Unpopular Opinion

The voting guidelines are an attempt to encourage actual unpopular opinions to "rise to the top", so to speak, as that is the purpose of the community. Obvious troll (or other rule-violating) posts should be reported rather than just downvoted, but we kind of expected people to embrace the spirit of the community. While many do, there are several problems with this approach:

1. As others have stated, people just knee-jerk to the downvote button when they see something they disagree with
2. 80% or more of the people on this platform don't bother to read the sidebar rules for any community
3. Muscle memory

We put out a poll a while back asking if the voting guidelines should be changed, but there was no majority in favor of it, so they remain the same.

I see the down voting more often as a method of saying "this is a troll" or "this opinion is unpopular because it is evil/ makes no sense". I've seen plenty of unpopular opinions that have decent ratios while genuinely being unpopular.

I think it's similar to how the right wing views the first amendment in the US. You can say whatever you want that's unpopular. Noone is stopping you. But that doesn't mean that you're entitled to upvotes for being a bigot or troll just because it technically fits the subject of the sub.

The only unpopular opinions I have seen downvoted to hell (recently at least) have been objective facts that were incorrect. Saying your opinion is [thing that is untrue] should still go into a black hole.

I thought unpopular opinion meant: „I feel a bit alone with my opinion on xyz, is there someone who shares this opinion?“ I think it shouldn’t mean: „Here is my completely unhinged take on xyz that would get me banished from my community if I ever said it out loud“.

So imho it’s expected to stumble unpon people that agree with you.

It should be for „ I think socks in sandals are cute.“ and not „Hitler was a great guy and did nothing wrong.“

This is an extremely popular opinion.

People don't check the channel when it's in their timeline. They treat it like a regular post and they vote on it like they always do.

This requires some redesign of the way the channel is treated to make it work.

Upvotes/downvotes dont matter on this site. Its not like reddit where downvotes limit how much you can comment and upvotes are required to participate in communities.

Its dumb that people cant upvote opinoins they disagree with but it is what it is. Maybe the OP should post a comment saying Agree and a comment saying disagree so only the people who bothered to open the thread can vote.

Heres my opinion: Votes doesn't matter, it merely inhibits conversation when we can express your reaction to a post with a click of a button instead of explaining our own thoughts on the matter.

Just post what you want to post and try to avoid looking at the number, or go over to an app or instance that doesn't show votes, or allows you to select your own settings for votes, or only shows upvotes.

I upvoted this not because you are correct but because you care about votes. Least popular thing I can think of. Nice job.

Do you only do things for imaginary upvotes?

People vote on what should gain more visibility, or less. So if your point is well created and somewhat heinous in nature, people down vote as to keep your opinion from spreading. If your opinion is true even if unpopular, I wager it will gain visibility. Even divisive opinions will gain visibility due to discussion.

Lemmy is different from Reddit. On Reddit you get pushed content to keep you busy. On Lemmy you just get the most active and new content. So I'm guessing a lot of people just get these posts in their feed without even being subscribed to this community.

It can get mixed up. People can upvote their agreement with the sentiment that it's unpopular or the agreement with the opinion itself. It makes the arrow system unreliable because you can't be sure they see it as choosing between agreeing with the opinion and agreeing with its unpopularity.

You realize the votes are meaningless, correct? It's ok to get downvoted, the internet is not real life. This is an opportunity to stop taking yourself and the internet so seriously.

People hate hearing opinions that don't fit in their comfort bubble. And most are unwilling (some are even incapable) to understand those opinions.
Luckily those arrows don't matter here.