to see someone's dick in gonewild but I know it's for someone. Maybe we can have a tagging system that user can filter what they don't want to see. But I don't care if downvotes comes back or stays away because I'll just block the accounts that shows things I don't want to see.

Id say enable it. There is no complex algorithm that promotes content based on up and down votes like with sites like YouTube. If people want niche stuff that performs poorly on All > Top, they can see it on the niche sub for that content in their subscriptions or directly on the sub page. Having a low score doesnt delete posts.

I don't like downvotes. I post stuff here, if it gets downvoted it can fail and go below the level of visibility that garners it more votes. People will downvote for any reason that comes into their heads. It's almost like random noise but it messes with my post's path to its intended audience.

I don't see what possible motivation I would have to keep posting when that is happening.

Definitely enable; e.g.: lets say based on my sorting algorithm and frequency of frontpage visits, I usually see posts with ~20 upvotes (sounds like a weird oversimplification but that is kind of the case for me foe some reason)

For those 20 upvotes there might be 500 more people that believe that a post is very low quality, inappropriate for the community's topic, etc., but I still see it, since, well its score was ~20.

Without upvotes it was very frequent that I saw a post that was not (or was very-very slightly) related to the community's theme, and there is absolutely no other way for the community to filter it out. It forces me (everyone) to scroll across much irrelevant content, until maybe I give up and unsubscribe from some communities altogether, instead of helping to curate them into something people enjoy visiting.

The only other solution to this problem is to have moderators check every post that is uploaded, and, besides putting more strain to moderators, one moderator's decision might even be debatable sometimes (e.g. a post might technically fit in a community, but the people who visit it might not find it enjoyable, or will just prefer to see it in a more appropriate community).

Downvotes provide a simple solution that involves many opinions in this whole process.

The only case that not having downvotes might make sense, is "Top", in which I feel I only see posts with an insane number of upvotes (that I btw might not enjoy seeing) and nothing else. I also feel that this sorting algorithm also promotes the visibility of more generic content that a larger variety of people will enjoy, and will just upvote without considering the community it was posted in etc. But in those cases, the posts with many upvotes, can only get more upvotes (promoting the phenomenon), whereas with the ability to downvote, the final score will be more balanced, or at least leave the choice to the user (maybe indirectly via the choice sorting algorithm, or their client's settings), for if they want to see controversial posts.

Every downvote on pro-downvote comments should count as a vote for re-enabling. Clearly they're okay with downvotes, at least when it suits them haha

I created this account solely for, uhm, research purposes but I'm using it as my only account now. Partly because my other instance had some persisting issues for a few weeks and partly because I realized the missing downvoting really helped me chill and stop looking at/for karma. Not that I'm here to collect points, but my primitive monkey brain found a source of cheap reward and enjoyed it. I'm not really into downvotes, but I'm fine with both if others care for it.

I've just counted 100 communities I had to block to get a semi interesting "local" feed, in addition to 7 posters who were really not my taste. How many hentai/anime communities are really needed for example? So yes, downvoting makes sense as long as there is a local feed, that's how lemmy works.

And yes, I have witnessed a clear improvement since downvotes are back.

I don't see it being a benefit in communities in that I mod (hentai, paizuri, tentaclehentai, and hentaigif), so I'm not personally keen on it but I can see why larger communities might want it. I'm no longer as hopeful that a more active hentai-oriented community will develop here, so though I voted "No", I'm a little apathetic about the choice now, personally.

From what I recall, some users use downvotes for more than just spam, like disliking things. This creates a problem when people browse the Local feed and downvote stuff they don't like even if they aren't even subbed to that community. This impacts niche communities and their posters/creators who would get more downvotes from people seeking more mainstream content even if it would otherwise fit that community.

If the goal is just to ward off spam, then unless reports aren't enough, I'd keep downvotes off.

Currently downvotes are enabled on a trial basis, this was done by me to see if they can be enabled to prevent spam

There's a bunch of spam from a user called "BravoIsabella" that has positive upvotes, and a grumpy post from one of the AI communities saying "mystery downvoter show yourself".

Edit: we have three regular posters (Radovic, LVL3_Eroticism, and Cleverhans) saying they don't like the decision and they may stop posting. There's at least one instance of upvoted spam.

There are two instances of spam accounts getting upvotes

• https://lemmynsfw.com/u/AmberXXX
• https://lemmynsfw.com/post/18036648

Downvotes are good, just as good as upvotes, having it one sided defeats the entire purpose of voting.

Everything just being upvoted is a terrible idea and you can see the negative impacts it already has in other places of the internet.

Yes

Disable down votes. Its nothing more than a Tool for Trolls.

Good job, a few saved posts from my saved list have been replaced by blanks. And who can blame the ones who did it? (Many will, considering these did get a bit of abusive words despite doing some good things). This place has become a place to debate and argue rather than have a good jerk. Ha! Just what was needed.

Being a bit of a dick is normal, so it is tolerated, and opinions are given importance, these dickheads are given respect for abusing the very ones who made this place work. What's next now? Enforcing moderation on those who answer back to them? It is the norm in the more corporate forums so I—would—not—be—surprised—at—all. Good job all.

Hehe… who could've seen this coming. The majority of good willing people here couldn't, how surprising🫢 If the world had more silent thinking (which is my style) and less debating (which was how things were before this slight seemingly insignificant change, a change which incited the question of whether each posting itself was right or wrong), these things wouldn't happen… but it is not the place of idiots like me to interrupt the legitimate high-placed people of the world from shooting their own feet so… carry on. It is amusing in itself. I'll start a casual bet (smiles on wager, so the world benefits from it) on just how much everyone among these well intentioned ones choose to ignore the results out of embarrassment. I say the majority will be too embarrassed to even talk about it again, as if it never happened, and try to shut down anyone who references it for being 'incorrect' or 'wrong'😁 Better yet, some will blame and insult the few posters who deleted everything. That will definitely happen.

How ironic is it that for the sake of arguing for good quality posts, you would drive away the posters of some of the best quality posts💀

I don't see much reason to have them. Others have spoken of helping with spam. I haven't noticed any spam on this instance.

I'd want it enabled only for people who are subbed to the community in question. That solves practically all issues.

I voted for : "I don't care"

No downvotes. This is a porn instance. Users will downvote OC that isn't classically attractive, gay content, etc. I'll do that because I'm a jerk. But it discourages what few posts we get.

Spammers should be banned and or users should block.