Currently, almost anyone in the Fediverse can see Lemmys votes. Lemmy admins can see votes, as well as mods. Only regular Lemmy users can’t. Should the Lemmy devs create a way to make the votes anonymous?
There is a discussion going on right now considering “making the Lemmy votes public” but I think that premisse is just wrong. The votes are public already, they’re just hidden from Lemmy users. Anyone from a kbin/mbin/fedia instance can check out the votes if they are so inclined.
The users right now may fall into a false sense of privacy when voting because the votes are hidden from Lemmy users. If you want to vote something and not show up on the vote list, please create another account to support that type of content and don’t tell anyone.
Yeah I mean it’s basically a consequence that an upvote or a downvote can be for any number of reasons not shared from up- to down- or viceversa, and a simple voting system is ill-equipped to represent or contextualize that. Various solutions are viable, but my perspective is that if up+down-voting is here to stay, that part could be extended so that the act of voting could be this one bit more representative.
it seems from a very brief search that likes and dislikes (see link below, i assume they translate to up and down votes) are the extent of what is available so a more nuanced slashdot or steam review type rating is unlikely to be viable.
in any case the ability to upvote and downvote feels like a core differentiating feature to this kind of forum and inbetween measures are unsatisfactory. upvote and downvote anything you like, and everyone can see you doing so, would be an improvement imo on the current implementation.
at least it may be possible in a future version to allow or disallow voting behaviours on a community rather than instance basis?
https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub/Primer/Like_activity