Ironic that three people downvoted this. But I agree, a "no downvotes" rule is designed to avoid disagreement and conflict, which is impossible on a public forum without extremely restricted expression. If the point is to be always be nice, why not disable open commenting and make users select their replies from a list of canned positive comments. 100% safety and positivity.

[–] LurkyMcLurkface@beehaw.org 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm torn on the whole no downvote button thing (I missed that when I signed up), but you can be still nice while having a discussion and disagreeing with people.

I would argue that the downvote button can lead to exactly what you are describing though, no disagreement or conflict.
Someone posts a unpopular opinion, a bunch of users downvote it to hell and poof!, no discussion or exchange of ideas. Just out of mind, out of sight.

[–] Andreas@feddit.dk 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's only true if there is a downvote threshold that automatically hides downvoted comments, which I don't think Lemmy has implemented. I agree that downvoting can be used to censor and avoid discussion, but the justification for removing downvotes on Beehaw is something like "keeping a positive environment with no negativity from disliking" rather than making sure users have to voice their disagreements and not just smash the ~~blue~~ red arrow like cowards.

[–] LurkyMcLurkface@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I think we are pretty much in agreement. We will see how the instances without downvoting turns out over time. Thats the beauty of federated services I guess, its just a small part of the whole ecosystem.

[–] Gort@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are issues with both sides of the down button debate, but I'm more for it than against.

For a different take on the downvote button, yesterday I put a post up on a technical thread. I hadn't really read properly what the discussion was about, so my post wasn't really helpful even if well intentioned. I only noticed when I got a couple of downvotes. I looked again at my post, then at the OP, then realised my error. Eventually I deleted my post. So, in that instance, I found the downvote helpful to myself as well as for the rest of the thread: make sure I read the OP carefully. ;-)

[–] LurkyMcLurkface@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In this case a reply informing you about the missunderstanding would also work. My hope is that one of the people downvoting will take the time to do that when there is no downvote button.

[–] Gort@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, true. Fair point.

[–] 4kki@feddit.de 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wait. Some instances disabled downvoting?

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, beehaw one of them.

Maybe when they were a bunch of users it might have been a good idea to prevent brigading, but imho now that there is 1000x user activity it's needed. I already saw the first spambots posting spam for meds....

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de -1 points 1 year ago

Only one user has to report the spam and then it'll be deleted by a mod. I think that's a good system as well.

[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do kinda wonder if beehaw actually has downvotes not do anything for comment ranking and such, or if they just hid the button for it's users. Because I can still see a downvote button on beehaw communities, being from a different instance, and I often notice comments on that instance that do have a downvote or two, which seems to imply that it does actually record and send data about downvotes from other users

[–] parlaptie@feddit.de 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Disabling downvotes is a feature in the lemmy software afaik, but apparently it affects the users on that instance rather than its communities, which certainly seems like it should be the other way around.

[–] shani77@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

That is hilariously bad design if it's actually the case