Recently, many of our anti-Zionists posts have been downvoted to oblivion by liberals. As hexberians realized a while back, downvotes only help liberals since they are more numerous and they don’t need to engage in discourse. I am proposing to just get rid of downvotes and instead engage in discourse on content that we disagree on.
Could reactionary comments just be removed instead and serial reactionary offenders just be blocked from the communities? Downvotes dont really add anything.
If you remove the ability for people to express that they dislike something, it makes our moderation work 10x more difficult.
Let’s say some shit comment gets posted and has 3 upvotes but dozens of replies. Does that mean people liked it, or didn’t? This is exactly what big tech companies want, to platform reactionary or unwanted takes, and forcing ppl to engage, rather than just downvoting and moving on.
Not every like or dislike needs an essay as a justification.
Strongly agree. It also leads if you’ll notice on hex bear to lots of thread clogging, useless comments like people using an emote called down-bear to express the same in much more space. It’s ridiculous. The urge never leaves even if the button is removed. It doesn’t result in forcing more education, it just frustrates and overwhelms those capable of education.
There’s a spectrum of wrong between mod action (including removal and banning) and simply being wrong on something.
But wouldnt you guys know which comments are the problem ones based on reports?
Reports are helpful to mods yes (although ppl use them far less than downvotes, because just like a response, a report requires a reason), but since they’re invisible to other users, you have no choice but to respond with an essay, and drive up pointless engagement.
If anything, we should be giving users more ways to express their preference, not less. Big tech would love to do away with all forms of preference, but they keep upvotes because it at least is better than the hell of old-school forums where you had to read through hundreds of pages before you found helpful or interesting content.
