Lemmy

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Should Mastodon votes be federated into Lemmy? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml

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I am concerned that Mastodon's unary-vote system (favorites), and Lemmy's binary-vote system (upvotes with downvotes) are mutually exclusive.

In a unary-vote system, a post's vote count generally has little use beyond expressing the post's absolute popularity/engagement, whereas, in a binary vote system, a post's vote count can be used to gauge opinions, such as its level of quality, trust, or agreement. This difference in usage makes me concerned that the votes federated from Mastodon will water down the votes originating from Lemmy.

Currently, I can think of two possible solutions to this:

Lemmy de-federates any votes originating from Mastodon (might be tricky as it would rely on all instances following suit)
Add an option for the user to toggle within their settings allowing them to toggle off non-binary votes.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think this is a non issue while we are small. Worst case now is that it's making posts look slightly more popular. I'd say let's cross this bridge when we get there

[–] Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think this is a non issue while we are small.

For sure, but I feel that it is better to think hard on an issue while one has the luxury of non-urgency.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Agreed

Now is the time to figure this out before the next big rush of people

You could post this on !fediverse@lemmy.world as well

*Fixed link