Learn to disagree without being rude or disrespectful.
It can be difficult sometimes, since western social media thrives on collective outrage, and they knowingly ingrain this into us for years. But please do adhere to this rule, and it will make this place much more enjoyable.
We will not hesitate to issue temp bans (usually a day or two) for those who make everyone's experience unpleasant.Hit the report button if you see this behavior.
First thing I read on Lemmy and it's like I've found emotionally intelligent people finally.
I saw the same thing on Mastadon, just normal people capable of handling their emotions.
Western social media (and television) is promoting the worst in people and it can make users believe everyone is insane. So it's very nice to see this being posted.
I really like the fediverse. I made a Mastodon account after Elon bought Twitter, because it was pretty clear he was disingenuous. On one hand, he said he wanted to "promote free speech" but on the other hand it seemed like he was focusing on one particular kind of speech (i.e. bigotry). It's nice to see posts like this saying that lemmy hopes to be a different form of social media.
But... I can't help but feel like there may be a similar disingenuous story going on, as much as I hate to say it. I want the fediverse to grow into a safe place for anyone to express themselves. And it's hard to see that happening when the developers (and moderators of the original instance, lemmy.ml) are unapologetic authoritarians. When they say they want people to be respectful, there seems to be a double meaning. After all, banning people for talking about human rights violations doesn't seem to be conducive to an open, honest platform where people can express themselves. The developers of lemmy are, sadly, committed to the ideas of old-school authoritarian governments. And I worry that's going to be a damaging force in what could have otherwise been a wonderful platform. Just my two cents.
Lots of redditors are coming out of echo-chambers. In fact most of reddit has become one starting from a suffocating top-down control.
They've forgotten how Reddit used to be and so are astounded at how "uncomfortable" Lemmy is given its NON-pyramid like structure.
The discomfort is how the world and free speech needs to be and I'm a non-white Muslim typing this.
None of us is 100% right so we should always be exposed to other POVs and question ourselves to keep ourselves in check and evolve in objective ways.
I hope Lemmy keeps it this way and the money doesn't corrupt things as it always does. Believe you me, advertisers and nefarious actors are already reaching out to Lemmy authors to do exactly that.
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.
Could we also have a rule saying that downvotes should not be used for disagreements? Downvotes should be meant for off-topic, or factually incorrect content. Disagreements should be debated in the comments, respectfully of course.
While I personally never downvote anyone for disagreeing, I don't think it's possible, or desirable, to try to create rules around how people use their preference buttons.
But I def suggest going into your settings and hiding vote scores, as that's psychologically better for most people.
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.
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.
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 really get why. A well reasoned position I disagree with might discourage me to downvote, because I would like the reasoning itself. But why would downvoting something you disagree with be bad?
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.
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.
I've encountered some people who are not so... respectful with disagreements. I've made use of the report feature, however, it doesn't seem to be of much use.
Tone policing is classist and is the reason I stopped using this instance. It'll be popular with the liberals who will weaponise it against those saying things they dislike but it'll cause situation after situation where leftists get punished ultimately driving away the base of people that supported the site and platforming up to this point.
More power to ya. I like the ruleset here, but that's the glorious thing about Lemmy: don't like the rules of your instance? Go to one that works better for you.
Apologies if this is something that you think should be obvious to anyone, but I'm genuinely curious what you mean by "classist" here.
I occasionally encounter assholes from all walks of life and prefer to avoid them all the same. I'm actively in favor of reasonable moderation on social media sites to filter assholes out because it's better for my mental health.
Nobody's saying we can't have differences of opinion and disagreements. But I don't think it's unreasonable that we should be expected to engage respectfully or not at all. This is a standard that should be applied equally to all. It's difficult to do, but we should also strive to hold people we otherwise generally agree with on principle accountable if they're being aggressive/hostile/antagonistic because, at best, they're being a bad advocate of our own positions and, at worst, they're being an asshole.
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.