First, love what you are contributing/posting. The ai art, sharing prompts and even helping other user finetune the process. A+
Now onto the issue at hand, i wanna make clear that im def not supporting to get rid of the downvotes forever. I just think that atm they are harming this instance and should be disabled for a while untill we have more people who post original content or untill fediverse users have gotten into the habit of curating and browsing only in subscribed communities of interest as most redditors have learned to do, due to the sheer volume of content there.
I think the real problem is that alot of new users are used to reddit and how it works. Lemmy operates different, i had to figure it out and get used to it too.
On reddit gonewild, you post something and only users who sort through new get to see your post (new accounts of course, subscribers is something else) and vote on that post. Its a sorting process thats rather low profile, the more people like it, the more exposure it gets, you go from new to rising to frontpage. Users sorting new are different folks then users scrolling the frontpage. New page are people trying to sext or cam or are just lonely and wanna talk. You can thrive and have fun in just that section of the sub. Even if you never get the upvotes to get to rising or frontpage, its a fun experience. If you do get the upvotes for frontpage, along come the rude disrespectfull messages, its part of the internet and comes with high exposure. But at that point the poster already has 100’s of nice messages and the self esteem boost that comes with reaching the frontpage. In other words the downvotes from that group are pretty harmless emotionally.
On lemmy new posts go up almost immediatly after posting so your exposure is biggest when first posting. If you get lots of upvotes you can keep that exposure longer. But as i just explained high exposure means rude assholes and on lemmy thats right at the start before the validation. Immediate bad repsonses and only the fun experiences later on or maybe never at all.
You have to realize that posters of nude selfies are putting themselfs out there, not a prompt or a (very beautifull) artpiece. The reactions/comments are way more personal and confronting. Its not always easy to deal with it and atm the downvotes on that content is leaving those posters with nothing. No fun experiences at all. So they give up and leave, or check this place see the negative comments and just never try.
For me personaly, its about building a community here, i dont post to sell or for validation (anymore). Maybe its a bit cheesy but when i first started in this world, i met some amazing and very helpfull people, it kinda changed my outlook on life. I wanna return that favour to the internet by helping to build something positive here.
Ok enough written. Im very interested on why downvotes are so important for you and your community. Cause not only gonewild is affected, every community that has nude oc content is experiencing this problem.
Thank you for taking the time to write this down and explain your pov so polite and articulate. Breath of fresh air.
Honestly, you make excellent points and i see no reason to not reinstate the downvotes in the AI communities except maybe technical? Its definetly worth to explore the option.
You also seem to grasp that there are real problems atm with attracting new oc posters and forming a positive envirronment for them to fool around in. The irony of the case is, despite lemmy’s pretty rough handling of sellers that is just what lemmy will end up with. They are the only ones willing to put up with the mean comments, downvotes, lack of community and overal negative vibe, cause they have monetary reasons.
I can take my content anywhere online and go have fun pretending to be a pornstar in my free time. As an oc poster other sites offer me more protection from harrasment, im here cause i actually believe in the project decentralization, federation, open source… its the future. I didnt know that 200upvotes did the same as 200downvotes exposure wise btw.
There are other tools that could help the situation too, 2way blocking would be nice or the ability to make private and invite only communities, to be able to control the audience a bit while the community can develop. There is strength in numbers for this kind of thing and once the groundwork has been layed, those posters will have the support they need to move on to the wider lemmyverse. Just an observation but i think the ai community on lemmynsfw seems to already be in the next stage, which is good of course.
Well time for some coffee here. Still in pyama and all :D