It feels like people are a lot nicer here than on Twitter and Reddit, and even when people disagree, it’s generally civil and not an all-out flame war. Also, there’s no algorithm promoting outrage all the time.
For me, the anticipation of toxicity was a huge deterrent for me ever participating in real discussions, but here I feel like I can be myself.
I think it’s healthier this way.
Especially the upvote/downvote system drives bandwagon behavior. If a post gets like 3 downvotes and the next gets 2, people just look at the votes and assume who’s right and follow that. They will literally think votes decides what’s right. Though when you’re on the other side of that, it’s also important to know that votes don’t matter and it doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It’s also important to know when to leave a conversation when it stops being a discussion and turns into an argument. Arguments are literally useless and just aggravating, which people won’t admit that they love.
The reddit behavior certainly still comes out. But an upside about decentralization is you can block the instance they’re from since that annoying behavior tends to follow the same company and you probably block a lot more annoying people as a result.
I’ve looked at comments I didn’t feel like reading, looked at the score then voted based on that. This is a bias we’re all subject to, knowingly or not.
You see a comment had -20 downvotes your interpretation of the contents is immediately swayed to side with the majority. Removing downvotes looking at you beehaw also doesn’t solve this problem. Less likes than the person who responded to you? You must be wrong.
So I’m glad Lemmy, at least the browser version, shows both up and downvotes by default and the total score is hidden away in the top right. Helps remove a little bit of bias.
I don’t think hiding the vote count is a bad idea though. Keep the upvote/downvote system and let it sort which comment is on the top and whatnot, but who does seeing the score really benefit? There is no winner or loser, and the score doesn’t matter, so why is it kept anyways? The goal in the end should conversation.
Yes, it absolutely does. But I think it’s still worth it to have a downvote system.
I’m glad we can even see the exact ratio, too. The more transparency, the better.
At the same time, it would be cool if users could just sort by means other than votes. If you’d like, it’d be nice if you could hide the votes altogether so you don’t see them. I wouldn’t do this, but I support having the option to for those who would.
