What's going on with the downvote button?
What's going on with the downvote button?
Today after updating Voyager the downvote button was gone. What is the reason for removing it? Is lemmy going the way of YouTube?
I dont know about your exact situation but the ability to downvote is instance specific. My instance for example has downvotes switched off.
I'm on lemmy.world. I'll did a quick search but nothing popped up immediately.
I don't know but I've always thought this sort of place should have 4 buttons for a post. Relevant Irrelevant, I like, I do not like. This way people could disagree with something, but show that they think it is a good fit for the magazine.
I disagree. There is rarely a relevance for like/dislike and all upvotes and downvotes are, should be viewed as and used as indicators of relevance.
Upvote what you find relevant/interesting, not what you like.
Downvote what you find irrelevant to the community or what uses language that you find inappropriate for that community, not what you don't like.
"Indicators of relevance" is fine in theory, but that's (allegedly) how it was supposed to work on Reddit too, and... it really didn't. It will turn into agree/disagree for a significant amount of people who either don't know or care how voting was intended to work.
You display the problem with that system in your own comment through your wording of "should be". Everyone knows what downvotes and upvotes should be, but due to their intent being unenforceable they just become "that person liked or didn't like this for reasons beyond my knowledge and understanding"
On instances where downvoting is disabled, the button serves no purpose and will now not be displayed unless the instance permits it. The existence or absence of the downvote button is feedback on whether or not posts can be downvoted.
If the button is not displayed then < your particular Lemmy instance > is the one to be accused of going the way of Youtube.
Interestingly though, since you're posting from Lemmy.world, I checked the list and your instance does allow downvoting. Maybe it's a bug for !voyagerapp@lemmy.world
I on voyager 1.2.0 and downvote button appears for me btw.
Yeah, it must be voyager issue. I downloaded Sync today and everything is as it should be.
Permanently Deleted
That is odd. Perhaps mine atrophied from overuse.
There is a setting in the general settings panel to show up and down votes on a post, and when I do that the downvote always works for me.
Does it matter? Who cares about imaginary points?
While one could argue for the usefulness of the downvote button, the very nature of a mostly anonymous platform like Reddit and Lemmy will naturally lead to its misuse, completely negating its usefulness.
It matters that if there's an option to upvote, there should be an option to downvote. Why have only one? What is the point of some instances having just one of them while others have both? I don't care about points but I like to see how controversial something is when I read comments.
The issue is the bandwagon effect. When a post is downvoted other users will do the same without reading the content or forming their own opinion. Some apps hide heavily downvoted comments like reddit which lead to suppressing some unpopular opinions and discourage people from speaking their mind. Hate speech should be reported and misinformation should be debated with strong arguments
Moderators and users don't always agree on what hate speech is. For example, people often use my mental disability as a pejorative for people they don't like. Half of them claim they weren't really talking about my disability and it's just a coincidence they used the same word. The other half will say they 100% intended to accuse the other person of being disabled. To me, both are unacceptable.
I'm on 1.2 and still have the downvote. Don't know what your settings are.
Do you know where in settings?
Button works/exists for me. I’m using the default mobile site.
Well at the time of writing your post has -2 votes so I'd say it's working!
I'm seeing -4 so clearly.
In the perfect world there would be no stupid downvote button. It makez everything toxic. If you don't like something just ignore it, critisize or block the user
Please see my reply to another comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/1968065
Downvoting on its own is fine, but if you're thinking Reddit then I'd agree. That's because Reddit actively hides shit based on it, though - and also because Reddit is an intensely toxic shithole, of course.