They’re asking about the total score. The better way to explain it is that there is not a total score, there is just the upvote count listed as the score. Downvotes and the calculated score based on upvote/downvotes are ignored.

Blocking open community creation is a mistake and that will be abused down the line. It’s also taking power away from users to make Lemmy their own.

First off, community creation is not the problem here. Anybody can make a community called the Donald, the problem are the people that will fill it. Those people are coming here regardless of what community they find themselves in. Blocking community creation doesn’t stop them, only actual monitoring of individual users will do it.

There really has to be a line here between combating this kind of toxic hateful bullshit and completely locking down a social media platform so that everything must be pre-scanned and approved before it sees the light of day. Pre-approving content means moderation controls the site directly and obliquely. Before users can even cast a vote, mods can unilaterally and silently strike it down.

I just generally don’t care for the overall notion that Lemmy needs to be carefully curated like a garden right out of the gate. Ban the obvious shit like the Donald but there has to be a fundamental acknowledgment that the users, the people, need to have the ability to make the space their own without some council pre-judging them.