this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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You Should Know
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At first I agreed with the general "whatever" sentiment. It has some important implications, however.
It discourages people from voting if they're concerned about other people seeing their activity. This could result in a lower quality of scoring for posts.
It might also increase quality though. If people downvote out of spite and now it can be proven that they did, they might not do it and thus remove "bad" downvotes from the pool.
I still think in total it's probably better that they can not be seen, since anonymity usually gives more honest opinions.
I strongly disagree with that. I think showing downvotes makes your votes more relevant. If something has 10k up votes and 10k down votes, it's probably a decent post. If it just shows 10k up votes, or 0 net total, the score doesn't reflect the nature of the post.
At the individual level, it lets you know if someone is just trolling. That's also a plus as far as reputation goes (not sure how people are scored here, or if they are).
I agree with what you're saying, but that's not the point of this post. This post is about the fact that an individual user's vote history is semi-public.
i.e. if you were to upvote my comment, anyone who owns an instance would be able to see it was you who upvoted it. Likewise for if you downvote it.
Whilst I'm sure there are those who don't care, I'd personally rather not have any rando who can be bothered to set up a Lemmy instance know what I've voted on. I'd honestly rather just not vote.
I disagree, a lot of people troll-downvote meaning they downvote content that they don't like, or just downvote because it's already low score. Same also happens with upvotes and content that shouldn't be upvoted. If you're concerned with other people seeing your vote history you probably shouldn't be making those votes.
Semi public voting discourages this form of misconduct because people who want to can audit their history and see that they're a troll.
Is there a valid reason, according to you, to use the downvote button? I'm really interested in knowing.
The accepted reason for downvoting since early Reddit times is content that either doesn’t contribute to discussion or is factually false. Downvote was never meant to be a disagree button, but I am sure we've all broken that rule occasionally.
Exactly. It seems everyone here is of the impression that voting is for agree/disagree. That sucks and it’s simply impossible to fix.
I upvoted you because I agree with you.
Downvoting has always been an indicator that you disagree in some way. Whether it’s a disagreement with the substance or format never mattered. You’ll sometimes see people jump through hoops trying to justify how their form of disagreement is the only valid one though.
You do see how it could have a chilling effect on engagement if the "someone" judging you negatively for your vote is, say, a repressive government, right? And what's the point of a social network without engagement?
Exactly.
"I see you up votes posts about my election rival.... see you soon!"
"Dear child, I see you up voted LGBT content. Let's talk about your sins, then try some electroshock"