My wonderful co-admin @supakaity@lemmy.blahaj.zone has made a modification to the downvote system. It’s not currently enabled, but if we were to turn it on, downvotes would be available for use, but they would weigh 5 times less than an upvote.
Which is to say, it would take 5 downvotes to counter an upvote. This would let downvotes have an impact on what appears in the hot topics sort, but hopefully mitigate some of the more negative impacts of downvoting.
Are there any strong objections from Blahaj Lemmy users to enabling downvotes with this modification?
Sounds like a really good compromise. “Rediquette” says it’s only to discourage spam and posts that add nothing to the conversation, but in practice, basically everyone uses it as an “I disagree” button. Gets used as a tool to discourage dissent and silence the actual unpopular opinions.
This is the big thing I hate about downvotes on Reddit. Instead of downvotes, people who disagree should make a comment about it, and then THAT comment can get upvoted to show that people disagree with the original comment. It encourages conversation and discourages echo-chambers where people are punished for having a different opinion.