Dog-piling is when someone expresses an opinion and people swarm in the comments telling the OC how wrong they are and how right they are. Typically the person getting dogpiled is downvoted into oblivion in the process. Note that I'm not talking about anything controversial in their opinion or the comment being trolling in any way; just any general disagreement with the groupthink.
Brief example:
User 1: There are lots of factors at play here, not just money. There's X, Y, Z, and those are all independent from money.
|____> User 2: No, it's money. It's always money
|______> User 4: Right? How can anyone think it's anything *but* money? Some people!
|____> User 3: Yes, well, X, Y, and Z wouldn't be a problem if not for capitalism, so it's definitely money, and you're wrong.
|____> User 5: It all boils down to money; always does.
|____> User 6: Of course it's money. Only a capitalist bootlicker would think otherwise.
|____> User 7: Go back to Reddit, troll.
|____> User 8: You're so close, but it's money.
...
|____> User 999: (Same as the last 998 comments; contributes nothing except attacking the opinion for being different)
None of that adds anything to the discussion; they're not engaging on the subject, just attacking the opinion because it differs.
That behavior does not seem healthy to me and seems like it's almost designed to discourage anyone from expressing any opinion that's not part of the established group think. Again, I am not talking about trolls here, just any kind of differing opinions.
Should that kind of behavior be discouraged? If so, as a mod, what would be the best way to address it? After the 2nd or 3rd dogpile comment, start removing subsequent ones that are just piling on?
It's definitely a people problem, so I'm curious what would be a gentle but firm way to deal with it.
Why would downvotes need to be discouraged?
It honestly doesn't matter if someone downvotes you even if you're 100% factually correct and they are absolutely wrong. This is the internet and up/downvotes are made up cool points.
People are going to troll, disagree, create alts to downvote, or do any number of other things that might make people sad or angry. Just ignore them. Investing thought into it will just cause your own grief and them to feel good about their actions. If someone is being pissy and you don't like their comments just block them. We don't really need anything more than that.
If someone just doesn't want to see downvotes because it makes them sad, then they can join a server that doesn't have downvotes. That solves their problem while still letting the people who don't care about getting downvotes use their downvotes to show disagreement.
The downvotes are an example of behaviour typically associated with dogpiling. Focus on the unreasonably large amount of replies adding practically no information each.
You should probably be made aware the the person you're replying to here is, in another thread, currently proudly admitting that they abuse the downvote function for reasons as petty as "this news article is about news I don't like" or "I don't like the OP", and believes this is a justifiable use of downvotes.
So I'd say their take on voting is best disregarded.
In that case maybe just add a "mute replies for this comment" button if someone doesn't like that lots of people dislike their comment and choose to voice their disagreement.
Why post to the internet if you don't want replies? Sometimes you'll get a bunch of upvotes and people agreeing with you. Some other times (for me i've found this one to be very, very few times) you'll get a bunch of downvotes and people telling you how wrong you are and how right they are.
Just like life you have to take the bad with the good. No one has 100% perfect beliefs that everyone agrees with.
The "mute replies" button would be great, indeed. It would solve one of the issues with dogpiling. But other two remain:
Neither thing is welcome when you think about community growth.
Not being able to downvote or reply is discouraging engagement and creating an environment that only allows toxic positivity.
As said in the very comment that you're replying to, and as OP confirms, the downvotes are not the relevant part here.
You are not contributing to the discussion by insistently hammering on a marginal point, across multiple comments.
In some cases you do need to remove some forms of engagement, because they go against the goal of creating an active and vibrant community where users can discuss a certain topic. Engagement is the metric, not the goal.
And in the specific case of dogpiling, it's rather clear that it's the sort of engagement that goes against that goal.
The question here is how.
"Toxic" is a weasel word that means nothing and everything at the same time; ask 1000 people what it is, and all 1000 will give you different answers. If you must use it, define what you mean by it, as I'm not going to assume.
Two comments is technically multiple, so at least my 'hammering' is efficient! Also, I think the two are intertwined which is why I commented in the first place.
I said toxic positivity, which is a thing that is defined: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_positivity
Three through the thread. That said two are too many, when the second replies to a comment telling the first comment already misses the point. The focus is on things like:
I picked a non-political example to avoid intrusive discussions. (But it does affect political discussions too.) You see this shit in real life, and in Twitter (ye olde "Twitter MC of the day" boils down to dogpiling), and in Reddit, and here. And yet it's non-contributive; it's a bunch of people saying the same shit, if you're Alice this shit is aggravating, and if a newbie sees it they say "nope, I'm not going there". All because the "hive mind" decided bananas >> other fruits > shit > apples.
(Or that you must use the 3-2-1 rule for backups. Or that "animes", "mangas" and "pokemons" violate everything that is sacred. Or that a certain game mechanic is shit/good instead of being good/shit. You get the idea.)
We need some way to address this. That's what OP is asking about.
About downvotes vs. toxic positivity: that link works nicely to provide us a definition. I think "toxic positivity" = "social unacceptable of people acknowledging negative emotions and/or attitudes" should work well enough, is that OK for you?
I don't notice it. Even in instances like Beehaw and Blåhaj (both deactivated downvotes), I don't see this popping up. In Beehaw for example you can pretty much rant to your heart's contents; as long as it's reasonable, and you aren't being an arsehole to other users, it's well-received.
As such, if any measure addressing dogpiling needs to tweak how downvotes work, I don't think it'll breed toxic positivity. I don't think messing with the downvotes would be necessary for this, though.
If you are the comment police please show your badge.
I wasted my time re-explaining the OP to you, because it's clear that you lack the basic reading comprehension necessary to even know what people are talking about here. And because you don't know it, but you were still willing to vomit your opinion and re-eat your own vomit, you were being nothing but a dead weight and a burden in this thread.
If this is "comment police" behaviour, I don't know. Or care. I also don't care if this hurts your precious fee-fees of entitlement so much you screech "waaaaaah, you is of comment polyce? wurr is you are badje???" My blocklist is full of dead weight like you, after I tell them to go fuck a cactus.
Go fuck a cactus.
Hey,
I always find your interventions useful, and this thread was quite interesting, but please don't insult other users.
That users seems to be trolling you, no need to feed them.
OK - sorry. My bad.
No worries, see you around.
Downvotes aren't discouraged - just noting that as it's part of the pattern. I should probably just remove that from the post since it's not really relevant.
It's possible, but not practical, to mod based on votes unless it's blatant/explicit vote manipulation. e.g. "Wow, 10 people signed up for accounts just now just to downvote this person.". I have seen that happen lol.
It's the piling-on that I'm asking if/how to address.
I would say put a mute all replies button. That would make it so they aren't bombarded by 1000 comments saying the same thing but still allow people to voice their opinions.
That'd be great if it existed, but AFAIK, nothing like that is available in the Lemmy API.
But I'm looking at this from a "fostering a healthy community" point of view. Someone comments that they prefer rainy days. Is it fair or constructive to the community to have 50 people to rip that person to shreds because those 50 people prefer sunny days?
I feel there's a line somewhere; I'm just trying to identify it and figure out what to do when it's crossed.
Shoot dessalines a message. It might be fairly easy to implement and it seems like something people might like. I know reddit had something similar for posts.
Other people are mentioning similar, so maybe it's new in the API after 0.19.9 or something (or I missed when it was introduced). I'll have to check.