Currently downvotes are enabled on a trial basis, this was done by me to see if they can be enabled to prevent spam from rising to the top of communities, along with the fact that is another form of interaction/feedback.

However I’ve gotten some pushback for this and so I’d like to see the general consensus of this decision. Please put any comments/concerns in this thread, and please vote here: (Link gone poll is done)

the results of this poll and the comments will determine if we keep or remove downvotes again

  • hjkl@lemmynsfw.com
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    6 days ago

    Ability to downvote is an important part of these communities, it’s a self control mechanism. I surely don’t want to block some users just because I don’t like some of their posts, downvote should suffice.

  • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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    6 days ago

    I was for disabling down votes the last goaround wrt this topic, and I’m of the same opinion.

    LemmyNSFW hasn’t grown much more in the past year and this will just drive away more posters (of which there aren’t much left) imho


    Additional - I’d prefer that others block me (so they don’t have to see what I post) or block/don’t subscribe to various communities I mod that they don’t want to see as part of their feed, rather than have them downvote individual top level posts.

    Enabling downvotes wrt comments, I’m okay with…

  • ayawnymouse@lemmynsfw.com
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    7 days ago

    I changed my mind. I was pro downvote but I just looked at the new community list, saw one I liked, and then saw that a lot of the posts that fit the theme just fine have been downvoted for no reason. The mod is clearly upset about it also.

    So yeah, please turn downvotes back off.

    • Mini Sex Doll Lover@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 days ago

      Yes that’s how reddit is that’s the issue people just downvote a lot for things they don’t like hivemind like as well. YouTube is different from this as the videos arent NSFW Sex. That’s why the block and report is more useful, also a lot of my posts would technically be negative 6 at the moment and all I do is fuck a sex doll I understand I don’t have a vagina and u might not like my content but just block me

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      I can see a lot of pros and cons, and I don’t think we can know what is best without a longer-term trial. There’ll be some trolling and harassment that comes with it, which is really bad, but also it allows user filtering of spam and junk posts, which is good. Hopefully there’s less of the former and more of the latter.

  • Lemon376Unpadded@lemmynsfw.com
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    6 days ago

    Nope. I’m seeing male posters getting downvoted, which sucks. Everyone should be welcome in all communities unless the community states otherwise or a post is off-topic.

    • qpnw@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 days ago

      Yeah, just filter stuff you don’t wanna see. There’s a person behind the post you’re downvoting

  • Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com
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    7 days ago

    I feel downvotes are fairly useless.

    They’re used as a disagree button. Ok but why do you disagree? Leave a reply and let’s discuss. Gain saying has little value and that’s all a downvote to disagree is.

    They’re used to report spam. Spam should be reported so I don’t think that’s a valid argument for them. Downvoting spam leaves it up, reporting spam gets it taken down. We have a better solution to spam than downvotes.

    They are used by bad actors, with the removal of downvotes bad actors have to spend more effort in making a comment and it becomes far more obvious in who they are, report and block them.

    Finally downvotes are a way to yuck someone’s yum, I’m mindful of the instance we’re on. I don’t want our communities to become like Reddit where only one genital configuration and body type are allowed.

    • b9999998@lemmynsfw.com
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      7 days ago

      Very well articulated 👍, especially your last point, given the still fragile growing-pains state that LemmyNSFW is currently in

  • deezcashews@lemmynsfw.com
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    7 days ago

    I’m for them in theory but I feel like they get abused. Like if someone posts a dick in gonewild. Nothing wrong with that, but most people don’t wanna see dicks.

    I don’t suppose you can leave it up to the sub-lemmy to decide? (Sub lemmy? Wtf are we calling these?)

    • wackawacka@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 days ago

      Nothing wrong with that, but most people don’t wanna see dicks.

      I agree that there’s nothing wrong with that, but if most people don’t want to see it, then… why shouldn’t it get downvoted? That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Give the people what they want.

      Perhaps dicks belong in a more niche sub where people actually do want to see that?

        • wackawacka@lemmynsfw.com
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          6 days ago

          ok, well that just sucks.

          *Edit: I feel like my wording was unclear and could be interpreted as “sucks for them, but oh well”. I meant it more in a genuine “oh damn, that’s really shitty” kind of way.

        • Nodachi@lemmynsfw.com
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          7 days ago

          Ohhhh I know trust me I know lol 🤣someone downvoted almost every one of my posts on nodachiwrld 😆

        • Nodachi@lemmynsfw.com
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          7 days ago

          She doesn’t like posting on here because people would rather see pornstars than OC’s, eclipsebunnie stopped posting here, nsfw kitty, posterxbunny, phoebe grace all left because of it , now If I told them about the downvotes they’ll never come back here .

