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.
Alt accounts are slightly less of an issue, at least on Burggit because we have to manually approve each user, Not saying it’d get rid of alts entirely, but it does reduce them slightly.
Completely fair point. Although, my singular anecdotal data point of having gotten in with a three-word application reason suggests that it’s not exactly a high bar to meet. 🤣
Also, I hope I don’t come off as implying I think something more should be done about alts. I think that’s a pretty intractable problem without foregoing privacy ethics. IME, the appearance of bad actors of this nature is more a function of community size than the amount of preemptive moderation effort put in.
Oh crap that’s right. guess we have to deny you now. Kidding, ofc. 😆
I mean my account is a alt because my “home” instance blocked you for being undermoderated (the stuff that gets posted here might cause legal troubles where the server stands)