I prefer votes being semi-anonymous. The vote counts are technically public, you just have to use software that displays them, but that added barrier is enough for most people to never check and that is how I prefer it. I feel like seeing voter names just encourages getting into pissing contests about "why did you downvote me" which I don't want to happen because: A, votes don't matter and B, if someone downvoted without commenting they probably don't want to spend half an hour arguing in comments.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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if someone downvoted without commenting they probably don’t want to spend half an hour arguing in comments.
Bingo.
This is precisely my reason for why they should be public.
In my view downvotes should be used sparingly, only to suppress spam and trolling comments that don't add to the conversation.
By keeping votes private people just downvote anything they disagree with
So what are you going to do with the knowledge that I downvoted your comment?
You have no reason to so I presume you haven't.
If we were actually in a discussion and you started downvoting all my comments I'd see it as a sign of pettiness and disengage.
I'd probably also tag you as a reminder to myself not to engage with you again.
You have no reason to so I presume you haven’t.
I'm telling you I downvoted your comment.
You got your answer, I guess.
I guess. I don't get it. If I refused to talk to anyone if they ever downvoted me, I would run out of people to talk pretty quickly.
To me, a downvote means "what you wrote contributes nothing to the discussion, and should be less visible". If someone downvotes me, I take it as a sign that no further discussion in that direction is meaningful.
I completely agree, you've summed up my view far better than I could.
There's also a controversial approach that if you're debating with someone and you believe in the points you're making then you should upvote even the comments you disagree.
By doing so the full thread of comments is ranked higher so more people see the incredibly clever points you're articulating.
This isn't so relevant on Lemmy right now because it's still small so you might read all comments on ba post. But it made a massive difference on reddit where there were thousands of comments. So the algorithm becomes very selective.
I guess. I don't get it.
This sums it up exactly!
You aren't just downvoting comments you disagree with, you're downvoting comments because you don't understand them.
By downvoting instead of commenting you never open that discussion to learn about somebody's view.
And by downvoting you're reducing the chance that somebody else might see the comment. Who either does understand it, or responds to continue the discussion.
I guess. I don’t get it.
This sums it up exactly!
What?
To go with the theme of this thread, I have no interest in debating why I downvoted you, nor if downvotes should be used for any reason. What I didn't get is why you would (or not I guess since you replied) disengage with someone that downvoted you.
My actual question that you can't seem to answer was: now that you know I downvoted your comment (the information you've been advocating for), now what? What are you going to do with that information now that you have it? Why is it so important to you to have it?
I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but it really seems like it would encourage stalking and revenge-downvotes.
Because the reason for a vote is personal and different to everyone.
If I see a post with a title containing 20 emojis, I downvote it. Doesn’t matter the content of the post.
Now, assume that post was about fighting for lgbt rights or fighting against anti-abortion legislation. Some moral crusader sees my downvote and immediately calls me a bigot. When, from my perspective, all I did was downvote a bunch of emojis.
Take that idea and expand it.
This. One thing I couldn't stand about Reddit was seeing people who could be doing anything else with their lives, but decided it worthwhile to "background check" other posters.
This was a big thing with Twitter too. "Oh, they follow such-and-such in their list of 10,000 follows, who turned out to be bad in recent news, so this person's views are worthless and they must also be bad!"
Like, being able to have a quick glance and be like "Ah this is clearly a bot / hate-troll / what-haves", can be handy for some sense of accountability, but purity-testing and association-mobs are the stuff of cautionary science fiction, and should be avoided.
100% agreed.
I wish people would respond to the comment, not the commenter.
I've seen it too often on Lemmy too.
Most are of what you describe, but not all of them. I have seen valuable background checks before (back on Reddit). I specifically remember an elaborate post about bots/botnet.
I don't like your dismissive qualification of "have so little going on in their lives". Some background checks are good and important. Dismissing people who are willing to invest into that in general, but also dismissing people who "have nothing better to do" for their situation, feels like an awful, uncalled-for, inappropriate insult.
/edit: Rewording to better get my point across.
Sorry I didn't mean to cause any offense but maybe I can clarify too. The people I'm referring to are what's referred to often as "terminally online." They could be doing anything with themselves and their lives, but instead they're choosing to deep-dive on anonymous message board posters they disagree with, so they can tear them apart or call them out for some post made years ago, or an assumed affiliation or belief, that kind of thing.
It's a choice to be vindictive and petty to people.
Like, yeah you're right, sometimes looking at post histories and such can be helpful to unmask a bot net or a troll riling up a community, but I'm referring to people doing it just to be obsessively petty and vindictive to strangers.
But okay, in good faith I'll add "decide they have nothing better to do" to emphasize one's free will, because the joke is that anybody could be doing better than trying to dig up personal beef on each other over message boards when nothing is at stake lol.