By default, Lemmy allows downvotes globally. However, when a server disables downvoting, it is similar to using a feature that is usually reserved for enterprises and very small, non-federated communities.
If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.
What do you mean? People already post things in the correct community and moderators make sure wrong posts get removed. My suggestion is that people should make use of that by curating what communities are they see or don’t want to see. There’s no need to encourage/force other people to do anything, they’re already doing it.
First of all, wouldn’t the tag system need other people to be encouraged/forced to do it? Secondly, if the tagged grey area posts reach a wider audience then it doesn’t solve the problem because the problem is that people don’t want to see specific posts in their feed. Posts in the grey area can contain posts people don’t want to see. If the unwanted posts still end up in their feeds then the problem isn’t solved. The tags should be used to exclude posts not be used to include posts.
I mean that what you call “the solution” (to curate one’s feed) already exists and did not solve the problem for the platform as a whole, as attested by the OP. Because regardless of what you or me think that people “should” do, they’re still browsing by “All” (that’s fine) and then downvoting content geared towards other audiences (that is not fine).
And it is not just porn; you see the exact same issue with content in other languages. Same deal: the resource exists (you can set up the language of your content, as well as the ones that you want to see) and people still don’t use it.
You’re suggesting that people should make use of that resource, but our suggestions mean nothing if people won’t follow them. We do need a way to at least encourage the usage of those resources, and discourage this idiotic “this content is not made for ME! ME! ME!, how do they dare? Downvoting time!” tendency.
It might not solve the problem but it does alleviate it. There’s a big difference between seeing 10% or 50% of irrelevant content.