this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
154 points (97.5% liked)
Sync for Lemmy
15143 readers
4 users here now
๐
Welcome to Sync for Lemmy!
Welcome to the official Sync for Lemmy community.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Community Rules
1- No advertising or spam.
All types of advertising and spam are restricted in this community.
Community Credits
Artwork and community banner by: @MargotRobbie@lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This missing feature is absolutely crucial for transparency.
Big tech industries are hiding downvotes, which obfuscates the true value of shared content in the eyes of the users. I was excited to see Lemmy natively going against this trend, and saddened to see that it's not featured in sync (yet?).
Sync for reddit had a % value that mentioned the ratio of Upvotes to downvotes and that also served a similar purpose.
From an user experience point of view showing downvotes separately can result in more negative votes but the feature is useful for transparency nonetheless.
You raise a fair point. Hiding downvotes could help avoid bandwagon negativity, as users may be less inclined to pile on additional downvotes. However, I still believe transparency should take priority over these concerns.
Showing the full picture - both upvotes and downvotes separately - allows users to more accurately judge content quality and community sentiment. I think we should trust users to make reasoned judgments, rather than hide data from them. A slight potential increase in negativity seems a small price to pay for maintaining transparency and accountability on Lemmy.
Edit: I do agree that displaying a relative percentage, as you mention, could serve as a compromise.
That bandwagon can go both ways, would be nice to have some sort of data showing consumer behaviour in this regard. Pretty sure youtube knows a lot about it