The Dangers of Down-Voting
The Dangers of Down-Voting
What risks does Down-voting have in a modern society? How is it used to push agendas?
This is my work; I am also looking for constructive criticism.
i feel like you missed the point why you (rightfully) would have been downvoted for HL. even if you're personally not supporting the game, you're still giving it (presumably) positive publicity, which is supporting the game
now you have a post celebrating that you could do that here, and ngl it's left me with a sour taste in my mouth
but hey, i guess you're right, i have to sit here and explain it instead of dropping a downvote on you and moving on with my life
LOL and it's recent, great, there are two posts on my front page that remind me that a famous franchise owner wants my dead, thanks
I remember when my sister disowned me. She was a huge Harry Potter fan growing up. When she heard that I started HRT she sent me vile text messages for months, quoting Rowling's then recent essay on trans people. I got to hear how disgusting I was from my own sister, parroting the words of JK Rowling.
She gives those who hate trans people validity, and spreads their message. I know how dangerous it is; I lost my sister in part because of her.
that's really tough to hear, thanks for sharing jellyfish. i hope time can heal some of your wounds, and i hope your sister is ashamed of this some day.
i didn't see it like that. I'm gonna delete that post, and I'm so sorry for that. Thank you. I understand that deleting it won't right my wrong, but I'm sincerely sorry.
Edit for a little note: I went to sleep after posting this, and I haven't checked Beehaw since. That's why I left it up for so long. Thank you though. Also, the post was a technical perspective on how the portals work in the game, not anything to do with it's content or the like. I haven't paid for the game either. So, I've deleted both posts and wanted to thank you for sharing this perspective.
hey, i appreciate you hearing me out and doing what you can. about it. that's all i can ask for
this is a valid perspective. what do other readers think? if beehaw had its' current activity in the height of HL's craze, how should that be handled here? i feel like this plays directly into beehaw's philosophy below from the Docs. mod input here would be really cool
We’ve all experienced someone who’s a real jerk on the internet but manages to never get banned because they never explicitly violate any rules. “I’m not sexist!” they’ll claim, but then happen to post a lot of articles calling into question modern feminism or criticize the wage gap…
I’m right with you on “Negative Reactions don’t Inspire Discussion” If someone doesn’t like my post, I want to know why. Hearing opposing viewpoints is my favorite way to learn.
A simple downvote doesn’t tell me anything. Are they mad because I raised a sensitive subject, made a bad joke, used an Oxford comma, or do they actually have a relevant disagreement? This isn’t reddit. I won’t bite your head off. If I’m full of shit, make a comment of your own and tell me why! Don’t just hit a down arrow!
Constructive criticism: words like “and”, “of”, and “the” aren’t capitalized in titles, but “don’t” should be. I don’t know the exact rule offhand, but I’m sure you can find it in a Manual of Style or something.
The rule is that you don’t capitalize prepositions (“of”, “in”, etc.), conjunctions (“and”, “but”, “or”, etc.), or articles (“the”, “a”, “an”). There might be a couple odd cases but those should be enough to keep you out of trouble with the people that get mad about Oxford commas. :-)
Careful, you only capitalize prepositions of three letters or shorter by default. Though different style guides might say otherwise: Chicago style doesn't capitalize any prepositions, while MLA doesn't capitalize any words 3 letters or fewer (which presumably could lead to the odd lowercase "i"). And AP doesn't capitalize any words 3 letters or fewer unless they happen to be verbs.
https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/capitalization/rules-for-capitalization-in-titles.html
Depending on the style guide, some prepositions are capitalized. For example, AMA says to capitalize prepositions that are 4 or more letters long (then, after, etc).
Could we think about repurposing the down-vote function to serve a different role? Similar to the report function, which signals a need for moderator review, the down-vote could be used in the same way to flag content that might require a second look. This could assist in handling extreme or illegal content without suppressing diverse opinions or content simply because it doesn't receive wide agreement.
What if we displayed only the "+1" upvotes on the website without showing any down-vote counts? This would maintain a positive atmosphere and could encourage more open dialogue. Essentially, a down-vote would transition from meaning "I disagree" to "this might need reviewing".
Importantly, if content isn't extreme or illegal but still gathers a significant amount of down-votes, it could be an indicator for the moderator to assess if further action is necessary. This shifts the down-vote function from being a tool for disagreement to a measure for maintaining the quality of discourse.
Reddit did try this, they use downvotes as a way to prevent showing poorly written or short content, but they didn't properly explain it and so I feel that it probably wouldn't be able to be explained.
This is great. I honestly hadn't given the downvote thing much thought. The bit about promoting discussion really hits it home. Tell me why you don't like it!
It reminds me of restaurant reviews. I eat at Chili's pretty regularly, and if you pay on the little tablet kiosk thing (Ziosk?), it wants you to complete a survey. If things were great, I do the survey. But if they were bad, or even just fine, I skip. I've heard too many tales of disciplinary action being taken on non-five-star reviews, which just kills the whole point. Do you want my honest opinion, or do you want a yes-man?
Back to the piece, it's a great write-up. Though I do want to point out that you used "apart" instead of "a part" at least twice. 🙂
But don't worry, the XMPP article linked at the bottom has way more errors.
Tell me why you don’t like it!
This is fine while we're still small, and the number of intentional bad actors is limited. If our user sign-up vibe check filter ever fails, though, and we get inundated with a thousand alt-right trolls, the inability to downvote is going to majorly suck. Having to sit down and compose a well-worded, sourced comment every time they brain-dump a load of reality-distorting rubbish onto my feed is a huge time- and energy-sink, which is exactly what they're going for. It takes them 3 minutes to type some pile of complete nonsense, and it takes me half an hour or more to debunk it. By the time I'm finished with my "this is why you're wrong" comment, they've gone on to copy/paste their own fuckery 30 different times over 10 different comment threads and 6 different Lemmy posts.
Eventually, nobody will have the energy for these chuds any longer, and their screeds will stay up unopposed or only marginally opposed, which is their intended goal.
Downvotes make it simple, quick, and easy to fight this bullshit-shotgun tactic, because clicking one time is faster than the fastest-typing sealion. While they outpace my ability to sit and debunk their "arguments", each one of their posts can accumulate double-digit downvotes before they even finish posting it on the next thread, hiding them from everyone who's not sorting the comment section by "dumbfuckery".
We'll see how it goes, though. I tend to be cynical and doomy, and maybe the things I worry about will never happen, or will shape up differently than I predict. But the fact that none of the "Yay, no downvotes!" people ever address this concern is something that reduces my level of confidence in the scheme.
if they're spewing hate them we'd report them, not downvote
Ah! Thanks for pointing that out I'll be more cautious in that regard