this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Lemmy NSFW

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Updates about lemmynsfw.com

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Several people in the community have expressed frustration in regards to the fact that any post that fits the community it's posted to but is slightly out of the normal post type like, for example, being more hardcore rather than softcore, get's a lot of downvotes by people who simply don't like that particular post.

We have also had complaints that particular types of posts as a whole get more downvotes even if they are in the appropriate community and are the normal type of post for a community. This especially appears to be happening to male content.

Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don't even want to see in the first place.

We understand some may not like some content of a particular post or community, but downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them in our instance and especially in other instances, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all.

After some discussion amongst the moderators and admins,because of the reasons above, we've decided to disable downvotes at least for the time being.

What do I do if I dislike a post?

  • We recommend those who would normally downvote a post they don't like just, instead, block the user who created the post, or, if the community is a topic you dislike, block the community. That way, you no longer see those posts, but don't effect those posts' visibility to other members of the community and instance.

  • Additionally, you can view your "Subscribed" feed instead of "Local" so that you only see posts from the communities you are subscribed to.

What do I do if a post doesn't fit the community it's posted in or is spam?

  • Please report the post, either the mods of the community or an instance admin will remove the post if necessary, as soon as possible. We have admins and mods online almost around the clock, so these types of posts should be removed quickly.

Potential future post filtering on lemmy:

  • In the future it appears that lemmy may implement a tagging system similar to flairs on reddit. This request has piqued the interest of the lemmy devs, so keep an eye out sometime in the (maybe not so near) future for the implementation of that feature.

As @[email protected] has said in the comments:

Downvotes should be used for posts you don’t like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don’t like.

When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.

But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.

Please put any comments questions and concerns in the comments below, we are of course always open to community thoughts and feedback, and want to work with you to keep this instance an enjoyable and entertaining place to post and browse.

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

get’s [sic] a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.

That's literally the point of the downvote system. To downvote posts you don't like, or you feel are out of place.

Additionally we are seeing posts with more downvotes than a community has subscribers, meaning people are downvoting content they don’t even want to see in the first place.

This seems to be the real issue you're trying to fight. It seems like only permitting downvotes on communities that the user has been a part of for greater than 1/2/7/30/pick-a-number days would be the proper solution. If people in a community are downvoting a post, then it means they don't think that post is worth sharing. No admin, moderator, community owner, etc. should be able to change that.

I am strongly against removing downvotes.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago (3 children)

get’s [sic] a lot of downvotes by people who simply don’t like that particular post.

That’s literally the point of the downvote system. To downvote posts you don’t like, or you feel are out of place.

Sorry, but I hard disagree with you on the "point" of the downvote system. A downvote, to me, is not the same as "liking" or "disliking" content. I only downvote content that is not correct for the sub, bad-faith, or troll content, and I would really urge others to do the same.

If you think of cause-and-effect, downvoting any time you dislike content is not a good system: Upvoting is the incentive to post that type of content, and downvoting is a disincentive to post that type of content. And Lemmy needs more content.

For example, I see Gonewild, every male poster getting downvoted to oblivion. But male nudity is not against the rules if properly labeled. As a straight male, I have no interest in seeing male nudity, so I don't upvote it, and it's not bad-faith or rule-breaking so I don't downvote it. But it's clear most people are downvoting it because they "dislike" it. But maybe there are some non-straight-male people in the sub who would appreciate it, and they don't see it because it's been buried. The eventual effect is that the community becomes more insular, with more unwritten rules.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I appreciate your verbalization of the issue at hand. I like to think of the vote system more along the lines of appropriateness upvote=appropriate/good, no vote=appropriate/neutral or not good, and downvote=inappropriate/broken/rule breaking.

Not interacting with a post has about as much of an effect on the non-chronological sorting as a downvote does so essentially you're just going out of your way to make someone feel bad if it's an appropriate fit for the community and you use it as an "Ew" button. This behavior becomes especially problematic when it comes to non-promotional OC.

It's not perfect, but I think removing the downvotes for a brief stint will have a pretty good impact on training user behavior to help facilitate growth until this place is at a point where there is enough core functionality to allow for better solutions.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

content that is not correct for the sub, bad-faith, or troll content.

IMO, those things are bad enough to warrant reporting them to mods for removal.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Gonewild

Gonewild is a good example, if you don't like male nudity, a more positive way would be to not downvote it but campaign to have a gonewildmale or something. Would make sense to have that so that the people who do like it can still watch it.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Strongly agree with this decision to disable downvotes untill the community of active oc posters and commentors grows.

