Several people in the community have expressed frustration in regards to the fact that any post that fits the community it's posted to but is slightly out of the normal post type like, for example, being more hardcore rather than softcore, get's a lot of downvotes by people who simply don't like that particular post.
We have also had complaints that particular types of posts as a whole get more downvotes even if they are in the appropriate community and are the normal type of post for a community. This especially appears to be happening to male content.
Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don't even want to see in the first place.
We understand some may not like some content of a particular post or community, but downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them in our instance and especially in other instances, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all.
After some discussion amongst the moderators and admins,because of the reasons above, we've decided to disable downvotes at least for the time being.
What do I do if I dislike a post?
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We recommend those who would normally downvote a post they don't like just, instead, block the user who created the post, or, if the community is a topic you dislike, block the community. That way, you no longer see those posts, but don't effect those posts' visibility to other members of the community and instance.
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Additionally, you can view your "Subscribed" feed instead of "Local" so that you only see posts from the communities you are subscribed to.
What do I do if a post doesn't fit the community it's posted in or is spam?
- Please report the post, either the mods of the community or an instance admin will remove the post if necessary, as soon as possible. We have admins and mods online almost around the clock, so these types of posts should be removed quickly.
Potential future post filtering on lemmy:
- In the future it appears that lemmy may implement a tagging system similar to flairs on reddit. This request has piqued the interest of the lemmy devs, so keep an eye out sometime in the (maybe not so near) future for the implementation of that feature.
As @yay@lemmynsfw.com has said in the comments:
Downvotes should be used for posts you don’t like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don’t like.
When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.
But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.
Please put any comments questions and concerns in the comments below, we are of course always open to community thoughts and feedback, and want to work with you to keep this instance an enjoyable and entertaining place to post and browse.
That's literally the point of the downvote system. To downvote posts you don't like, or you feel are out of place.
This seems to be the real issue you're trying to fight. It seems like only permitting downvotes on communities that the user has been a part of for greater than 1/2/7/30/pick-a-number days would be the proper solution. If people in a community are downvoting a post, then it means they don't think that post is worth sharing. No admin, moderator, community owner, etc. should be able to change that.
I am strongly against removing downvotes.
Sorry, but I hard disagree with you on the "point" of the downvote system. A downvote, to me, is not the same as "liking" or "disliking" content. I only downvote content that is not correct for the sub, bad-faith, or troll content, and I would really urge others to do the same.
If you think of cause-and-effect, downvoting any time you dislike content is not a good system: Upvoting is the incentive to post that type of content, and downvoting is a disincentive to post that type of content. And Lemmy needs more content.
For example, I see Gonewild, every male poster getting downvoted to oblivion. But male nudity is not against the rules if properly labeled. As a straight male, I have no interest in seeing male nudity, so I don't upvote it, and it's not bad-faith or rule-breaking so I don't downvote it. But it's clear most people are downvoting it because they "dislike" it. But maybe there are some non-straight-male people in the sub who would appreciate it, and they don't see it because it's been buried. The eventual effect is that the community becomes more insular, with more unwritten rules.
Gonewild is a good example, if you don't like male nudity, a more positive way would be to not downvote it but campaign to have a gonewildmale or something. Would make sense to have that so that the people who do like it can still watch it.
In that case it should definitely be up to the individual community.