            • Nodachi@lemmynsfw.com
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              7 days ago

              I seen far more pornstar pics/posts make it on the front page more than OC’s, now is currently mostly OC’s but that’s only because the current OC’s are pretty new and are posting individually on other communities

              • lemmyposter212@lemmynsfw.comOPM
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                7 days ago

                if you look at top week and month the majority of top posts are OC, there are more pornstar posts because there is just a huge stockpile of porn that people can grab from, that’s always going to be true. But again if you look at the upvotes history, people do actually appreciate OC alot. The ratio of upvotes for oc vs porn is probably similar to reddit, there’s just a lot less people here, which means less interaction in general.

                • Nodachi@lemmynsfw.com
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                  7 days ago

                  But then why are OC’s leaving? I talked to the girls I know and they said not many interactions on here, upvotes are good but it doesn’t keep them staying on the front pages for long and then gets drowned out by non OC posts . If people interacted with OC’s like they do with porn posts, then OC’s wouldn’t get drowned out by it

          • deezcashews@lemmynsfw.com
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            7 days ago

            I disagree but that’s just me, there are plenty of tube sites to see pornstars get fucked, I come here for the OC

            • Nodachi@lemmynsfw.com
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              7 days ago

              Exactly! More ppl should bring light to the OC’s on here rather than the pornstar posts lol

        • Nodachi@lemmynsfw.com
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          7 days ago

          Hahaha, they’re mad/jealous because I sleep with beautiful women all the time 😅 they don’t like pretty guys with pretty women 🤣💜

    • JustS0m3Dud3@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 days ago

      (Sub lemmy? Wtf are we calling these?)

      We tend to call them what the UI for most Lemmy clients (or the web version) call them, i.e. “communities”.

  • zshornyposting@lemmynsfw.com
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    7 days ago

    I feel that downvotes serve an important purpose both in keeping out spam, but also in preserving the many-niches architecture common in porn. Without downvotes even more work will be put onto mods in order to make sure the content posted is relevant to the communities its being posted too. Take c/Hotwife which has recently had a few postings that have 0 to do with hotwifing. Allowing downvotes is an imperfect solution, but I think an important one.

    • Clevererhans@lemmynsfw.com
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      7 days ago

      What about people getting pissed over something (presumably, it’s hard to tell) and then going after people’s posts in other communities and rampage-downvoting everything?

      • tom_was_taken@lemmynsfw.com
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        6 days ago

        This should be handled by (auto)mod tools, allowing good faith users to help filter non-fitting or low quality posts, and preventing bad actors from downvote fireworks.

        There are possibilities to limit available downvotes either by throttling amount per time/community/instance/user, by demanding to have a certain “reputation” in the community/instance or by making downvote cost your own “reputation”.

        None of the above is perfect, but IMO outright removing a right to disagree is against community interests.

        Currently I can either leave a “harassment” comment: “wtf this is doing in this community”, make complain to a mod (if there is any active), or ignore the post. Neither help community grow stronger, I think.

        • Clevererhans@lemmynsfw.com
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          6 days ago

          It seems to me that most valid criticisms are better stated as a polite comment than a numb downvote.

    • hjkl@lemmynsfw.com
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      6 days ago

      To be fair, comparing to Reddit, Lemmy is still niche, let alone LemmyNSFW even nicher. However, without downvotes some communities lose track. Without growing bigger, I do not expect to see some niche NSFW communities here which are already niche on Reddit. With more posters Lemmy shall grow, does not matter if it’s slowly, but it should be steadily.

  • esthete@lemmynsfw.com
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    5 days ago

    I’ve just counted 100 communities I had to block to get a semi interesting “local” feed, in addition to 7 posters who were really not my taste. How many hentai/anime communities are really needed for example? So yes, downvoting makes sense as long as there is a local feed, that’s how lemmy works.

    And yes, I have witnessed a clear improvement since downvotes are back.

  • PhantomPeeper@lemmynsfw.com
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    7 days ago

    I think a lot of responses were correlating downvotes with censorship which is something I can agree with. I personally don’t want to see someone’s dick in gonewild but I know it’s for someone. Maybe we can have a tagging system that user can filter what they don’t want to see. But I don’t care if downvotes comes back or stays away because I’ll just block the accounts that shows things I don’t want to see.

  • CombedSpaghetti@lemmynsfw.com
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    7 days ago

    Every downvote on pro-downvote comments should count as a vote for re-enabling. Clearly they’re okay with downvotes, at least when it suits them haha

      • lnsfw3@lemmynsfw.com
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        7 days ago

        A poll isn’t a good way to decide this. Regular posters suffer from downvotes more than others, and they drive our community. Their opinion should count for more.

        Currently three regular posters have complained about it:

        • Radovic
        • Cleverhans
        • LVL3_Eroticism.
        • lemmyposter212@lemmynsfw.comOPM
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          7 days ago

          Yes I definitely understand that, that’s why the comments here and the poll are being taken into consideration

          • Radovic the Unreasonable@lemmynsfw.com
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            7 days ago

            To be quite frank, I don’t know why you’re even doing this. We had a discussion about it last year and all the same points were raised after which you turned them off, only to turn them on and have another debate a few weeks later and you then had to turn them off again. I think you know that you will probably have to turn them off again at some point. So how about you level with us, what is it about downvotes that you find so compelling?

