Insulting or attacking other users, even so much saying "fuck you", "fuck [this group of people]", "you're an idiot" or anything like that while debating IS against the rules of Lemmy.ml. This goes for every political view, you DO NOT get free passes no matter if you're leftist, rightist, communist, anarchist, liberal, etc. If you're confident of your position you should be able to debate in a civil manner without cursing someone else out. I understand that debates can get heated and frustrating, hell I've debated with a good bunch of users, but you can still express that without resorting to name calling or insults.
Check the modlog, we HAVE removed replies of this nature from every political view, and even if we don't say it every time, we DO keep track of both removals per user and general behaviour even if it doesn't get removed, and too many infractions WILL result in a ban.
That said, it is NOT against the rules to present countering facts or opinions, or to have political opinions in general. Don't report comments for "being pro communist" or "being pro China" unless they have broken an actual rule, namely the ones about being civil. Don't attack or insult people from Lemmygrad just because they're from Lemmygrad or they're arguing for Marxism-Leninism or supporting a country you don't. If they're presenting their points in a civil manner (which had been the case for almost everyone from Lemmygrad), you can either read it and respond in kind with your questions or counterpoints, or just move on. People coming over from other instances is not brigading if they're mostly being civil, that's the whole point of federation.
Things people disagree with getting down voted is also acceptable, it's not considered an attack on you if your comment has a negative score, and it doesn't even significantly affect the ranking because of the relatively low comment volumes currently on Lemmy. It's just imaginary internet points, relax.
The entire purpose for downvotes in Reddit was to allow people to weed out comments that do not add anything to the conversation, but people of course misused it as an "I disagree" button. All the downvotes contribute is further ruining the conversational culture here by turning them in to gladiator fights of egos. Lemmy is actually just worse than Reddit in this regard when its downvote feature doesn't even have a stated purpose. Lack of downvotes alone is a good reason to support Beehaw.
Sometimes I get downvotes without knowing why and no one is replying me what's wrong with my words. For example, the comment I just write here like you got more downvotes than up votes, does that mean they disagree with me or that I am not adding anything to the conversation? Because I said "I suppose", so it's just my opinion.
So those votes are used for a "disagree" or an "agree" here on Lemmy, right? (not talking about Reddit)
Further ruining the conversation when you can simply press a button to devalue someone's opinion without contributing anything yourself.
And yes, they're used as agree/disagree buttons and it cheapens the conversation.
Most big tech platforms have gotten rid of the downvote as well. They only want you to express liking, not disliking.
Sometimes, a crowd of people on internet plays with downvotes, I suppose it's a way to make "wars". I wonder if it could be a good idea to replace the like/dislike with emoji icons... Smile, Happy, Thinking, Heart, Shit poop, etc... To give it more a meaning of reaction than a like/dislike.
The votes are really more about helping sort popular / unpopular content more that anything, so emojis wouldn't help with that.
Without scores or voting, its back to the days of forums where you have to scroll through hundreds of pages to find something decent.
I should mention that I'm only against comment voting. It makes sense for the content itself, but in discourse it only leads to fights of wits.
Still can be sorted by most reactions too.
Then you'd have to assign numbers for the different reactions (otherwise how would you compare a heart to a poo emoji ) and we're back to where we started.
Poo and heart are both reactions, it can be sorted on first even if it's a +30 poo reactions, so people can see those comments and contribute on those comment threads when someone said something "stupid" or "bad". 3 poo + 6 hearts = 9 reactions. Comments with no reactions could mean, they don't say anything interesting at all. And I expect people reacting more with hearts and faces than a poo. Still, poo can be ignored as a counter, you can make the rules. (But I would make all reactions, even poo icon, to count as reaction)
So sorting by total reactions, regardless of if they're negative or not? That sounds like a way to bring some disliked things to the top.
So, if people want to do the same as the downvote right now, they will just need to not react and ignore the comment.
But then you've just taken away a method for people to express their dislike of something.
In my experience the only thing that removing downvotes changed in sorting was that it prevents users from suppressing the extremely shit posts. The sorting of the middle and high end of both comments and posts ends up almost identical.
The worst posts that would have received a tonne of downvotes are also almost always something that moderation would agree with removing entirely.
This tradeoff comes with the benefits of eliminating all the psychological issues that occur.
BUT, Lemmy can't go down this road imo as it would no longer be a reddit clone if it didn't have the downvote. My general opinion is that the downvote hurts conversation, creates circlejerks, hurts the way people see one another, and creates a mindset of writing a comment for the audience to "win" the interaction instead of writing a comment for the recipient. But the decisions about Lemmy should be about what's best for Lemmy's future as a tool though which is probably best to maintain the "reddit clone" selling point for the timebeing.
Any comment with reaction, for dislike or for a like reaction, is a debate where a lot of people are giving an opinion (reaction icon), so can be still on the top (but with a lot of poo).
If it's someone saying something stupid, he will see he got 0 reactions, no downvotes, so that can make him more alone/stupid and not looking for a voting war. Hoping this will unmotivated more the trolling people or voting wars.
