Oh wow. Just looked at the votes of a harmless happy post that had lots of upvotes and a few downvotes. With this tool, I was able to figure out who was that one downvoter. Well, then I dug a bit deeper, and found out that this user seems to be a serial downvoter. Every day, there's a proper barrage of downvotes directed at pretty much anything and everything.

I have very mixed feelings about this discovery. Kinda nice to know all this, but it certainly didn't make me happier.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 8 points 3 weeks ago

Every small-to-medium sized community trying to build will have a handful of users like this. I managed to discover the serial downvoters on my old lemm.ee comm and when I banned them (about 4 of them?) it had a huge impact. They didn't all downvote /everything/ but they downvoted a lot of things, and no contribution. And if they got in early, they could sink new threads.

Made a huge difference.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It's a nice tool for admins and mods, but then again they already pretty much had access to this information. I've always believed votes are obscured for good reason, and knowing how people vote on your posts and comments is only going to bring about negative emotions.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 weeks ago

Mods and admins need to know, but everyone else will just find sadness in this kind of data. I asked, but clearly wasn’t ready to hear the answer. Well, now I know where some of those seemingly random downvotes come from.

[–] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Wait, we did? I'm a mod and had no idea I could see peoples' votes. How do I do that? I say, as I probably will never use it until I start seeing my communities consistently getting downvotes on inoffensive posts that have no misinformation and are clearly on topic.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not a mod but that's my understanding yes. An actual mod could probably help you, I guess ask for help in a fediverse/Lemmy support community?

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago

Vertical dots menu - View votes

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Vertical dots menu - View votes

[–] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey you are right, thank you!

For any other mods unaware of this feature, it only works on posts in communities you mod.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 weeks ago

You're welcome!

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

But if your a community moderator, you can use this tool to identify the bad actors and uninvite them from the party.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 weeks ago

You can already see votes directly in the Lemmy UI as a mod