Dog-piling is when someone expresses an opinion and people swarm in the comments telling the OC how wrong they are and how right they are. Typically the person getting dogpiled is downvoted into oblivion in the process. Note that I'm not talking about anything controversial in their opinion or the comment being trolling in any way; just any general disagreement with the groupthink.
Brief example:
User 1: There are lots of factors at play here, not just money. There's X, Y, Z, and those are all independent from money.
|____> User 2: No, it's money. It's always money
|______> User 4: Right? How can anyone think it's anything *but* money? Some people!
|____> User 3: Yes, well, X, Y, and Z wouldn't be a problem if not for capitalism, so it's definitely money, and you're wrong.
|____> User 5: It all boils down to money; always does.
|____> User 6: Of course it's money. Only a capitalist bootlicker would think otherwise.
|____> User 7: Go back to Reddit, troll.
|____> User 8: You're so close, but it's money.
...
|____> User 999: (Same as the last 998 comments; contributes nothing except attacking the opinion for being different)
None of that adds anything to the discussion; they're not engaging on the subject, just attacking the opinion because it differs.
That behavior does not seem healthy to me and seems like it's almost designed to discourage anyone from expressing any opinion that's not part of the established group think. Again, I am not talking about trolls here, just any kind of differing opinions.
Should that kind of behavior be discouraged? If so, as a mod, what would be the best way to address it? After the 2nd or 3rd dogpile comment, start removing subsequent ones that are just piling on?
It's definitely a people problem, so I'm curious what would be a gentle but firm way to deal with it.
Why would downvotes need to be discouraged?
It honestly doesn't matter if someone downvotes you even if you're 100% factually correct and they are absolutely wrong. This is the internet and up/downvotes are made up cool points.
People are going to troll, disagree, create alts to downvote, or do any number of other things that might make people sad or angry. Just ignore them. Investing thought into it will just cause your own grief and them to feel good about their actions. If someone is being pissy and you don't like their comments just block them. We don't really need anything more than that.
If someone just doesn't want to see downvotes because it makes them sad, then they can join a server that doesn't have downvotes. That solves their problem while still letting the people who don't care about getting downvotes use their downvotes to show disagreement.
Downvotes aren't discouraged - just noting that as it's part of the pattern. I should probably just remove that from the post since it's not really relevant.
It's possible, but not practical, to mod based on votes unless it's blatant/explicit vote manipulation. e.g. "Wow, 10 people signed up for accounts just now just to downvote this person.". I have seen that happen lol.
It's the piling-on that I'm asking if/how to address.
I would say put a mute all replies button. That would make it so they aren't bombarded by 1000 comments saying the same thing but still allow people to voice their opinions.
That'd be great if it existed, but AFAIK, nothing like that is available in the Lemmy API.
But I'm looking at this from a "fostering a healthy community" point of view. Someone comments that they prefer rainy days. Is it fair or constructive to the community to have 50 people to rip that person to shreds because those 50 people prefer sunny days?
I feel there's a line somewhere; I'm just trying to identify it and figure out what to do when it's crossed.
Shoot dessalines a message. It might be fairly easy to implement and it seems like something people might like. I know reddit had something similar for posts.
Other people are mentioning similar, so maybe it's new in the API after 0.19.9 or something (or I missed when it was introduced). I'll have to check.