So, we made the possibly controversial decision to disable downvotes. Let’s talk about it briefly.
Why we disabled the downvote button.
On Reddit, the purpose of downvotes is and always was to make it so irrelevant posts in subs would be pushed down to prop up more relevant content. In practice, they have been used as a flat out “I don’t like this” button, regardless of if the content is relevant or not. We have already started to see this be the case in Burggit communities, despite the posts being 100% allowed on Burggit and being entirely relevant in their respective communities.
It is instead recommended that you use the report button if you suspect something to be spam or irrelevant to a community.
On Reddit, it’s also frequently used to dismiss/silence legitimate arguments and discussion. We’d rather avoid this happening on Burggit, we want this to be a place where people can freely and openly discuss ideas/opinions.
In the end, we couldn’t really find a positive use case for the downvote button. So, we decided to remove it.
Great! I don’t think downvotes are conducive to actual discussion and expression - if you don’t have the courage or ability to actually verbalize your distaste then your opinion is worthless.
I’m fairly left-leaning and I want to be able to have actual discussion, not be downvoted to hell or see people who disagree with me be downvoted to hell.
Agreed. Downvotes just lead to a loss of nuance.