That is of course quiet a difficult task. And will be very much in the hands of the moderators. Just like the countless mods that voluntarily keept reddit running. I’am quiet positive that we cant accomplish that even better here.

You mean racism, sexism, and homo/transphobia? Yeah. I hear ya on that!

I was a big fan of seeing both the upvote and downvote numbers, just to know that there was someone out there who agreed with you even if your comment was unpopular to the particular community you were posting to. When Reddit removed that feature, I think it drove a lot more people crazy.

I don’t think it’s possible, or desirable, to try to create rules around how people use their preference buttons.

I also don’t think it’s possible to actually end mean-spirited disagreement in internet comment sections, but it’s a valuable thing to strive for as a value and emphasize, like you did in this post.

I think the same can be said for group-downvoting and stalking threads to downvote people based on what side they take without engaging with the substance of what is said. Minority viewpoints that add information are probably the most needed thing, and if anything I would say group downvoting is worse here than reddit on certain topics, unfortunately.

I think the attention spans are better here, and many/most things are better here but this is a sore spot.

I hope that’s a default. Is it default off?

Maybe not rules, but I think it is desirable to change how people think about it through UX.

Currently the downvote button is equivalent to upvote, just a casual thing you can do. If it’s meant to have a different meaning, it should look different.

no but you censor and go even back in history to remove traces of an approved and upvoted comment to give a certain portrait of a user.

why are you actually providing this instance, really?

Personal experience ofc, but a lot of people argue in bad faith. Knowingly (or unknowingly) invoke logical fallacies, whataboutisms and straw man arguments. With how ideologically volatile the internet has turned in recent years, you can’t really have a reasonable argument any more without it becoming just a name calling session.

Yesterday I noticed just how much reddit had jaded me. Had a bbq with some friends and a guy I knew was very much in the right, q anon stuff and all, asked me about my position on polarizing topics. I’m anarcho syndicalist. Expected it to get heated. Dude just genuinely asked questions and that was it. No trying to prod holes into the ideology or show the superiority of his ideology. It was kinda eye opening and showed me I just spent too much time in toxic areas of the internet. Though he seemed to have a bone to pick with the stereotypical city dweller lib. Had I had those positions he probably would’ve unloaded with quotes from the usual suspect talking heads.

It helps prevent hivemind mentality and keeps us growing. Unpopular opinions often have ideas worth examining or could be outright correct despite common wisdom saying otherwise, and forums like these are one of the best places for us to engage with those facts. There’s also times when an opinion we like dislike is misinformed, and rather than send it to the bottom, it’s good to explain how it’s wrong for both our own sake (refining our arguments) and bystanders that haven’t given the topic much thought.

But if someone left a turd, send that stank to the bottom!

I can get behind this, because upvotes/downvote serve a purpose of telling the website “more people should see this”. But we don’t need to know what needs to be seen less. Upvotes will, on their own, already tell us what’s the top content and sort things out things. Late, Average and Middling posts aren’t really going to be seen by most people and are fine with a lesser rating accuracy.

But what about de-constructive comments? What if something TRULY deserves to be seen less? Well, here’s a stance I don’t particularly believe everyone would get behind but has some merit: People should post their reasoning why their post was not very good as a response. As that not just generates discussion points, but also informs other onlookers of their rationale. And if a response gathers upvotes (ratio’d), then that signals a better message than a simple downvote ever would. Yeah, that means the only response to a troll is actually responding, and that may make a community appear less welcoming, but overall I don’t know if that’s a big issue in practice.

Now there’s an interesting approach, will have to check out Beehaw I guess.

this only works for your own instance. someone from another instance can still downvote you

Right. And if they have a bad argument, regardless whether you agree with it or not, it’s worth a downvote. But if it is an opinion without an argument, I think it is fine to up- or downvote depending on whether you agree or disagree.

Yeah that’s why I spend almost all my time on Hexbear instead.

Alright I’ll bite.

As you move down the wealth ladder you eventually reach a point at which there is a culture change. There are significant differences in the culture of the average middle-income anglo with guilt about their privilege compared to the people who are really, genuinely struggling. Once you cross a certain threshold, I’ll call it the poverty threshold for the sake of this reply but it’s not really a strict line but more of a broadly intersecting spectrum where there are many people who can blend into both groups, you reach a behavioural change point. This behavioural change, both in speech and in attitudes, is generally driven by those of us below a certain income level genuinely not giving a single fuck about how someone speaks but rather what they are saying.

Take for example my home of Liverpool. If I go down the council flats I’ll find myself hundreds of people who will speak in ways that the middle-income liberals of america would find abhorrent. They will cuss you for a minor thing that makes it seem like you just killed their dog. This is normalised culture for them, and among their peers it is perfectly fine behaviour - but to the sheltered middle income person who sees it as an overreaction? It’s shocking, and they don’t like it.

This trend occurs towards the lower income groups because frankly their is less and less incentive to ruin relationships with people over social policing. Far more is put up with and accepted because everyone’s got it rough and nobody’s interested in making someone’s life harder by getting overly emotional about a few swearsies.

I fit into one of the blending people, seamlessly transitioning between the two and speaking both ways. I grew up in squats, but I also got a very fortunate break that led to me getting an education in what many would regard as the ruling class side of our education system, which is split between schools for the workers vs schools for the bourgeoisie.

Anyway. The point is that the tone policing has the effect of shutting out these people from participation. The reason you don’t see the majority of these people in participation online isn’t because they don’t have access, it’s because they’ve had the experience of getting banned everywhere for not speaking like a cultured middle income liberal, and they’ve frankly got bigger priorities in their lives than learning how to speak like the people they fucking despise.

It is classism because it explicitly shuts out this class of people from participation. Almost everywhere online the tone policing functions as a tool of class discrimination that bends internet culture towards privileged middle-income groups over the poor. It’s not explicitly intended to do this, but it is the outcome of it. Much like for example having a “no hoodies” rule in a shop doesn’t function to keep out middle-income people but keeps out the “chavs”, if you’ll forgive my use of a classist slur for effect.

You wanna get aggressive and go at it? Go ahead. Do it. How something is expressed is not important compared to what is actually being said. The issue with this form of classism is that a section of society goes completely unrepresented online because of it, people whose politics almost always align with my own socialist views once they’re well educated in what their interests are.