My experience
A few hours ago, I commented on a post about a nuclear power plant in Georgia on lemmy.ml:
Why expensive nuclear reactors instead of cheaper renewables?
What happened? 8 likes, 11 dislikes
I am totally honest with you now: This makes me sad, because it’s the same behavior that I experienced on Reddit and why I deleted my account there. Different oppinion => Downvote!!! Now my comment has a “-3” score and I could think about deleting it. I won’t do it, but others would maybe do it. IMO, that’s how we create echo chambers.
I want to post what I like to (not what the 60-vs-40-majority of the platform likes me to post)…
So let me ask you these question:
- When do you upvote 👍?
- When do you downvote 👎?
- When do you do neither 👍👎?
My answers:
When do you upvote? 👍
- same opinion as mine
- a post that I think should get more attention
When do you downvote? 👎
- discrimination
- trolls
- irrationality, ignoring facts
When do you do neither? 👍👎
- different opinion => I write a comment instead
- posts I classify as “not interesting”
Upvote: cool!
Downvote: twat.
ignore: mostly
Upvote: I really like that post.
Downvote: Jerk.
Do Nothing: My default
Upvote:
-
I can tell some effort/thought went into the post/comment
-
It contributes to the correct community
-
Is somewhat original
Downvote:
-
It doesn’t belong in the community
-
Is spam
-
Post/comment is rude or contains unnecessarily offensive material
-
It’s a Reddit’ism such as commenting “This” below something they agree with
Neither:
-
It’s a hot take I don’t agree with
-
It’s been posted several times (including cross-posts because I typically sort by all)
-
Upvote = I agree, or I think you’re wrong but you make your point clearly, or you’ve made a high-effort post and I learned something.
Downvote = you’re being rude, off-topic, arguing dishonestly or spreading misinformation.
Neither = move on.
deleted by creator
My own principles: Upvote things more people should see - good points, questions that improve the conversation, things that made me laugh Downvote things that fewer people should see - bigotry, derailing the conversation, bad faith arguments, spam I don’t vote at all on the majority of posts and comments I see
I haven’t seen the post you commented on and I don’t want to take a stand right here right now on asklemmy but I could see how that comment could be seen as derailing in some conversations about nuclear power. There are many other factors than cost when it comes to power sources as well.
I also up vote anything that stimulates conversation, even if I disagree with the comment. Unless it’s click baity or the sorts. What makes lemmy great is the posts with great comment threads that you can get lost in, where people are polite
Upvote: I like this post/comment (for any reason)
Downvote: this post/comment is off-topic/spam, objectively wrong, or contains logical fallacies
Neither: in all other cases
Based on these criteria, I’m very liberal with upvotes and don’t downvote much.
I vote on every post I see. That combined with the “hide read posts” setting means I always see new stuff on the front page.
I upvote any post that I want to see more of in the community it was posted to. Posted game news in a gaming community? You get an upvote, whether or not I actually like or care about that game. I also upvote anything I don’t have any particular reason to downvote. It’s my default vote.
I downvote any post I want to see less of. Clickbait titles or misspellings are an automatic downvote. Off topic posts are always a downvote. And any post that comes off as salty gets downvoted, especially if the post is salty about being downvoted. I just don’t want to see any of that, so I use my vote to discourage it.
especially if the post is about being downvoted
Lemmy itself is different than Reddit. Lemmy itself is pretty much “What if we’d build Reddit, but better?” So, why not taking that as the opportunity to question things instead of copying the Reddit behavior?
I does not matter who you are. There will always be a situation when your have the 33% opinion and others have the 66% opinion. And that’s fine. We are indiviuals and not clones of each other or robots. Imagine, there are 100 people. On Reddit, you’d get 33 likes and 66 dislikes. Now, your comment or post has a score of -33. Some people would delete that post/comment now. New people arrive, see -33 and ignore the comment. The poster of the comment/post will not post his opinion again. But why all that? You don’t need to always agree with the majority… Are we really interested in building echo chambers? Is it really your interest to hide different opinions and hear only what you like to hear?
Sometimes, I ask myself the question “What, if everyone would do XYZ?”… What, if everyone would dislike every other opinion? Be honest: This platform would be toxic AF. I gave probably 1k likes and under 10 dislikes on lemmy so far and I keep going the way of positivity, because I think, in the end, it’s better for Lemmy.
I usually downvote people who are clearly pandering for fake internet points
Fake Internet points that aren’t even centrally counted anymore!
I intentionally upvote a lot here, to show people their posts are appriciated and they are part of a nicer community here.
I mean, the problem with upvotes and downvotes is that at one point they were supposed to have specific uses, but they’re unenforceable, so it’s really just a “here, community, you manage yourself with the numbers”.
Of course, “misuse” of the downvote is rampant, and so you should always interpret them with a grain of salt when you see them, on your posts or otherwise. Just because you got downvoted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the wrong or that you deserved it.
Likewise, just because you got upvoted doesn’t necessarily mean you contributed much to the discussion or that the info you provided is true. So be critical of yourself and your own conduct, and use your best judgment when voting, but at the end of the day, it’s internet points and you should judge a post or comment on its contents and not immediately by its votes.
It’s not really misuse, it’s a thumbs up and a thumbs down, up to the user to interpret how to use. There’s no rule given in the interface when you use the buttons. Oh you’re voting something down does that mean it should be removed from the community? No the app just leaves it up to the users to interpret.
We could change the symbols, amplify and minimize, something like that to make it clearer that it has less to do with your agreement with the idea in the post