Hi,
i want to explore the various way we can highlight content.
Currently, on the threadiverse, we use vote to show our approval, discontent…and we can couple it with a bot for moderation. Or hide post below a certain score…
Some instance completly removed downvote as Beehaw. Piefed is experimenting private vote. On other fediverse software, mastodon, iceshrimp, there is no downvote and we use emojis to express our feelings.
You also have website as https://slashdot.org/ where you can tell that comment was insightfull or a troll, or funny…
There is also also website that compare software or video as https://tournesol.app/
- Do you think vote sould be private ? Public ? And why ?
- Are you sastified with the current voting system ? And why ?
- What other interesting software/website that tried something different do you know ?
- What way do you imagine to highlight content and improve search, discoverability ?
Yea, the best solution is:
As long as users know that votes are not private, it should be okay.
Problem is, if it’s visible to mods, it’s effectively public.
This also presumes mods are, by default, inherently non-biased, held to a standard, and never have vendettas of their own.
Of all the many things reddit did poorly, choosing not to let mods see votes was an excellent decision.
Of course mods are not always like that. But if mods are like that, just go to another community. If mods are bad, just leave. On the fediverse, you “vote” with where you participate.
Public voting, or at least semi public-voting helps cultivate a high-trust culture on-site in my opinion. And being able to remove repeat offending downvoters who do it nonetheless is very useful.
I managed to discover the serial downvoters on my old lemm.ee comm and when I banned them (about 4 of them?) it had a huge impact. They didn’t all downvote /everything/ but they downvoted a lot of things, and no contribution. And if they got in early, they could sink new threads. As that kind of behaviour now is more-or-less confined to non-interacting support/troll accounts, it’s much rarer of a problem. Unlike Reddit when a lot of threads can quickly get downvote buried instantly for seemingly no reason.