It’s very nice to see that X people liked a post/comment and Y people disliked it instead of just having a singular “goodness/badness” rating. It (literally, in a mathematical sense) adds a whole new dimension to post ratings and gives us a more nuanced understanding of people’s opinions. Plus, it feels a lot better to see that 5 people agreed with you and 7 disagreed when you made a controversial statement instead of just seeing a score of -1 telling you how bad you are.
Agree. It gives perspective.
100%. I’m still a bit shocked there are instances that block down votes and vehemently defend the decision. I mean, didn’t everyone raise a huff when YouTube disabled dislike? I can only imagine someone got down voted into oblivion once and reacted with “Down votes are bad.”
I think it’s totally fine to have the option, personally I find it the “goodness/badness” percentage to be more appropriate. A post could have 1000 upvotes with 5 down and I’d only look at the 5 and think “wow, so many disliked this” where it’s actually 99.5% positive.
Reddit used to have this functionality too (RES would expose it in the UI). Later they removed it and only showed if a comment was controversial. Very refreshing indeed to see the up and down votes again!
They fuzz the numbers a bit “to make it harder for vote manipulation bots to see if they’re working” or something like that too. It makes the upvote percentage almost useless.
That was the official line, which was classic doublespeak, because it’s technically true, but also total bullshit. Even with the vote fuzzing it was easy to tell when a post or comment was heavily downvoted. Advertisers and astroturfers hated this, because it meant that when users recognized their posts as trash and voted accordingly, it was that much harder to make them seem organic and innocent. When reddit obscured the vote tallies, it also destroyed transparency and made it easier for bad actors to game the karma system to push their own agenda.
It’s an integral part of online content, being able to both upvote and downvote. I’m amazed how it’s still so divisive given that it’s been the norm for over a decade on Reddit
Also the reason why I’ve avoided so many of the alternative web apps for lemmy that try to hide the downvotes.
It’s amazing.
And there’s also a “controversial” sort coming (Reddit had similar right?), which ranks posts with many but balanced votes … which as you say, can be quite interesting.
I’ve always wondered what the actual vote counts were for controversial posts. It was amusing to see reddit posts with like 2 points and 300 comments.
Some people can’t see the difference, but a comment with +4 could be a 1004/1000 or a 4/0 and there’s a world of difference there.
It’s like Fallout New Vegas’s rep system.
The most illuminating aspect of Lemmy has been in contrast with what Reddit has become in recent years. It’s difficult to make nuanced or light hearted comments in Reddit without misunderstandings or receiving a lot of negative feedback. The Lemmy userbase seems to be dominated by refugees from Reddit. I’m amazed how long Reddit managed to hang on to it’s core principles and I think that can be credited to the diffuse structure. Now that they’ve committed to the unified corporate goal of profit it will completely go down the shitter in the way Facebook and the other popular platforms have.
I’ve noticed that people on Reddit are exceptionally bad at spotting satire and sarcasm. It’s not a whole lot better here, but it is a bit. I think that it’s just difficult in general without being able to hear people’s tone.
Couldn’t agree more. As someone not shying away from controversial discussions reddit used to be frustrating because it created the illusion that no-one ever agrees with you. I don’t at all mind the total points being negative when I can atleast see that third of the people still agree with me.
Right! It’s either everyone agrees with you or everyone hates you.
I like that I can see this post has 9 downvotes.
How are you seeing the split votes? I can only see the aggregate number.
It’s not on by default. Check the settings.
Depends on the app you’re using.
I’m using Voyager, as the community name suggests the OP is. Using the AppStore version on iOS which may make a difference.
Settings > Appearance > Display Votes > Separate
You should have an option. I’m not on iOS. But try go to settings > appearance and there should be a Votes section that lets you pick separate.
Aww man I’m using Sync, I don’t see options to change it, all I see is how many points a post has.
I also like that you can hide vote count altogether. This is something that I wish other apps had. It’s great for people like me who want to read and judge comments by their own merit as opposed to vote count
Does your husband sell half-baked maps of an ancient kingdom brought to ruin?
I was extremely confused for a second there but yes, he hasn’t been back in ages.
It’s also possible to view what account upvoted you by viewing your post on a Kbin instance.
I think it’s rather silly that this information is obfuscated on Lemmy.
And it’s only possible to upvote on Kbin. Which makes more sense to me as well.
Do you need a kbin account for that? If not, how do you see it?
No account needed.
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Select the triple dots menu in Voyager to copy a link to your OP
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Visit kbin.social
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Enter the copied link in the search bar
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Open your OP
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Click ‘more’ and then ‘activity’
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Click ‘favorites’
You’ll see a list of all accounts that upvoted your OP. Why this isn’t possible on Lemmy is completely unclear to me.
Just like I don’t understand why Lemmy allows for downvotes. It’s not valuable and induces toxic behavior IMO.
Woah, I can even see who downvoted on there! It does seem to be a bit behind though, as I see less upvotes and only one (instead of 12) downvotes.
IMO allowing downvotes is good because when used properly, it can filter out toxic and hateful content more effectively than just allowing upvotes, as well as giving people a way to reduce the visibility of misinformation. A good case study for this trying to find a good tutorial for something on YouTube before and after the removal of dislikes.
when used properly
That’s the problem. Downvotes often aren’t used properly.
I always thought part of the fun was to see if your comments pissed off enough people to get downvoted into the negatives!
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Huh? Where do I see this? If it matters I’m using sync on android.
Man…tough crowd…down vote hate for an innocent question with a bit of info on my client. Feels like somewhere…we all left.
This is !voyagerapp@lemmy.world.
You can’t on Sync as far as I’m aware.
But at least we can pay a premium price to maybe receive it in the future! Because the dev is doing gods work and whatnot.
Yeah there’s definitely a bit of a circle jerk happening with Sync. People proclaiming it was the best Lemmy app ever, while up until a few days ago you couldn’t even submit a post.
Edit: realised I even got downvoted for pointing out Sync doesn’t have that functionality. How ironic that the only reason I can see that is because I’m not using Sync haha
People have to justify paying premium money for a beta in every way they can. Imagine Boost releases and is better in every way, and people have spent upwards of 120 dollars on Sync. I don’t understand the rush.
Edit: Just out of curiosity, you running Voyager or smth else?
Voyager. I’ve tried a couple others but keep coming back to it.
Yeah with the cost of Sync. I don’t think it’s right. This isn’t Reddit. I’ve donated money to support a local instance and I’ll donate to Voyager as well. I’m for supporting developers. But this is an ad free platform, so it feels wrong to pay so much for an app that adds ads to it.
Yeah I agree. Creating a problem and taking “donations” to solve it is a bit sketchy especially when the instances themselves could use that funding. And when the whole idea of the platform is the other direction.
In my personal belief system, anyone who mentions votes must be downvoted. They’re either complaining about deserved downvoted or fauning over upvotes. In keeping wish my wishes, you must downvote this comment.
You’re welcome