Look, i post nswf oc content because i like making and sharing my pictures. Gives me a thrill, i like the social aspect too. Alot of people here are focusing on the "user experience" but what about "posting experience"?

Its just not fun to post your oc content and immediatly get 5 downvotes cause some lurkers cant be bothered to customize their feed. Its driving active and contributing users away and is harming this relatively small community atm.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (16 children)

I ran a forum with 30k active users before saying F that. One thing I learned during that adventure is that you can't force people to behave the way you want. It doesn't matter what you type, the up/down votes will mean exactly what the user wants. Trying to force conformity or censoring their contributions (down votes) will only end in frustration and lower user count.

tldr: Your team is behaving like it's their first moderating experience.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

"downvoting posts discourages these posters who are actually passionate/interested in the topic of the community from posting again. Additionally, when posts are downvoted like that it can bury them, preventing them from being viewed by others almost at all."

Isn't that literally the point of down voting? To discourage posting that doesn't fit the community so that it isn't seen by as many people... ESPECIALLY since the focus on this instance is NSFW then more discouragement of posts that don't fit should be the goal so that users subscribed to those communities surface the appropriate things they want to see. You've removed users' agency to shape their communities and caused waaaaaay more work for moderators.

This also takes away our ability to down vote posts across the entire federation it appears?!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I understand what you're saying, and while I personally like downvotes I've also seen how posters who fully fit the topic of a community are discouraged from posting because they were downvoted by people outside of the community

Moderators have talked about this for a few weeks now, this decision won by a majority after we got several complaints.

If something doesn't fit a community that can be brought up to the mods in a post and a discussion can be had. However as of right now, with the size of this instance and to promote more growth downvotes haven't really been helpful.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Agree that the point of down voting is to discourage posts that don't fit with the community, which means the the community is voting for what it does and does not want to see in a community.

Someone being passionate about something that doesn't fit with what the community wants to see getting frustrated should not over ride what the community has voted for. They should instead find or create a community that fits their passion and not try to change a community to fit their passion.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

Yes but my point is it's usually people outside a community. We've seen posts get more downvotes than a community has subscribers. If we could limit downvotes to just those subscribed to a community, we would, but unfortunately that functionality doesn't exist right now.

Additionally upvoting does also work to shape a community, posts with more upvotes will still rise to the top of a community

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I fully understand why you guys did this and it is certainly a solution to the problem above.

That being said, I really do not like this change.

I would go into detail about the reasons why, but I feel like this topic has been hashed out a few times before. So everyone should know why people are for and against this change.

(I am only posting this comment because the other way to show disapproval has now been removed.)

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I disagree that blocking users or communities covers everything. Upvotes are for good content, neutral (no action) is for most posts that you just scroll past, but downvotes are for 5 second clips without sound that technically don't break any rules of the community. But maybe other people might disagree, and that's good, in that case they can upvote and the net value of the post is clear. If not, the OP gets a clear signal that the number of downvotes is higher than the number of upvotes and they can fuck right off with those posts.

Especially if they also post other, high quality content, you can't expect me to just block the user who has done nothing wrong, or report their post that breaks no rules.

Or do you expect me to upvote literally everythingI scroll past (except the posts I would have downvoted)? I'll gladly do that if I can autmate it, otherwise ain't nobody got time fo that shit.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

Yeah that's honestly been my biggest issue here is the fact that I can't properly filter out certain content/users because it technically fits the community or the user posts in many communities.

Like the hentai community is one of my most viewed yet people will post niche hentai stuff that I have no interest in whatsoever and even though there's already a specific community for that niche it's still not breaking the rules by being in the main community.

It's the same with users who post exactly the type of content I like while also posting content I abhor. I can't block them without also losing out on a lot of the content I actually want to see

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Don't tell me what to do, I'll downvote everything I dislike. I don't care what you think is good, neutral or poor content. And that's exactly the issue, I see the all feed and downvote most of the content and only upvote what I actually like, and many people do the same.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I disagree with removing downvotes..

I prefer to jump on here and browse local by New posts. I don't shoehorn myself to specific communities, I like to see what all is out there. If it's not in my interest I block the community, I don't interact with it.

