Downvotes suck. I get it, they are made up internet points coming from strangers (or bots) that you know nothing about, and you shouldn’t let that get you down. Still, putting in a few minutes of effort to share your opinion and engage with the community just to see a downvote is disheartening.
Based on the patterns of downvotes I see on a post, it seems like there is usually one or two people downvoting everything they wouldn’t personally say themselves. Extrapolating from this, I presume there is a population of users that contribute more downvotes than anything.
Personally, I don’t think the platform should allow any user to spend more time tearing things down than building other things up. Only allowing downvotes after so many upvotes would help stop trolls and could help generate more engagement via upvotes.
Edit:
The upvote/downvote count would be a global count including posts and comments, not a post specific count. This solution does not prevent downvoting, it merely adds friction to those who predominantly leave negative feedback by ensuring their positive feedback elsewhere. Sure, some would go on to upvote unsavory things, but others would attempt to further engage with their interests, and some would simply lurk.
If any good faith user approached the limitation, they would likely be better served by curating their feed.
Should be tied to comments. If you don’t comment, you don’t get a vote either way.
Vote comment
The fediverse need more interactions for it to work. Downvoting or upvoting isn’t creating any value.
Comments create value even if you disagree.
I disagree.
Source: I have nothing of value to say.
This point of view is like extroverts forcing introverts to talk when they don’t want to.
Well if they don’t want to talk then they shouldn’t get a vote. I’ve seen post that have hundreds of upvotes that say something like let’s talk about x but no replies.
That’s the point of something like lemmy to discuss a topic. It’s not just for downvote or upvotes.
It’s just my personal opinion, but this seems too exclusionary to me. Just because someone doesn’t want to talk doesn’t mean they don’t want to participate at all, and I don’t think that excluding someone just because they don’t have a specific statement to make will add value. Perversely, it might encourage low-effort commenting (first!) just for access to voting.
It is called social media for a reason.
Personally, I don’t care about upvotes for downvotes. I suspect the reason you see users declining is because there isn’t much content or interaction. Eventually it will become either a niche or just die off.
I’ve seen quite a few people saying this recently, but it doesn’t match my experience. I’m having more interesting conversations with more people than a year ago, and I see new content every day. Maybe your instance has defederated with too many others?
Do you mean lemmy as a whole? I don’t think so, it’s definitely been growing. I think people forget how small reddit was for such a long time. It used to be a joke there that you wouldn’t get new blue links until 8am on the US east coast.
Lemm.ee is great about letting you decide what to filter. I can’t say enough good things about the admin.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the number, but last I saw, they were trending down on all counts.
But sometimes, something is just so fucking stupid it doesn’t deserve that sort of engagement…