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.

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[–] jet@hackertalks.com 5 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

When a topic gets too heated we have the ability to lock a post, it would also be useful to lock a comment for more granular control.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Yeah, locking a thread would be ideal. Am definitely known to lock a post when things get out of hand, but having the granularity to only lock down the too-spicy / non-productive thread would be way better and more fair to everyone else who's not being an asshat.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago

Definitely

[–] sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz 10 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

If someone stands in front of a crowd and yells an opinion, I don't think they should get angry when they get a bunch of replies instead of having the crowd elect a spokesperson who then gives a committee-decided solo reply.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Obviously the crowd wouldn't elect anyone, they just have to accept what the first person to respond says!

[–] SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Does dogpiling happen on Lemmy? I'm a refugee.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 17 hours ago

Sometimes, but much less compared to Reddit.

Welcome here, here are a few pointers for you

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 13 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

None of that adds anything to the discussion; they’re not engaging on the subject, just attacking the opinion because it differs.

Responding when someone disagrees is literally how discussion works. The fact that there a large number of potential participants means there is a chance for a large number of responses, even if some are similar or even identical.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

Responding when someone disagrees is literally how discussion works.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at (though apparently poorly lol).

Disagreements are quite often healthy. It's the piling-on from the peanut gallery without adding any new information or perspective that I'm spotlighting here.

So, imagine 30 replies to your comment here amounting to absolutely nothing but "you're wrong and I'm right!" and nothing else. Is that a discussion? I would say no, it's not.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 2 points 22 hours ago

I don't have to imagine!

So there are opposing camps that all want to avoid shitty behavior but work against each other, and some of the camps overlap. This is because some content gets negative responses when it doesn't deserve it and soe does. This leads to some of the following responses and even moderation.

Don't just downvote, respond with why!

Not everyone needs to reply, just downvote and move on!

Don't downvote content you dislike, block and move on!

All of these are well intended in their own context, but also tend to be promoted as absolutes without nuance. The whole concept of group think is just a representation of what the majority of people happen to share opinions on. It isn't coordinated or intentional, just a statistical representation of who clicks reply and/or the vote buttons.

[–] CidVicious@sh.itjust.works 11 points 23 hours ago (12 children)

Given that there's no karma here, dogpiling doesn't matter much. Can mute replies and move on.

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[–] teft@lemmy.world 11 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (19 children)

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.

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[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 7 points 21 hours ago

As a commenter, I find the dogpiling notifications are the most intrusive part of such a situation. When a situation like this occurs to me I usually quickly disable notifications on the comment in question and move on with my life and it really makes it much more tolerable. I may go back to check on that comment manually from time to time to see if anyone has managed to come up to anything new worth replying to, but typically after a day or two that seems to become pretty unlikely. The comments themselves don't bother me much, even if they are repetitive. I don't mind that people feel the need to have their own personal voice heard on a particular topic but I don't personally need to keep having it hammered into my brain every 10 minutes with a new notification either, I think it's the notifications that turn it into badgering.

I think a lot of the toxicity might be addressed by allowing users to set a limit (with a reasonable default, even) of the number of times they'll be notified about responses to an individual comment. Ideally you would also be able to enable/disable this on a per-comment basis, maybe you do want to be notified of every response to a particular comment because you're basically polling people for their opinions, and of course you would want to keep the existing functionality to disable all notifications related to a particular comment because like I said I use that all the time. But maybe we could limit it to a default like "up to 10", and then disable notifications, because after 10 replies, you probably aren't getting much new information. It would make the storm of replies when something gets particularly controversial or viral or popular a lot more manageable.

Of course if you get into a reply back-and-forth with someone, and you're arguing with a bunch of different people at once, that's not dogpiling that's on you.

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago

I got this for saying I downvote copypasta. The whole thing was ridiculous, of course I doubled down.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Being an instance with downvotes disabled sorta helps for this imo

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Can you explain how? Removing downvotes removes a signal, which I would think leads to an increase in the other two signals, upvoting and commenting. Since dog-piling is excessive commenting I feel like it would make the problem worse.

It I can't downvote someone I'm more likely to comment my opinion, even if that opinion is dog-piling.

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 4 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

People that dogpile downvote too, it’s not exclusionary. Downvotes on Reddit were not meant to be a „disagree” button - it was intended for off-topic and rule breaking content. Of course platform has very little control over that and people started it to bury opinions they disagreed with below visibility thresholds.

