[Migrated, see pinned post] Casual Conversation @lemm.ee gay_sex @mander.xyz 6d ago

I just disabled scores (upvotes and downvotes) and I think it's great!

It's freeing in a way, I don't have to do any extra processing in my head, and I can just see the posts and comments for what they are. You should try it too!

18 comments

No dice, looking at the scores on recent comments I've made is how I microdose dopamine.
I never looked at or considered uovotes and downvotes, so, who cares if they are enabled or disabled.

You don't need confirmation from strangers online to feel confident...
- It might be the case for you, but other people might be impacted differently.
  
  Giving people the choice is good.
- It's more that I wanted to remind others. I was thinking of posting this in the "YouShouldKnow" community at first, but I figured that it wouldn't fit there.
  
  It would probably, I posted similar messages there in the past.
Not sure if other UIs have similar granularity, but in Tesseract you can also:

Disable downvotes (won't show downvote count OR the downvote button; upvote arrow turns into a heart/like button)

Basically, if you don't want to see downvotes, you also can't give them out.

Disable scores (it just indicates your vote)

Both

Scores Disabled

Downvotes Disabled

Both Scores and Downvotes Disabled
I'll have to figure out where to do that, it sounds like what I'm looking for. (Edit: Well, that was easy. Found it in the settings. Love that it's so simple.) I finally decided to let my reddit account drift off into the void a couple weeks ago, it was really hurting my mental health. I'd had the account for over 10 years and have high 6-figure post and comment karma, but like... I recognize that doesn't really mean anything, but the way it's gamified, whenever I'd make a controversial post or say something stupid or wrong and get even -1 karma, it'd ruin my day in a serious way. I felt tied to the platform, like I constantly had to "perform".

I was getting kinda lonely after leaving, since I also don't really have any social media outside an instagram that I just post my photos on, which is when I stumbled across Lemmy. I am feeling really nostalgic for the old days of forums, but sadly it seems outside super niche communities, forums are dead.

Anyway, very long story short, I'm a reddit castaway looking to just chill and talk with a smaller community of strangers for a bit. This casual conversation community seems nice.
- I’ll have to figure out where to do that
  
  If you are using something like a third-party client (may be an Android/IOS app that you use to access lemmy), it depends on the app.
  
  If you use lemmy from a website, i.e the official https://lemm.ee/ site, you can navigate to your settings and disable it, just click on the settings button:
  
  then scroll down and find these:
  
  Edit: I see you've found it, Welcome to lemmy!
  
  Thanks for the detailed response! I'm really looking to keep Lemmy as no-frills as possible to try and prevent myself from getting addicted to something again. The default web skin and interface is pleasantly bland, I'm liking it so far.
- Welcome here!
  
  !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca and !communitypromo@lemmy.ca have a few pointers to help you settle in.
- I recognize that doesn’t really mean anything, but the way it’s gamified, whenever I’d make a controversial post or say something stupid or wrong and get even -1 karma, it’d ruin my day in a serious way.
  
  Seems like you made the right decision by leaving it behind. Welcome :)
It's quite nice and refreshing indeed. I did it for a while, but then reactivated them to check how the posts I was making were doing in terms of visibility.

Definitely something that less active posters can do!
It sounds like Mastodon is more the experience you're looking for. The votes are integral to a service like Lemmy and it's a weird sentiment
- On Mastodon, stars and reblogs are basically the same as votes. I agree that they're not integral to using Mastodon, but I don't think they really are to Lemmy, either. The discussion is what makes Lemmy, Lemmy.
nooo you're gonna make the downvote bullies feel all powerless, how could you!

Anyway, since this topic is back on let me get back on my soapbox:

comment score should be hidden by default, while the algorithm still works behind the scenes. This prevents dogpiling and karmafarming (even though karma doesn't do shit on Lemmy, but this could change in the future I guess) and would make for a more comment-centric experience instead of vote-centric.
- I fully agree with this. There is no reason except for hive minding to have scores enabled by default.

18 comments