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.
Being an instance with downvotes disabled sorta helps for this imo
Can you explain how? Removing downvotes removes a signal, which I would think leads to an increase in the other two signals, upvoting and commenting. Since dog-piling is excessive commenting I feel like it would make the problem worse.
It I can't downvote someone I'm more likely to comment my opinion, even if that opinion is dog-piling.
People that dogpile downvote too, it’s not exclusionary. Downvotes on Reddit were not meant to be a „disagree” button - it was intended for off-topic and rule breaking content. Of course platform has very little control over that and people started it to bury opinions they disagreed with below visibility thresholds.
Out of all the ways to solve this I really like what Tildes does. There’s no downvote button and only somewhat trusted users get to assign labels that work a bit similarly but force you to provide a reason for that downvote. For example, a pun that doesn’t bring anything to discussion can be labelled as „noise” which doesn’t remove or hide it but brings it to bottom. Other labels serve as quasi-report. It’s a solved problem but I think most people like dogpiling and downvoting.
FWIW Dog-piling also applies to upvotes. People see a headline or comment they agree with, even if it's a complete fabrication, and upvote it.
Of course as you noted not everyone agrees what an upvote or downvote represents.
As for Tildes, it does help but also requires a lot more moderation. Not that I'd be against trying it, I do just wonder how well it scales up, especially if people disagree.
The voting on any website since the inception of the idea was intended to be a "like/dislike" counter to help guage the popularity of a post. Things that were well liked, get shown to more people. Things that are mostly disliked, don't. That's all it ever was, and it's how a majority of people continue to use it.
„This is how it always was” is never a good argument but it’s not even applicable in this case. It was Digg that brought downvoting to mainstream and it was definitely a Web 2.0 thing. Old forums used upvotes only, sometimes labeled as „thanks” and such.
My argument was only against the statement "it was always intended to be this way." Because, no... It wasn't. I am not saying that it should be one way or the other.