But the ones I don't block I'm interested in, not enough to join because to me that takes away my intent to just browse it all. After all that's why I joined this instance, to not have to hunt down communities to subscribe to but to get it all straight from the horses mouth..

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (20 children)

I just want to say that I think the admin here is awesome. You seem to really want to accommodate both users and posters. I decided to no longer post here because many of the users are negative. The downvotes felt awful even though I have a thick skin. That’s great they are disabled, but there are also negative comments. I have a thick skin, but I get treated better on other social media. There are great users here, but the trolls are too prominent for me. It seems like many users have high expectations yet don’t want “pros”. The stock images look like sex dolls. Idk. I just want to be treated well. Thanks for the users that supported me. There are awesome people here.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like we're only allowed to upvote and anything whatsoever that gets posted is considered valid content? So... basically just a shitty Instagram for nudes?

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Fck it, I'm begining to look for a new nsfw server. Normal people need both down votes and upvotes equally. That is called freedom of opinion and a free exchange of freedom of opinions. The comunity is a comunity then it is not a walled garden of enforced hapy smiles only. If someone doesn't like getting down votes, the problem is in them, they have a chance to correct, adjust their content, but all is lost if they are just blocked. You'll lose comunity faster this way. And so, your decision to remove functionality is plain wrong. Oh, and vote me down, if you do not agree ;) you fcks.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Its too bad that I can't downvote you lol 😅

Our goal here is not to take away the downvote feature, believe me, but to protect the posters. Please see our good intentions.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I just want to go on record saying I do not like this change, though I do understand the good intention behind it.

It seems there was a simple and elegant solution discussed earlier in this thread - only allow downvotes of you are subscribed to the community where the post is. I know this would need to be implemented by the lemmy devs; is there someplace we can request or vote on such features? A whole tagging system may be nice, but it's overkill for this problem.

Meanwhile, genuine question, how do I hide posts that I have already seen that I would have downvoted? I have already joined a bunch of communities, and I only look at my Subscribed feed. I have lemmy set to not show me posts I've already voted on. Thus, my feed is always kept fresh, and when I log in I just see what's new in those communities to which I've subscribed.

So, now I see a post that I feel doesn't live up to the standards of a particular community. It doesn't break any rules per se, and it's not report-worthy, it's just not a good post. Normally I'd downvote and move on, and I'd never see it again. So now what do I do to ensure I don't see it every time I log in? Lemmy doesn't have a 'hide' or 'mark seen' feature (another good feature we should have), and I don't want to upvote the post because it's a bad post. I also don't want to block the poster, because their next post might be great! What do I do here?

I hate to make this post any longer, but I'll just provide an example. Within the last couple days, I saw the same post uploaded to both gonewild and to adorableporn. I upvoted the gonewild post and downvoted the adorableporn post, because at the end of the day it was a pretty average nude picture, perfectly reasonable for gonewild. But not, IMO, anything that could be called adorable. That, to me, seems like specifically the kind of situation that calls for a 'downvote and move on' response. So now how do I hide that post without blocking that user, who is otherwise posting good content?

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Welp, guess the bot content and spam-posting will always rise to the top now :/

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Thanks for keeping us in the loop! While I agree that downvoting can be problematic for smaller nicher communities, I'm not a fan of removing the downvote button. I think a better option would be to remind users (in a post like this) that they can block communities whose content they don't want to see on their client

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I agree with you for the most part but the issue is with that is that because of size of this instance, pretty much all the communities here are about the size of niche reddit subs. That's why I said for the time being. In the future we may re-enable downvotes once communities grow.

Additionally we mods and admins have expressed that we wish downvote disabling had more granularity, like limiting downvotes to those subscribed to a community or something like that so that those who are interested in something can shape their community, but unfortunately that doesn't exist at this time.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Just a reminder that it is ok to propose different solutions and also disapproval of the change here, we know this is not a perfect solution.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I don't think recommending blocking users is a good idea. It could have effect of creating "holes" if a user posts in multiple communities. It seems best to block the community to remove the majority of content you aren't into. That way you still see a users posts in a community that you do like.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (5 children)

It's a sad day when something like this happens. Unfortunately with how the Lemmy's All works it's possible a huge amount of the initial downvotes are regular people not wanting to see the content, as downvotes are federated. This constituted as part of my original choices for disabling it when I started my instance. We had the gripes people are displaying here and it probably constituted to a lack in Reddthat's growth potential.

