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Upvotes/Downvotes and boosts being visible on posts. (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by mihnt@kbin.social to c/kbinMeta@kbin.social

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I don't mean the actual numbers. I mean being able to see who has actually upvoted, downvoted, and boosted a post.

I've already received one message from a user after downvoting their post because I felt the content was a little on the fence. This should not be a thing. I should be able to vote on posts without worrying about someone messaging me because they have a problem with how I voted.

In my opinion, this is a bit lacking for the safety and security of members here. (Or people who just want to lurk for that matter.)

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[–] YouveCatToBeKittenMe@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

This, all of this. I'm very shy and not great with words (case in point, this barely-coherent ramble), especially when I have to defend an argument. A lot of times, I get cowed into backing down and shutting up when people express even a little displeasure with what I say, and when I don't, it's either because it's one of the few topics I feel extremely passionate and knowledgeable about or because the other person said something that made my hackles rise.

No joke, about 75% of the time when I write out a comment, I second-guess myself and end up not posting it at all--even when they're benign jokes or whatever, I still worry that people will think my comment is stupid. With an anonymized voting system like Reddit's, I still got to express my opinion without fear.*

But here, or rather anywhere with public voting records, I'm right back to being afraid of expressing my opinion. Not to be melodramatic, but I'm de facto being silenced because I don't want to be dogpiled by people who think my opinion sucks. Downvotes are annoying but harmless. Harassment is not.

I'm okay with the admin being able to see everyone's voting records, to combat brigading or whatever. Less so with mods, because for every fair mod, there's a circlejerky one, but I'd accept that compromise. Not at all okay with everybody being able to see them.

*Whether or not agreement and disagreement was what Reddit's upvote and downvote were for, it was what everyone used them for, and TBF, I didn't downvote people I disagreed with who accepted that their opinion wasn't the only valid one. There are a lot of people who aren't like that, though, and not in the harmless downvote kind of way. I left one sub because I discovered either the majority of people there, or a very vocal minority, rabidly hated my favorite character from that series and regularly viciously derided anyone who liked him, claiming that even sympathizing with a morally-grey fictional character made you a bad person in real life. Nobody knew he was my favorite character because I fortunately didn't say anything about it before I discovered they hated him and wasn't brave enough to speak up afterwards, but before I left, I could defend my stance by downvoting the worst takes and upvoting the few dissenters. I couldn't have done that if votes were public.