I think people can still express their likes (reacting) and dislikes or indifference (not reacting) in a more healthy way.
My experience of internet discourse is that people will absolutely react with negative emojis to things that they consider 'stupid'. In some cases they are doing it to explicitly attempt to get a reaction out of the person who posted something, in other cases they simply want to point out that someone else is less than them, so that they can boost their own ego. I'm sure there are other use-cases, as humans are incredibly diverse.
Yeah, I was thinking emojis were more kind, and I don't even need a dislike button. I think it would be cool to use emoji reaction like with an X or with smile/laugh/xD/thinking and all those faces to quickly express my reaction. And dislike system could disappear...
I feel like facebook tried that. It's straight garbage on any controversial topic, at least how they implement it.
I don't have experience on that, I don't use any kind of social media (unless Lemmy and Mastodon), so I am probably pretty wrong if those systems neither work.
What does decent mean? Something popular? Or something with quality content and comments?
All three I suppose? Here's an example from xdadevelopers of what dealing with old-school forums is like. A 17-page thread of people trying to discover the best practices / things to do for battery life. Without any scoring or voting, you have to read through hundreds of replies.
Some threads have thousands of comments, going through each of them to find what's good might take days.
So you think that popularity equals quality?
For the most part. If you have a thread of 10k comments, would you rather read through each of them individually, or have them be sorted by collective preference?
That's not at all what I'm talking about. I argue that using votes as "likes", instead of how the Reddiquette originally meant it, is a bad idea for the very reason you are stating. Sorting by popularity is not going to highlight the best solution or argument, but the most popular one.
How do you dictate how people use preference buttons? They're going to use them however they see fit, and that's a good thing.
And how do you find good content without some sort of collective preference? Any site should be able to answer this question: you have a thread with 10k comments, what's the best way to sort them so that users don't have to read every comment?
Why do you want to dictate it?
If that's a good thing is the very thing we argue about right now. I disagree that this is a good thing. Especially if you mean that everybody should any system however they like, instead of how it is supposed to be used. If everyone uses any system differently, be it a 5 star system, or upvotes/downvotes, the system is not going to show what people think it shows, but a mix of all interpretations mangled into a number.
If half of the people use "3 stars" for an average product, but the other half uses "5 stars" for an average product, the rating is off for both halfs. It's the same with rating the delivery. If the rating system is meant for the product only, using it for other reasons distorts the result of that system.
I hope you can see what I mean.
As I said elsewhere in this thread: By having a metric that shows how well written and thought through an argument is. You don't have to "like" what is written or said, but you can acknowledge the quality of the argument.
Depends on what your goal is: Do you want users to read what they LIKE to read? Then you go for likes/dislikes, so what people want to read most is always at the top, creating a filter bubble, also called an echo chamber.
If you want to encourage quality discussion, where arguments are higher rated than emotional replies, then you should not do that.
How would you implement this? Because if its by user preference, then you're back to step one, except you're dictating how a user should use their preference button. And if its by something strange like comment length, AI's reading comments, then all of those can be easily gamed
I'm sorry, but I think you are avoiding to talk about the merits of such a system based on the fact that you can't dictate how users use a system. Your solution is to simply stop caring about it, my solution would be to encourage the correct usage of the system and educate everyone about it.
You argue for a good system, while at the same time you argue that no system can be good, because you can't dictate anyone, and there are bots.
So... why even talk about this, if there is no reason for you that any of this makes sense?
How does one "enforce correct usage" of a like button? Why do you get to dictate how ppl use that button?
You can't really enforce it, but in smaller community sizes self-enforcement can occur through a community culture that's self-reinforcing. This is typically done through repeated reminders and a constant back and forth between community management and the membership, often through a regular post of sorts.
There is a tipping point in size where that stops working too though but it's somewhere in the 40k-100k users range.
Alright, you don't want to talk about it. So please do stop. You repeating already answered questions doesn't do anyone any good.
Okay, now I understand what you mean and yeah. I know when I deserve bad votes, but sometimes I feel like they are just to devalue opinions on debates.
I agree. I don't like the aspect that votes are seen as "lol internet points" by the devs and admins of Lemmy. I don't even understand why it was implemented if they see it like that. If the votes are of no meaning, then..... why take the time and implement a system for something that should be without any use?
The original "Reddiquette" was really well written in regards to voting. It was humane and about quality discussion. But... the new owners of Reddit, whoever it is, don't care for quality discussion. If you want to sell data, you want votes and comments to be emotional gut reactions. So they actually are A/B testing to replace votes with literal "likes" and "dislikes".
I think the "up" and "down" arrows suggest something that doesn't easily align with the original Reddiquette. The upvote is not really the opposite of the downvote. It has different meanings, and should be two different buttons that do not look like opposites. That would help users to understand the Reddiquette. Also, that the final number is a simple "upvote-downvote" calculation contributes further to that problematic user interface communication.
100% agree. The original Reddit was a bit of a wild west, but Reddiquette itself is great as a founding document and as a basis for all conduct in all communities.