It actually adds a tool for harassers, in that targeted harassment can’t be tied back to a harasser without the cooperation of their instance admin.
In reality, I think a better answer might be to anonymize the username and publicize the votes.
Comment on Private voting has been added to PieFed
smeg@feddit.uk 4 weeks agowhilst doing nothing to protect them
Well it also takes away a tool that harassers can use for their harassing of individuals, right? This does highlight the often-requested issue of Lemmy needs better/more moderation tools though.
shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 4 weeks ago
rimu@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
Hmm, yes.
PieFed tracks the percentage of downvotes vs upvotes (calling it "Attitude" in the code and admin UI), making it easy to spot people like this and easy to write functionality that deals with them. Perhaps anonymous voting should only be available to accounts with a normal attitude (within a reasonable tolerance).
shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 4 weeks ago
PieFed tracks the percentage of downvotes vs upvotes (calling it “Attitude” in the code and admin UI)
That’s cool. I wonder what my attitude is and I wonder how accurate the score is, if our federations don’t overlap super well. What happens if I have a ton of interactions on an instance that yours is completely unaware of?
(I think “Attitude” is a perfect word, because it’s perceptive. Like, “you say they’re great but all I see them do is get drunk and complain about how every Pokemon after Mewtwo isn’t ‘legit’,” sort of thing.)
rimu@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
I've intentionally subscribed to every active community I can find (so I can populate a comprehensive topics hierarchy ) making piefed.social get a fairly complete picture. Your attitude is only 3% below the global average, nowhere near the point where I'd take notice.
smeg@feddit.uk 4 weeks ago
Feels to me that being able to link what people like/dislike to their comments and username is much more dangerous than just being able to downvote all their comments.
And I’d hope that in this new suggestion an admin would still be able to ban the user even if they only knew the anonymous/voter ID, though that’s probably an interesting question for OP.
maegul@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
If public voting data becomes a thing across the threadiverse, as some lemmy people want.
Which is why I think the appropriate balance is private votes visible to admins/mods.
doctortran@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Admins only. Letting mods see it just invites them to share it on a discord channel or some shit. The point is the number of people that can actually see the votes needs to be very small and trusted.
maegul@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
I can see this argument, at least in general. As for community mods, I feel like it’d be generally fruitful and useful for them to be and feel empowered to create their own spaces. While I totally hear your argument about the size of the “mod” layer being too large to be trustworthy, I feel like some other mitigating mechanisms might be helpful. Maybe the idea of a “senior” mod, of which any community can only have one? Maybe “earning” seniority through being on the platform for a long time or something, not sure. But generally, I think enabling mods to moderate effectively is a generally good idea.