Do you rarely vote on anything at all?
Do you upvote when something is interesting but rarely downvote? Do you downvote when something isn’t interesting but rarely upvote?
Do you vote to signal agreement or disagreement?
Do you vote to encourage insightful replies regardless whether you agree or not?
I rarely interact with the voting system on sites, aside from the occasional missclick, that is. While I think it can be useful when searching for answers or tutorials, especially on topics you’re not familiar with and can’t judge competence vs BS, I think in more social spaces it leads to both echo chambers and karma farming, and it feeds social media addiction by giving you little validations for every upvote you receive.
I also think it prevents people from having more meaningful interactions. Rather than replying with 'This was insightful", “I disagree because…” or “that was really funny” You just make a number go up or down.
I generally upvote stuff to reward engagement and effort. Anything I pass by that looks like a creative work someone is putting forth themselves I’ll upvote. Also pretty much any response to anything I post or comment on. Often times comments I respond to as well.
I only downvote utter bullshit, i.e. people spouting things that are categorically not true, or bad faith arguments, or just people being argumentative in general when there’s no reason to be so.
I don’t give enough of a flying fuck if we hypothetically disagree, only if your position is so odious that it is in fact literally objectively wrong or intentionally misleading.
Or utterly useless bots that no one asked for. I’ll downvote those, too, but I haven’t seen too many of them anymore in the corners that I regularly haunt.
largely agree with this
- good faith arguments or just good quality comments or posts get upvoted
- lazy comments or posts get nothing
- bad faith or unnecessarily combative or ill intensioned comments get downvoted.
I almost never downvote a post, I’ll either block the instance, community, or person instead - I want a good feed
I will never understand the blocking mentality. Never done it. Online since BBS days and it has not been something I even consider doing.
The things I see are fine. People change their minds. I am never forced to engage with anyone thing I don’t want to anyways that’s what scrolling down is for.
Subscribe to what I like and simply ignore the rest.
Ya I get that, I just would prefer to see some content over others by a lot, like I don’t care that bdsm stuff is on the internet, but I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to see furry art, zero problem with it existing, just don’t want it in my feed that’s all.
I wouldn’t see any of that because I don’t subscribe to it.
But I get that use case, block is the new name for filter I suppose.
I was thinking mostly about blocking commenters.
Ahh ya so I try to browse all communities, because who knows some new community might be interesting and I don’t want to miss it
Yeah I just occasionally click on communities and browser them without posts in an alphabetical list.
Totally makes sense.
For all that I talk a big game about “contribution to healthy discourse”… I use them as “I want other people to see this” and “I don’t want other people to see this.”
That’s a good way to think about it because that’s what it does. More people see posts and comments that have more points.
I upvote things I like. I don’t downvote things I don’t like, I only downvote lies, misinformation, or harmful takes.
This. Upvote what you like, is helpful, particularly informational or positive input. Downvote insulting content, lies, bad faith…
This and I also downvote people clearly being dicks. To me it’s not all about the content, but also how you decide to discuss something and how willingly you are to have a reasonable discussion.
That was the original intention of the voting system, but most people don’t read and follow the rules and guidelines, and presume the system is about popularity contest.
I consider unwarranted dickishness to be a subset of harmful takes
I’m downvoting this because I don’t like it! /s
I think down voting things you disagree with or want to discourage is a perfectly valid way to use them, and better in most cases than responding and further escalating a shit fight.
If something you post gets heavily downvoted, that’s information. You now know that your opinion is unpopular in that community. If you get down voted frequently and it really bothers you, it might be time to do some introspection on what you think or how you present yourself. Not all opinions are created equal, and you’re not entitled to people’s attention.
I can appreciate the opinion that discussion would be better, but I don’t think it’s realistic. Many times bad takes are coming from people who have no intention of listening, and just want to spew hate or argue. Down voting and moving on is a much better use of people’s time than arguing with these people. If for no other reason than preserving one’s mental health. It sends a message without feeding the trolls in other words.
As for how I use them? Funny/uplifting/valuable posts = upvote Don’t get it/not interesting to me = nothing Shit take/spam/obnoxious person/wrong community = downvote
If you get down voted frequently and it really bothers you, it might be time to do some introspection on what you think or how you present yourself.
Or do some reflection on where you’re sharing your thoughts. An anti-AI community won’t respond positively to someone hyping Google’s new image generation model, for instance.
If I’m getting downtown in a community, it’s a sign that maybe it’s not a good fit for me.
Exactly. Read the room in other words!
I upvote things I find interesting. I upvote posts that I comment on. I don’t downvote.
Same here … if I’ve read or looked at something, I’ll just upvote, just to encourage people to post or comment again.
Even if someone says I’m wrong on something or disagrees, I’ll still upvote. I’ve been corrected lots of times in the past (on many other platforms) so I don’t mind being told I’m wrong if I objectively look at my content and see how I was wrong.
The only time I’ll downvote is if I come across blatant hateful, ugly, racist, homophobic, misogynistic crap.
I always make it a point to upvote content on smaller communities I subscribe to; I like to think it helps whoever posted the content to know that despite the very low engagement, people are in fact seeing it and appreciating it.
I down vote things that are factually wrong. If it’s a matter of opinion and I don’t agree, I take no action. If someone is being an asshole, or if their comment/post has absolutely nothing to do with the post/community, I will down vote. I can’t always tell what is AI generated, so I might end up voting some of those, but my preference is to down vote AI generated content and bots.
It’s a Like/Dislike button, and I find it pretentious to treat it any other way.
I upvote nearly everything, helps drive engagement and keep Lemmy healthy.
Its pretty rare that I downvote, guessing a 90/10, 0or 95/5 split
I rarely downvote, only for people being assholes, misleading content, AI slop and so.
For articles, if I think it needs attention I upvote. If it’s garbage shit I down vote. For comments, I usually use as agree or disagree.
I upvote when I think other people should see the post as well. I downvote when the content is bigoted or similar and doesn’t add to the conversation.
Upvote: Things I like or find interesting, other people’s OC and effortful posts (even if it’s not my thing), genuine stuff that makes the community thrive
Downvote: People who are super rude, antisocial content/communication, reportable stuff, misinformation.
I have a couple of users blocked.
There’s no aggregate karma on lemmy, so farming is meaningless.
Upvote posts and comments that are particularly interesting/valuable/topical/insightful, which often means that I agree. Downvote those that detract from meaningful discussion. Sometimes downvote on disagreement is a fine line, and it mostly depends on why I’m disagreeing with the author. If their opinion is racism, sure they get a downvote, and if they’re particularly abusive maybe also a report. But if they just see things differently that’s neutral.
I probably only vote on about 5% of the content I read, and engage in comments in 1%. As a poster I expect similar numbers from others. I don’t get over collecting fake internet points, but it’s important feedback to understand that people out there are reading your content and that someone finds it meaningful or useful enough to upvote. If you were just yelling into the void with no engagement, you’d likely stop pretty quickly.
I’m vaguely aware that I’m feeding the LLMs of tomorrow, but I engage in the fediverse to interact with humans today, and it’s important to see that some humans get value from the content. Formulating comments is a lot more effort than clicking the up arrow, and there’s often no real need to elaborate - 20 “I agree!” comments would just be annoying for everyone to read.
I try to not downvote subjective opinions and download objectively wrong posts and comments
