By community, do you mean just this particular Lemmy community or the community on Lemmy collectively? If the latter, there are other alternative Lemmy communities on other instances that may be better suited for you.

You mean "the former". But this is a counter-argument that dares not speak its name. My proposition is that all online communities suffer when opinions are downvoted (which is how the downvote button is overwhelmingly used), not just this community. Just as all dinner parties suffer when someone points their finger at someone else and says, "Shut up, you're wrong".

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I disagree. Communities suffer when noise outweighs signal.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

This is to explicitly invalidate other people's opinions. We are talking about points of view expressing civilly, not about irrelevancy.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Would a dinner party suffer if it had 10,000 people at the table and instead of saying “shut up” people could just turn the volume knob down on someone else a little, but nobody’s voice would get silenced unless more people turned the knob down on them than up?

What if the dinner party were open invitation?

Downvotes fold comments and sort them last. It’s signal inhibition.

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

but nobody’s voice would get silenced unless more people turned the knob down on them than up?

So, a popularity contest of opinions where unpopular views do get silenced.

The signal can be inhibited in exactly the same way by just not upvoting what you don't want to see. Yes, it's not as powerful as downvoting but then at least you're not telling someone to sit down and shut up.

For me, that is the real issue. Why are so many people so keen to hide opinions that they don't like? Again: we are talking about viewpoints expressed in a thoughtful manner. Not irrelevancy, not insults, not incoherent rambling. They're all fair game.

Personally I find it disturbing that so many people are happy to invalidate and silence others. I don't agree with you but you made your point well and it would never cross my mind to downvote you for making it.