            • lemmyposter212@lemmynsfw.comOPM
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              7 days ago

              Downvotes can be a useful tool to shape a community, the issue comes in when several people start downvoting communities they don’t even participate in. Which is one of the main issues brought up here.

              It may seem very clear to you that “no one” wants downvotes, but as an admin I get complaints for basically every decision made on this site, so what is the “right” choice is sometimes hard to determine. I’ve been getting complaints about downvotes being disabled for awhile now, so it wasn’t clear to me. Even now, the opinion is still very split. Which is why I enabled them quietly to see if it would cause any issues. It did, so I made this post to see if people think the issues created by downvotes outweigh the benefits, and what peoples’ other opinions about them are.

              This is my opinion based on what I’ve read and the results of the poll: I think at a later time when lemmynsfw is larger, downvotes may be viable, especially if lemmy implements a custom home feed so that not everyone sees the same posts. This would help mitigate the issue of people not in communities downvoting posts. But as it stands, I’m leaning towards disabling them again. Frequent posters, which are kind of needed for this site to survive, don’t seem to like them, and the poll is split almost 50/50. I have to try to balance enjoyability of posting and enjoyability of consuming content on the site, and it just seems like downvotes really hurts posters and only marginally helps consumers.

              I’m leaving the poll up for a few more days and am going to continue to read the comments, but, if nothing changes, that’s probably what’s going to happen.

              • MaybeALittleBitWeird@lemmynsfw.com
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                7 days ago

                I know this is an incredibly divisive topic and I don’t envy the position this puts admin in. For what it’s worth, I appreciate that you’re trying to make it work and involving the community in the process.

                Downvotes are a useful tool to shape a community and help with moderation, but with the size of the active posting population as well as the broad reach for posts across the greater Fediverse downvotes don’t lend well to fostering the human element. It’s fine to have them with a larger active community where people can form their own content bubbles, but pretty much anything that’s posted here ends up at the top of local for a few hours and is going to get a lot of eyes on it that may not enjoy the premise of the community. You’ll have no posts to downvote after the community has chased away anyone who posts though.

                With Yiffit, pornlemmy, and now Lemmyf.uk all shut down this is the only dedicated nsfw instance left that I’m aware of. It honestly just seems like Lemmy in general is hostile to nsfw content.

              • Radovic the Unreasonable@lemmynsfw.com
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                7 days ago

                All this seems very fair. I’m under no illusion as to the popularity of downvotes, I would say that damn near all of them want to be able to downvote.

                The question I have asked you and have asked @CombedSpaghetti is what motivates me or any of your other regular posters to post when they know that all their efforts can be nullified, for any reason you can think of, by someone pushing a button at the wrong moment.

                And you can’t. Not unless you cut us in on that sweet crypto action 😜

                • lemmyposter212@lemmynsfw.comOPM
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                  7 days ago

                  Like I said I understand what you’re saying, my answer is it’s not always as simple as doing something that makes one group of people happy, I have to weigh the options, which is why I made this post.

                  Also, I don’t get paid to do this, they crypto money goes 100% to paying for hosting the site to my knowledge. All the admins have day jobs.

            • lnsfw3@lemmynsfw.com
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              7 days ago

              The stated reason is spam. We’ve been getting a lot of that recently, so I get admins are looking for a way to deal with it. But the spam is being upvoted, so I don’t think it’s working.

              • Radovic the Unreasonable@lemmynsfw.com
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                7 days ago

                Yeah this time spam. This is admin Yay talking about it last year:

                Some people found it right, some people hated it, some people hesitated. At the end of the day, since we are on a disorganised platform like fediverse, I find the decision we took right. However, I was also annoyed by the lack of downvotes. So I searched for a solution.

                https://lemmynsfw.com/post/4962186

                Then he said this a few months later:

                As you may notice, downvotes have been completely off for the last few days. I did this because I couldn’t resist the pressure of some friends :/ I still don’t know what to do about this. The majority of members probably want it to be completely open. As mods, posters and admins; some think it should be closed, some think it should be restricted (I guess).

                I guess there is no solution that makes everyone happy. I realized I don’t have admin skills in stressful situations, I’m a fucking stupid lol :D I miss @gabe so much.

                lemmyposter212 suggested “fuzzy votes” or something that can work for us too. I think I’ll just ghost this issue for a while.

                https://lemmynsfw.com/post/7152586

                “Annoyed by the lack” and “:/” sounds like the admins just want downvotes. Well, it is their instance and they will have what they want.

  • Mini Sex Doll Lover@lemmynsfw.com
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    6 days ago

    Yes I can clearly see this more about girls… and Sex Doll stuff aren’t a niche here it was worth checking this place out though I wish your site luck Reddit and Internet has become to damn soft in general people are just ridiculous nowadays it’s kinda sad 🤷🤦‍♀️