cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/54923731

Some accounts are deleting their posts after a few downvotes. It’s devastating on communities like c/asklemmy.

Lemmy doesn’t track an account’s karma like reddit. So, all downvotes will be isolated to your post or comment and won’t affect your account—unless you wrote something truly horrible.

Remember lemmy is a community effort. Deleting a post also removes all comments on it. So you are not only robbing the effort others put in, you are actively removing knowledge from the fediverse. Others won’t be able to find it through search and lemmy will seem lonelier than it already is.

    • Barbecue Cowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Sometimes down votes are a sign that you’re saying things people don’t want to hear or the right things but on a crazy instance, but sometimes down votes are a chance for self reflection where you have to ask yourself “Am I the asshole?” and in the latter case yeah I’m probably just going to delete it. No apologies though, I’m not looking to be a saint here.

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I will say in their defense that some people delete their comments/posts not because they care about “karma” but because they now feel they were wrong and are genuinely embarrassed or think that its continued presence is just an annoyance to other people.

      That said, imo, unless you realize you’ve broken a rule in posting it or literally just posted by accident, it’s healthier for yourself and the community to simply e.g. edit in a correction and a “mea culpa”, even if you continue to get dogpiled for it.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        8 hours ago

        I have, in the several years I’ve been here, deleted only a handful of comments - pretty much exclusively as a result of me being in a terrible mood and/or too drunk and commenting something very stupid or dickish, then reading it the next morning and going “what the fuck was I doing 🤦‍♂️”. That is thankfully vanishingly rare for me lol

    • Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip
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      23 hours ago

      As someone with social anxiety for some people seeing a large negative social response to something you said or did, even if just abstractly represented by a number, can be pretty distressing 🤷🏻‍♂️

      I generally leave stuff up unless its misleading or something, but I can empathize with why someone would take it down

    • Summzashi@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      All around you.

      I want to prove I’m not a baby so please downvote this comment.

      Edit: please stop you’re hurting my feelings

      • 1984@lemmy.today
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        2 hours ago

        Downvote my comment, so I can share your pain. I promise I will spend at least five seconds caring.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        8 hours ago

        Me too, go ahead - it doesn’t matter.

        What matters is when people scan your post history and check why you were downvoted, given the context of the comment. The community here is smaller, so if you post consistently, you can actually build a meaningful organic reputation (that is: other user’s opinions of you). Karma doesn’t matter. What you post, and how you engage with other users does.

    • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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      20 hours ago

      The other day somebody asked me a question and I couldn’t be bothered to deal with them, but later on I decided to answer in earnest and deleted the previous response.

    • brave_lemmywinks@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I’ve had discussions here with people that don’t want down votes, like in YouTube. There are instances that have them disabled.

    • TachyonTele@piefed.social
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      23 hours ago

      I’ve seen it a few times. It’s stupid. Why bother participating if you’re just going to take your ball home, so to speak.