Hello all!

As of yesterday, I have updated the the instance to 0.19.2-rc.5. This should fix some of the remaining federation problem.

This morning it was brought to my attention through the Matrix chat that a feature has been added to the UI to allow admins to view votes: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/2303

I would like to add a bit of context. Viewing votes has always been possible in at least two ways:

  • Since votes are stored in the database, admins with access to the database have always been able to retrieve the list of voters by running a postgres database query.

  • Some applications in the fediverse will display votes by default. For example, content federated with friendica displays the votes as “likes/dislikes”, so any user can see federated votes.

What this feature has changed is that admins, regardless of whether they have access to the server, are able to see the list of up-votes/down-votes through the user interface.

This is effectively making a “hidden” admin feature more transparent. This can also help admins easily identify if bots are being used to mass down-vote.

I am bringing this up explicitly here because I think users might be interested in knowing if their votes can be seen, and so I want to be transparent about this change and about votes in general.

I also have some thoughts that I would like to discuss. If users are uncomfortable with admins having this power, I could remove this feature from this instance. But that would only be symbolic, as the votes can always be retrieved from the database anyway - and other instance admins will still have this feature to see federated votes.

I can also keep it this way. Only admins can see votes, and I can simply not abuse that power.

I can enable this feature for every user. Then everyone can see everyone’s votes.

Another option is to disable down-votes altogether.

If anyone has any thoughts/opinions about this, please let me know. I’m curious and interested in finding a good way to handle this.

  • @jadero
    2•4 months ago

    I’ve long had concerns with up/down votes and like/dislike, especially the down/dislike. Nothing major, and I have no real solutions.

    My concerns are only to do with the ambiguity. There are so many different reasons why someone might vote one way or the other or even just not vote at all that I think it’s kind of weird that compiling the votes into a score seems to mostly work pretty good. That ambiguity means that it’s difficult to derive meaning from any individual vote, which I think argues in favour of keeping it somewhat private. Just because a non-admin can jump through hoops to get someone’s voting history, doesn’t mean it should be deliberately made public.

    As for keeping down votes, I’d be reluctant to mess with a system that works as well as it seems to. Personally, I very rarely downvote, as even that is more engagement than I’m willing to provide. In fact, one of the things I like about the client I use, Thunder, is that I have to long press a comment in order to vote. That little bit of friction means that I vote less often. When I vote, it’s because I really mean whatever I intend the vote to mean.

    • SalamanderOPMA
      2•4 months ago

      Thank you for your input, it’s very appreciated!

      As for keeping down votes, I’d be reluctant to mess with a system that works as well as it seems to.

      There is a toggle in the admin settings to enable/disable downvotes, and several instances do disable them.

      This hides the button and the results from the UI - other instances can still vote, but it’s not displayed. This change would be easy to implement and revert messing up anything. Personally, I do think that having up/down votes is a useful metric more often than it is abused. Disabling down-votes might be a good match for an instance dedicated to, for example, sharing one’s own art, as users might feel more comfortable sharing in such a space.

      • @jadero
        2•4 months ago

        There is a toggle in the admin settings to enable/disable downvotes, and several instances do disable them.

        I didn’t realize that.

        Strictly as a user, from what I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be anything that resembles rampant abuse of downvotes. I’m glad that is what is visible at the admin level.

        Carry on, you’re doing great work as a community builder/manager.

        • SalamanderOPMA
          2•4 months ago

          Thanks!

          This is a comparatively small instance, the problem is more prominent in the larger instances!

          Also, I just found out that there is a user-level setting to turn off the visibility of all scores: