Lemmy NSFW

Thank you for involving the community in the decision :D I generally like downvotes because it allows scrolling top posts to see the most generally liked content. It's still easy to view New posts to see things without being affected by downvotes, like looking at a niche topic.

Id say enable it. There is no complex algorithm that promotes content based on up and down votes like with sites like YouTube. If people want niche stuff that performs poorly on All > Top, they can see it on the niche sub for that content in their subscriptions or directly on the sub page. Having a low score doesnt delete posts.

Definitely enable; e.g.: lets say based on my sorting algorithm and frequency of frontpage visits, I usually see posts with ~20 upvotes (sounds like a weird oversimplification but that is kind of the case for me foe some reason)

For those 20 upvotes there might be 500 more people that believe that a post is very low quality, inappropriate for the community's topic, etc., but I still see it, since, well its score was ~20.

Without upvotes it was very frequent that I saw a post that was not (or was very-very slightly) related to the community's theme, and there is absolutely no other way for the community to filter it out. It forces me (everyone) to scroll across much irrelevant content, until maybe I give up and unsubscribe from some communities altogether, instead of helping to curate them into something people enjoy visiting.

The only other solution to this problem is to have moderators check every post that is uploaded, and, besides putting more strain to moderators, one moderator's decision might even be debatable sometimes (e.g. a post might technically fit in a community, but the people who visit it might not find it enjoyable, or will just prefer to see it in a more appropriate community).

Downvotes provide a simple solution that involves many opinions in this whole process.

The only case that not having downvotes might make sense, is "Top", in which I feel I only see posts with an insane number of upvotes (that I btw might not enjoy seeing) and nothing else. I also feel that this sorting algorithm also promotes the visibility of more generic content that a larger variety of people will enjoy, and will just upvote without considering the community it was posted in etc. But in those cases, the posts with many upvotes, can only get more upvotes (promoting the phenomenon), whereas with the ability to downvote, the final score will be more balanced, or at least leave the choice to the user (maybe indirectly via the choice sorting algorithm, or their client's settings), for if they want to see controversial posts.

I created this account solely for, uhm, research purposes but I'm using it as my only account now. Partly because my other instance had some persisting issues for a few weeks and partly because I realized the missing downvoting really helped me chill and stop looking at/for karma. Not that I'm here to collect points, but my primitive monkey brain found a source of cheap reward and enjoyed it. I'm not really into downvotes, but I'm fine with both if others care for it.

I personally believe downvotes can be of use, but that would require a much, much larger userbase than what Lemmy - as a whole, and also LemmyNSFW - has. Maybe the biggest stances could afford to have downvotes (though from what I'm aware, plenty of them don't) but in NSFW I could easily see a few people with bad intentions deciding what gets or doesn't get seen in smaller communities.

The average activity in non-niche communities of NSFW is also much smaller than their Reddit counterparts, plus the fact that - from my experience - there's quite a few mods missing, inactive for several months to +1 year, and I'm not sure what one would do in case of brigading.

Unfortunately you can't really stimulate people to comment, which really would've been a boon to uploaders

I don't see it being a benefit in communities in that I mod (hentai, paizuri, tentaclehentai, and hentaigif), so I'm not personally keen on it but I can see why larger communities might want it. I'm no longer as hopeful that a more active hentai-oriented community will develop here, so though I voted "No", I'm a little apathetic about the choice now, personally.

From what I recall, some users use downvotes for more than just spam, like disliking things. This creates a problem when people browse the Local feed and downvote stuff they don't like even if they aren't even subbed to that community. This impacts niche communities and their posters/creators who would get more downvotes from people seeking more mainstream content even if it would otherwise fit that community.

If the goal is just to ward off spam, then unless reports aren't enough, I'd keep downvotes off.

Yes I can clearly see this more about girls.. and Sex Doll stuff aren't a niche here it was worth checking this place out though I wish your site luck Reddit and Internet has become to damn soft in general people are just ridiculous nowadays it's kinda sad 🤷🤦‍♀️