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Ah, the coward setting.
Having people disagree with you is a good thing.
Hiding the score doesn't stop people from disagreeing with you or from vote count affecting sorting. It does help a bit, at least for me, if you've found yourself habitually checking your comment vote scores in a mentally unhealthy search for validation, and wish to train yourself out of that habit by making those checks futile. On a place with no overarching control like lemmy, vote counts are probably too easy to manipulate to provide trustworthy feedback anyway.
But we are all monkeys who see positive number as agreement/good or negative number as disagree/bad.
Lemmy down/upvote? Lemmy comment? That's communication with the outside world. Instance discretion. Nuh-uh. Look, hey — if all of these nuts could just make random comments/meme's, they could spread insanity, oozing through interwebs, oozing into the screens of all these poor sane people, infecting them. Wackos everywhere, a plague of madness. In fact, very few, very few of us here are actually mentally ill. I'm not saying you're not mentally ill, for all I know, you're crazy as a loon. But that's not why you're here. That's not why you're here. That's not why you're here! You're here because of the system.
That's smart. I just started doing drugs from this guy who said they were a Psycho or something
I don't find downvotes useful for that. If no one tells me why they disagree, a negative number isn't going to tell me that either. Not to mention that the most popular answer is often not equivalent to the correct answer.
But I also have the display of downvotes disabled, because I want to judge other comments without much bias.
I always hated the snowballing of downvotes. As soon as you're at like
-2, people will stop giving you the benefit of the doubt and just hit downvote some more, or even worse: Start harassing you, because you've said a thing that others disagreed with.Admittedly, this was more of a problem on Reddit, haven't seen that too much on Lemmy yet, but I don't find seeing the downvotes particularly useful to begin with, so I'd rather not have the bias myself.
I’m downvoting you just to use the button. I leave it there cause it’s a good sanity check, make sure I didn’t say something off the rails. But sometimes seeing a comment I made get something like 135/1 really makes me wonder what the 136th dentist thinks.
I also use the vote buttons as a kind of 'I seen this' system as the read post doesn't work the same way on all clients.
I've seen people use downvotes as "hide this". I've seen for myself how easy it is to misvote by gesturing just a bit too far or while scrolling and you put your finger in the wrong spot.
There are a lot of explanations for them besides a dislike. Maybe it's funny but not on topic. Maybe it's well-written but they disagree. Maybe they agree but it's poorly written.
Frankly if I'm getting <5% downvotes I just ignore them.
No it isn't
Wow. Who is downvoting the joke answer.
You.
Downvoting isn't disagreeing. It's just shouting "boo" from the audience and adds zero value to the conversation. If you disagree with something I've said, tell me exactly what you disagree with and why - then we can talk about it. Disabling downvotes doesn't change that at all.
I don't agree. A downvote is a signal to others that "this topic/thread does not contribute to the overall discussion."
And on a platform like Lemmy, with limited engagement (compared other social platforms) these signals are critical.
We need a way to signal to others:
I would agree if that is how downvotes were actually used but that is not the case. More often than not when people downvote it's because they don't like what is being said not because it's factually incorrect, offtopic or otherwise unhelpful. Factual information and perfectly reasonable (but unpopular) takes get downvoted here on a daily basis.
"Be the change you want to see in the world... " ;)
Well yes, social behaviour is bounded by rules that are maintained through reinforcement. So more threads like this one, please! We educate each other here. Media literacy is a skill.
I do exactly that, engage with comments I think are wrong, or misunderstood, or even harassing, but reserve downvotes for stuff that is really in the wrong place or very obviously rude or offensive, or just mouthbreathing stupid, like hatred or revenge wanking.
Votes are for quality, not conformity.
No. Most people are morons.
Yet even morons can sort the recycling and walk on the proper side of the path. Keep pushing.
Huge agree from me
You're wrong. Everyone needs to be nice and mirror my opinions.
It's a social media site. If you "disagree" solely by hitting a "i don't like this" button then you're part of the problem. Use your words. Real cowardice is downvoting things you disagree with, without having to make the case for why or do any kind of critical thinking about your own position.
For example: I disagree with you, but I have expressed it through the above argument rather than with a petty, silent downvote.
I don't have time to write a rebuttal to every mouthpiece with an opinion. Down voting is a quick way to disagree.
You literally just did the thing you said you don't have time to do. What a ridiculous take.
Imagine if you got 12 comments telling you that you are wrong instead of 12 downvotes. That sure would be better!
I literally said every comment. Your comment warranted the use of language, please learn to use it.
You've responded to my every comment so far. Seems like you're the one who doesn't know how language works because you think you can tell other people how to use it.
Which is fine, because not only do I know how language works, I know how the block feature works too. Now get lost, troll.
Wow. You complained about a petty downvote, then responded with an insult and "I'm going to block you". Incredible cognitive dissonance here. If a silent downvote was petty, what else could be more petty?
And just to drive home my point, I'm also going to block *you *after I post this!
Conversation is such a fucking waste of time in this place.
I have discussions with people who have ideas worth discussing. Trolls and shitheads will be mocked and blocked. Thanks for taking the trash out for me.
You are part of the group of people that should not exist.
While I agree with most of your comments in this post, performative blocking reminds me of why I stopped using Mastodon much: so many grandstanding block proclamations over there, which just increases general toxicity with ego and spite.
That's okay, your agreement is not required.
No one was asking for permission or agreement, it was stated for context. Your conviviality was being requested, however.
Heh, you're all right. Love the username by the way. I thought I was the only one who called spoonerisms by that name.
Nah, down voting has a purpose that's totally uncoupled from that.
It changes visibility in some sorting methods. This can serve as a way to filter out bad actors, bad actors trolling, and outright nutters.
It also serves as a partial safety valve. A lot of assholes are lazy assholes, and having them able to vote without interacting further is a very good thing.
Besides, nobody is obligated to engage at any specific level. Voting is a perfectly valid tier of interaction all its own.
It certainly is a "valid tier of interaction", I just wouldn't call it a valid or useful way of disagreeing with someone on its own.
You're standing on a soap box on the street corner. My downvote is me frowning, shaking my head in disappointment, and walking away.
While I long for the day when a place like lemmy becomes populous enough for it to be a fair comparison, but as it stands I'd say commenting on lemmy threads is a far, far cry from irl public soapboxing. It's more like standing up in the corner of the beatnik bar and quietly booing the poet.
Well I disagree with you both, but I'm upvoting you anyway.