There needs to be work done not only for flairs, which I like the idea of, but for a curated All/Frontpage (per-instance). Too many times I see people unable to find communities or new content that piques their interest. Having to "wade through" All-New to find content might attribute to the current detriment as instead of a general niche they might want to enjoy they are bombarded with things they dislike.

Tough problem to solve in a federated space. Hell... can't even get every instance to update to 0.18.5 so federated moderation actions happen. If we can't all decide on a common Lemmy instance version, I doubt we can ask our users to be subjected to not using the tools at their disposal. (up/down/report).

Keep on Keeping on!

Tiff - A fellow admin.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Believe me, I didn't want this decision either, but the posters were being downvoted for their posts in even accordance with the community.

Downvotes should be used for posts you don't like in your area of interest, and not for niche communities you don't like.

When the RFC mentioned in the post is developed, we will be able to have a more refined home page, this way we can enable downvotes.

But for now, please block users/communities as it supposed to be.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I have no problem with downvotes . I have problem with users who downvote and comment " WTF is wrong with people/ Why you degrade like this?" on a SPH community! Rules and description are on the sidebar! People see something and dont even bother to check what community they are commenting on. What I am supposed to post on SPH / Femdom comminity ? - Minnie Mouse praising them?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Thank you for this. I found it really discouraging to spend hours making something only for it to be downvoted immediately. I hope this will encourage more active participation now.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I agree with this.

Going through the comments some people say downvotes are important for ____ reason, which is actually correct. But that's not how I see it playing out.

And interestingly some comments, especially when you squint and read between the lines, actually show how people are misusing downvotes (I hope I'm not reading into it too much).

In any case when you look at how downvotes actually played out, perfectly fine posts (for their community) were being significantly downvoted. This is the right path, at least until things grow to be larger.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

Just wanted to comment that I also agree with the decision. Lemmy has a lack of OC amateur porn so I really feel like anyone breaking the ice and posting their own content shouldn't receive any downvotes.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Good move, I can only upvote this decision. Jokes aside this is a good move.

The discussion is old and tired so I won't rehash it. But, I did want to vocalise my support as people are more likely to speak up about things to complain which can shift the perspective.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I agree with the decision but disagree with the reasons. And I believe a community poll should have been held before the change.

The actual reasons I think downvotes shouldn't be used are those mentioned in Is it worth having downvotes?: because it discourages people from posting content, especially if they post their own nudes and receive downvotes, and it makes the content from this instance less visible in other instances.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is a great decision and I applaud the admins for listening to feedback.

Nothing worse than having your posts down voted especially by people who are submitting no posts of their own.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I don't like your content. It is useles as nsfw on a nsfw server, cause it's is not a nsfw, just some boring celebrities default photos promoting for them not to become forgoten. Do you think I'll begin to think that your content is in the right place (server) just because you take voting down off? Shit in a wrong place is shit in a wrong place. Concurency of ideas, opinions, random content has to be free and it has to have all means of expressing those opinions and having a way to know opinions of others is esential tool.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

This kinda bs is why I hate anonymous forums.

On my reddit account I had 20 followers.

At least 5 of them followed me to downvote EVERYTHING I posted. I think one of them was on some kinda macro because within minutes of me posting I'd be downvoted. EVERY TIME

up and down votes should be weighted.

You're a lurker who never up or downvotes? Finnaly see a post you upvote? That's worth 1 per day you havn't voted.

You downvote 100 posts a day? Each one of those is worth 0.01. Be a downer somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

While not directly related related to the upvote/downvote issue mentioned, I've noticed a lot of the Lemmy nsfw posts are just...weird?

Too much AI, yiff futa stuff (I mean hey, if that's your thing, then you do you), and mildly nsfw content that looks like it was taken from a 1998 Hustler magazine.🤷🏼‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Lemmy is a bunch of Marxist-Leninist furry Linux users. Have you not noticed?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

I think it's a good change for now, prevents people feeling demotivated! Thanks for the update.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago

Because you don't nlike something, that does not mean others want like it, the more you downvote, the more down it goes, so people who like the content won't see it.

It's a NSFW instance, people expect to see mainly NSFW, if you don't like something, block the community that it came from, you don't have to downvote every post , day after day. I learned the hard way, that SFW posts in the community that I made, are big NO, so I stopped posting SFW.

It's a big community and people should be free to d upvote and downvote, but there are users who only downvote ! Which is not the only use of the downvote.

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