There is a pull request which adds a new setting show_downvotes with these settings:

  • Show (current behaviour)
  • Hide (all downvotes hidden in ui)
  • ShowForOthers (only downvotes on other user’s posts are visible)

Importantly the last option would become the new default, which means that users wont be aware that their post or comment was downvoted unless they manually change the setting. This may be good for mental health, but may also make it harder for users to realize that their content is unpopular. What do you think about it?

Here is the pull request

  • TerranFenrir@lemmy.caEnglish
    221·
    12 hours ago

    I think disabling downvotes totally for the user’s content by default would be a bad idea, because it is important for a user to know if what they are saying is unpopular.

    Here’s an approach I have taken for my app (for all posts and comments).

    • If downvotes are <= 5, downvotes show as 0.
    • If downvotes <= 5%, downvotes show as 0.

    Remember, the reasoning for this is a mere hypothesis and not results obtained from an experiment.

    The 5 percent rule aims to prevent fringe opinions from downvoting. This solves issues like, “why do I have 3 downvotes on a picture of my cute puppy?”.

    The 5 downvotes rule prevents downvoting bias. I have observed this happening on Reddit a lot. If a comment has 3 upvotes and 2 downvotes, people tend to downvote more (just because of the downvote counts and not the content itself). 2 downvotes in a 5 total votes sample size is too small to make any decision about the quality of content.

    In my opinion, cases like these are where the downvotes serve more as a mental health destroyer rather than decentralised content moderation.

    So to answer your question, I think having the current as default would be better, I.e., option “Show”. However, if you’re open to refine this even further, I would suggest the 5-5% idea.