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This is about downvote spamming. Like, going through someones post history and downvoting harmless things they've said, not just using the arrow as intended.
Downvotes degrade post visibility. So if I go into a community and downvote every post, it hurts the community. At least if its a smaller community. If the mod then spots that, they may reasonably decide to ban me.
Obviously larger communities wouldn't notice.
Correct. And communities aspire for visibility. So someone coming into a community to downvote all the posts will potentially be banned for harming that communities visibility.
Because the point of the Fediverse is to grow, not degrade. Also, it's not downvoting per se that is viewed as inherently harmful - it's bulk downvoting of posts. If someone who doesn’t like metal music enters !metal@lemmy.world and downvotes every post there - and commits themselves to doing it to every new post, this hurts their visibility across the Fediverse. Would you not say its reasonable, in this specific hypothetical, for the community owner to ban a user who does that?
A newly made post that gets downvoted to 0 quickly after being posted is rendered effectively invisible on the fediverse. I’ll give you my own experience: When I was growing !television@lemm.ee before lemm.ee shut down, the community collected about 5 frequent downvoters. None of these accounts ever upvoted anything. They never participated by posting or commenting anything on the community. In a few cases, two of the accounts had no posting history on the fediverse at all. They existed purely to downvote. Whether because they didn’t like television as a topic, or hated news articles being posted - I don’t know. But they would, between them, always downvote posts and sometimes do so early - deprecating their visibility. After I banned them after a time, I noticed an improvement on the community.
If they're not interested in metal music then they're not ever going to be part of the community, so if they don't want to see anything there - there can just block the community. That's what the block button for communities you don't like is for.
Why should a metal community orientate itself and placate itself to what people who don't like metal like? If someone started downvoting all metal music videos on the community and said they were doing so because they don't like metal, then why would I keep them around to keep doing that?
I don't look at it anymore for the most part. Most people upvote as a matter of normality. I want content to spread across the fediverse.
The community was much smaller then, and they would hurt visibility by getting in quickly and preventing the posts from trending. I don't really know how you can also claim that multiple accounts with no post history, and sometimes no upvoting history were remotely authentic accounts sincerely interested in meaningfully positively impacting the fediverse.
You asked, I answered. :shrug:
The point is non-community members downvoting everything. When there are five people active in a community, five non-communists downvoting everything can seriously hurt the community's reach even when people are browsing their subs with a scaled sort.
A bit like being nice and polite would seldom be frown upon but acting like a dick would?
That is not reasonable...
Do you do that?
Because if so I'll block all your communities right now even tho you got some good ones.
That is childish behavior and any mod that engages in that, is likely doing other shit that isn't as obvious. And I just want no part of it. I'll go to any other community or make my own if it doesn't exist.
If you approve someone, you don't need to explain yourself, you would just say "I agree with this guy". There's no substance to it.
However, if you downvote, you are saying "this is wrong". Which is much different. When you accuse someone of being wrong, you should explain yourself, otherwise you're being a dick.
It's fine if someone already answered with what you were going to answer. You can just upvote that guy and move on.
EDIT: I'm absolutely in awe that this comment specifically gathered so many downvotes. And this is a good example of what I was referring to. Lots of people downvoted, and 0 ppl said why.
I agree. Unexplained downvotes on posts that look like they're in good faith weaken the platform - it's slapping someone who spent time and effort writing their idea.
I've heard of other systems that require a reason (or comment) to go along with a downvote. That seems like a good approach.
People enjoy slapping other people.
And they don't enjoy being slapped.
Other people don't care how much time and effort someone put into anything, they only care if it makes them fell good or bad. And if you make them feel bad they want to make you feel bad.
A lot of the tech/rationalist lemmyites really don't get how basic and rawly emotional most human beings are, themselves included.
I didn't downvote your comment, but I'll explain why I don't agree with it.
We should upvote and downvote based on whether a comment contributes or doesn't contribute to the discussion. If I disagree with a comment but still find it thought provoking or worth reading, then I'll probably upvote. If I agree with a comment that adds nothing worthwhile to the discussion then I won't upvote and might even downvote. If a comment adds no value to the discussion then there's nothing to be gained by replying to it.
Because they don't have the intellectual capacity and/or the courage to engage with what you've said in earnest, since it might mean they'd have to agree with you and admit they were wrong (and these are not wise people who understand admitting you're wrong is the path to being right). They'd rather just "e-boo" you without any more explanation and hope the other stupid cowards do the same and there we go, we were right all along because of numbers! Morons, lol, spineless morons.
And the downvotes on the post I'm replying to just gives what I've said here more credence, lol.