By default, Lemmy allows downvotes globally. However, when a server disables downvoting, it is similar to using a feature that is usually reserved for enterprises and very small, non-federated communities.
If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.
Yes and no, I agree we need a better alternative to only downvotes but adding a reason to be able to downvote will only make the problem worse.
They are removed to protect the sensibilities of the users, so instead of seeing ambiguous 100 downvotes, now you’ll have 70 downvotes with messages that might go from no or ew to horrible insults I’m not going to type here, if it was hurtful or discouraging before, it would get worse.
Sadly I don’t have the creativity to come up with a better way, the only alternative being to move to a forum where they can control as they please and categorise everything until the fediverse (or Lemmy at least) has the tools to give them their safe space.
I am not proposing that you’d need to write down why you’re downvoting the content, but that you’d pick an option. As such, the ability to say “ew” or hurl an insult would be zero.
And the goal here is not just “to protect sensibilities”, but to force the downvoter to provide at least some feedback. Because a lot of what makes the current system feel awful is that downvotes are interpreted as “this is bad”, but nobody can be arsed to tell you “why” it’s bad, in a way that you could fix.
Disagree, the downvoters would just pick a default reason and move on… maybe even turning one of the reasons into a troll motive.
Remember we’re talking about people who only care enough to go out of their way to mass downvote or even have scripts to do it for them; not normal users who up/down vote and move on (which weren’t the problem back then, as far as we were told).
Forcing a reason maybe would stop people who actually cared enough, for the rest it would just be a nuisance so they’d pick whatever (or the meanest option).
Honestly… after reading another guy’s comment, I am more inclined to just say fuck it and say we return to the forums, no upvotes or downvotes, things neatly categorized into their place (specially so sensible things can be hidden but still available) and if someone wants to interact they’d have to comment.