Old habits die hard, but there’s Reddiquette which needs to be revived, and some which needs to die.
Many “golden-age” redditors remember a time when downvoting was reserved for hostility, not a different opinion. For the sake of our growing community I would like to implore everyone to be awesome to each other.
However, this place is not Reddit.
- We don’t measure in bananas here.
- We don’t need to append “edit: typo” to edited posts and comments.
- if you see something which is worthy of a downvote: down vote and move on! Don’t engage with it and feed the algorithm/engament machine so other people are exposed to it when sorting by active.
If seeing negative numbers is that impacting on a person’s self worth, the “disable downvotes” that a Lemmy instance can select will not allow down votes on it and not federate in those same down votes.
There are servers where it is set up that way.
As to accusations of downvoting, everyone who runs a server can peek at the database and see exactly who down voted a post or comment… and anyone can run a server.
The issue of seeing numbers go up or down being tied to an individual’s validation is more of an issue for the individual than the community and should be addressed as such.
You said its more of an issue for the individual than the community, how much more?
I see this as a shared responsibility. The main reason is I’m convinced there’s not much people can do about the issue of validation.
I see the validation as a double edged sword. Lots of people do legitimately need validation from strangers online, and I’m glad they have communities to go to, to feel better about themselves.
On the other side of it, is it can form into unhealthy comparison. It’s the reason Instagram stopped showing the number of likes a few years back.
I think some reddit communities had a good idea for limiting the karma counter to 0, because negative karma definitely contributes to how people feel about themselves and the community.
I understand many people see it as self-policing, but if you ever visit r/vegan, you will see an extremely gatekeepy community which breeds toxicity. People who step in any direction are taking a step over the line, and it forces compliance via mob instead of allowing mods to handle bad actors.