Out of all the ways to solve this I really like what Tildes does. There’s no downvote button and only somewhat trusted users get to assign labels that work a bit similarly but force you to provide a reason for that downvote. For example, a pun that doesn’t bring anything to discussion can be labelled as „noise” which doesn’t remove or hide it but brings it to bottom. Other labels serve as quasi-report. It’s a solved problem but I think most people like dogpiling and downvoting.

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago

FWIW Dog-piling also applies to upvotes. People see a headline or comment they agree with, even if it's a complete fabrication, and upvote it.

Of course as you noted not everyone agrees what an upvote or downvote represents.

As for Tildes, it does help but also requires a lot more moderation. Not that I'd be against trying it, I do just wonder how well it scales up, especially if people disagree.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The voting on any website since the inception of the idea was intended to be a "like/dislike" counter to help guage the popularity of a post. Things that were well liked, get shown to more people. Things that are mostly disliked, don't. That's all it ever was, and it's how a majority of people continue to use it.

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

„This is how it always was” is never a good argument but it’s not even applicable in this case. It was Digg that brought downvoting to mainstream and it was definitely a Web 2.0 thing. Old forums used upvotes only, sometimes labeled as „thanks” and such.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

My argument was only against the statement "it was always intended to be this way." Because, no... It wasn't. I am not saying that it should be one way or the other.

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (6 children)

What you are talking about is a normal internet conversation.

If you don't want everyone showing up to call you dumb then don't say stupid things lol

There's a clear difference between people being mean to someone who didn't know better vs someone who is full of shit

[–] madcaesar@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

It's not that easy. People often LOOK for malice and give people zero grace, it's seen as an easy opportunity to white knight and get people to pile on.

It's the worst part of online conversation, because it only takes one asshole to derail everything.

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I’m here to get away from a normal internet conversation but with size it seems that it is inevitable.

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[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 points 23 hours ago

Personally, I think this is where downvoting is a thing. Let's be honest, us mods are demonized here for "over-modding", I think this counts as one of those things where unless a comment breaks an established rule, then there's no real rule breaking. Dog piling isn't great and it doesn't add anything, but it doesn't necessarily mean that a mod needs to jump in and put a stop to it. Personally, I'd just wait until someone reports something to me that is rule breaking, otherwise any of those users can leave the thread if they don't like it, or downvote. That's my opinion though.

Maybe what another commenter said, "harsher enforcement of the rules when you notice someone being dogpiled". Not a new rule directly, but that could be something (worded better than me) "Dogpiling is not banned, but will be watched diligently for rule-breaking". No new rules or anything, but the second someone steps out of line you lock the thread or give them a temporary ban for breaking a rule. Similar to speeding in a construction zone.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 22 hours ago

Maybe adding a "no dogpiling" rule could be worth it.

I don't see it happening too much in communities I mod, but those aren't really controversial communities.

[–] reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 3 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I think the thing it ‘adds’ is some kind of indication of social consensus. I agree it’s harmful to thoughtfulness and to people’s development of individual understanding rather than just parroting (see all of twitter). I do think the semi-anonymous forum style prevents a bit of the soap boxing compared to social media with your name on it, but it’s still clearly present here.

In terms of solutions I don’t have a lot of concrete ideas. I think this phenomenon stems from a broader social shift towards moral absolutism and outsourcing knowledge to experts (where who is trusted as an expert varies dramatically) rather than striving to understand things yourself.

Opinions that go against the grain require patience and suspension of disbelief with your conversation partner—something usually lacking in online discussion. A presumption of good faith (even where no good faith was intended) would go a long way.

Anecdotally in a formal learning setting when you take a student’s ideas seriously (even if they’re not very mature ideas) they learn to think through things better and consider them more deeply than when you just correct them with the most up to date spiel on the matter.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 23 hours ago (11 children)

A few potential ways to address this:

a rule against dogpiling
a rule against replying without adding new information
harsher enforcement of rules when you notice someone being dogpiled

I'd probably pick #3 but all of them are problematic: #1 and #2 can be misused by the mod because they have huge grey areas, #3 creates double standards. ("So you're saying a «go drink bleach» is OK, but «this is dumb» is not???")

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