Insulting or attacking other users, even so much saying “fuck you”, “fuck [this group of people]”, “you’re an idiot” or anything like that while debating IS against the rules of Lemmy.ml. This goes for every political view, you DO NOT get free passes no matter if you’re leftist, rightist, communist, anarchist, liberal, etc. If you’re confident of your position you should be able to debate in a civil manner without cursing someone else out. I understand that debates can get heated and frustrating, hell I’ve debated with a good bunch of users, but you can still express that without resorting to name calling or insults.
Check the modlog, we HAVE removed replies of this nature from every political view, and even if we don’t say it every time, we DO keep track of both removals per user and general behaviour even if it doesn’t get removed, and too many infractions WILL result in a ban.
That said, it is NOT against the rules to present countering facts or opinions, or to have political opinions in general. Don’t report comments for “being pro communist” or “being pro China” unless they have broken an actual rule, namely the ones about being civil. Don’t attack or insult people from Lemmygrad just because they’re from Lemmygrad or they’re arguing for Marxism-Leninism or supporting a country you don’t. If they’re presenting their points in a civil manner (which had been the case for almost everyone from Lemmygrad), you can either read it and respond in kind with your questions or counterpoints, or just move on. People coming over from other instances is not brigading if they’re mostly being civil, that’s the whole point of federation.
Things people disagree with getting down voted is also acceptable, it’s not considered an attack on you if your comment has a negative score, and it doesn’t even significantly affect the ranking because of the relatively low comment volumes currently on Lemmy. It’s just imaginary internet points, relax.
Honest question: Then why are we having these points? If they are of no actual use, and nobody should care about them, why are they implemented? For what reason?
The entire purpose for downvotes in Reddit was to allow people to weed out comments that do not add anything to the conversation, but people of course misused it as an “I disagree” button. All the downvotes contribute is further ruining the conversational culture here by turning them in to gladiator fights of egos. Lemmy is actually just worse than Reddit in this regard when its downvote feature doesn’t even have a stated purpose. Lack of downvotes alone is a good reason to support Beehaw.
Sometimes I get downvotes without knowing why and no one is replying me what’s wrong with my words. For example, the comment I just write here like you got more downvotes than up votes, does that mean they disagree with me or that I am not adding anything to the conversation? Because I said “I suppose”, so it’s just my opinion.
So those votes are used for a “disagree” or an “agree” here on Lemmy, right? (not talking about Reddit)
Further ruining the conversation when you can simply press a button to devalue someone’s opinion without contributing anything yourself.
And yes, they’re used as agree/disagree buttons and it cheapens the conversation.
Most big tech platforms have gotten rid of the downvote as well. They only want you to express liking, not disliking.
Sometimes, a crowd of people on internet plays with downvotes, I suppose it’s a way to make “wars”. I wonder if it could be a good idea to replace the like/dislike with emoji icons… Smile, Happy, Thinking, Heart, Shit poop, etc… To give it more a meaning of reaction than a like/dislike.
The votes are really more about helping sort popular / unpopular content more that anything, so emojis wouldn’t help with that.
Without scores or voting, its back to the days of forums where you have to scroll through hundreds of pages to find something decent.
What does decent mean? Something popular? Or something with quality content and comments?
I suppose it’s just to say you agree or disagree. So can’t do anything when a crowd from Lemmygard votes bad on all your comments if you don’t support their government or politic discussion.
So its bad when we disagree, but not when you libs do that.
I don’t do that, I rarely vote down… I talk about a lot of stuff, politics, tech, but when I need to talk about Communism and this kind of ideology I always get a crowd of downvotes.
could it be that you’re just wrong?
Yeah, maybe I am wrong, and need your illumination.
Or maybe a crowd of Communist people (Lemmygrad users) are doing mass votes to this kind of topic.
It sounds to me like you may just hold some genuinely distasteful opinions. I’ve been “victim” of mass downvoting before, and more often than not it’s a result of me stupidly speaking out of ignorance. Try not doing that, and maybe pay less attention to your internet points and more on the quality of discussion. For instance, you should consider the value of this discussion wherein you tell people how to “properly use” Upvotes/Downvotes from a prescriptive lens.
In my experience, the Upvote/Downvote system generally works in large threads, even if people have their own philosophies by which they choose to use the functions; the very principal of the Wisdom of the crowd is the means by which it functions. Of course when others come to interrupt this by means of brigading/raiding/whatever the current terminology is for this behaviour, things go off kilter, but having a large prescriptive agreement as to how you should go about Upvoting/Downvoting is no cure for intentional disruption.
If you want to call it like this… I already argued with someone once with a long thread and with many details that the other person (Lemmygard comunist defender) couldn’t explain, they just ignored my view of points and my arguments, at this point is when I already decided to just ignore them. This happens with many ideologists, so I don’t talk with “ignorance” and I don’t really care getting downvoted, I know what I talk about and I can see their closed mindsets.
Sorry for the late response, but I didn’t like your accusations to me. Just letting you know.