From what I can gather, this particular design was proposed by Puerto Rico's New Progressive Party (Partido Nuevo Progresista or PNP), which advocates for Puerto Rican statehood. The circle definitely has its appeal, though I think I'd prefer something closer to the current flag.

Explanation for anyone who wants it: https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2878:_Supernova

All of the people there? They seem fine in my experience.

It's just a fancy name for "Dakota[citation needed]".

I see where you're coming from, but this to me seems more like a property of the fediverse than an issue with Kbin in particular. Right now, anyone can make an instance and choose to show downvotes. Someone could make their own instance, gather downvotes federated from other instances, and make a list of who's downvoted who. Being on an instance that doesn't show downvotes doesn't hide your downvotes from everyone — just you and others on instances that don't show them.

On this end, I feel that Kbin instances are just being transparent about the publicity of your votes. If anyone can see your downvotes just by looking at an instance that shows them, I think it's important that people are aware of that. Showing public votes is sort of telling you, "Hey, people can see how you voted on the fediverse," and that's preferable to pretending that nobody can see them.

Thanks for the response, Ernest!

This is a good time to start a discussion on how it should work on kbin.social

A while back, I made a thread on /m/AskKbin about this. While it's not solely kbin.social users, there's still a lot of good input, and you could use KES to sort through those who are and aren't on the instance if you want. My two cents are that it's important for downvotes to exist, be federated, and be shown separately so that (A) people can easily express that they feel something doesn't helpfully contribute to the discussion and (B) similar expressions from other instances aren't drowned out.

Downvote federation only applies to remote threads from other instances, without affecting local threads

To be clear, what exactly do you mean by this? Does this mean that downvote federation is one-way (i.e., that downvotes federate from Kbin instances but not to Kbin instances)?

EDIT: Fixed quote formatting.

100%, but the hardness of a cricket ball doesn't change with who's using it. A really really hard ball moving really really fast is still a really really hard ball moving really really fast, so it's not like there's some significant difference in danger posed. And even if there was such a big danger posed by someone assigned-male-at-birth playing cricket, why would it still be perfectly fine for men's cricket?

>:(

Something that people don't seem to be aware of is that about all of this stuff has been in place for several years. If you go look at the old usage guidelines, the rules that everyone is yelling about are nothing new and have existed for a while.

For example, AntVenom says that server ranks are dead based on this:

You may make money by…:

• Asking for donations, so long as you don’t offer the donor something that only they can use[.] However, you may offer all players server wide rewards if donation goals are met.

However, ignoring AntVenom's claim is refuted two bullet points later—

• Selling cosmetics, except for capes or anything that attempts to visually act like the feature of a Minecraft player cape

—the old commercial usage guidelines, which were in place since at least 2020, say the exact same thing about donations as the new ones:

…YOU MAY:

• ask for donations (as opposed to direct charges) IF you do not offer the individual donor something in exchange that only he or she can use. You may offer server wide rewards if donation goals are achieved though.

Yet, lo and behold, server ranks are still around.

Mojang isn't killing servers and maps. They're not going full 1984. These are pretty much the same guidelines that have been in place for at least 3 years—just with some clarification. Server ranks didn't die, maps with McDonalds in them weren't taken down, and unless you think the devs are suddenly going to go full evil mode when it would just actively hurt them, there's no reason for all of the fearmongering.

EDIT: Fixing formatting with the quotes

This is my flag redesign for Pennsylvania, also known as the Keystone State. This is probably one of my favorites.

Symbolism

• The general layout of the flag (a tricolor with three white icons on the center stripe) comes from William Penn's coat of arms.
• Gold and blue are Pennsylvania's state colors. The white stripe is there for visual variety.
• The icons in the center are keystones, representing Pennsylvania's aforementioned nickname.

I think Kbin just doesn't support downvote federation yet. Dunno if it's just a Kbin thing or if Lemmy also hasn't gotten around to it, but either way, it's something that needs to be fixed.

If this is deliberate, it makes no sense. There are reasons to want or not want downvotes, but you need to commit to one instead of having this confusing jank where you only see downvotes from your instance.

Recently, someone posted some Minnesota flag redesigns to !vexillology, and I had the idea of making a stupid alignment chart out of them.

I used redesigns from these sites:

• https://newmnflag.org/designs
• https://vexillology.fandom.com/wiki/Minnesota