(For instances that allow downvotes, obviously.)
I ask because if I see a post with more than a handful of downvotes assigned to what otherwise seems like decent content, I consider it a yellow flag, and I’ll often go to the comments section to try and discover why the post is controversial.
Sometimes I’ll find it’s truly a matter of personal disagreement (such as on a hot-button topic like veganism), however I’ll often discover the downvotes are there for a more objective reason, such as misleading or outdated info in the post. On many occasions this additional digging has led me to change what would have been an upvote from me to no vote or even a downvote. On the flip side, if I see a post that I like but that looks a bit fishy, if it has hardly any downvotes relative to the upvotes, I’ll assume that it has passed Lemmy approval (a kind of Cunningham’s Law I guess) and is therefore probably okay (e.g. I see a reference in a ScienceMemes or HistoryMemes post that seems too bonkers to be true).
So what about you all? Do you use the upvote: downvote ratio to guide how you interact with posts?
Pretty much the same. I’ll look at the post or headline or whatever and make my assessment of if I want to see more like that. If I see downvotes already there tho, I try to figure out why. Sometimes the post does turn out to be spammier or more controversial or more factually wrong than it first appeared.
If it’s generating discussion, I upvote, regardless of how many votes it has.
If I participate in the discussion, I upvote, regardless of how many votes it has.
If people are participating in the discussion in good faith, I upvote, regardless of how many votes each comment has.
It’s the only way to boost engagement in the community, by pushing quality discussions and posts to the top.
Also my instance disabled downvoting so I don’t do that.
If I dislike a comment but notice that it has a decent amount of upvotes, I’ll reread it in case I’ve misconstrued what the OP was actually saying.
Not really. If I like it I upvote it, if I dislike it I downvote it. If it seems interesting I’ll click it, if not I won’t. And if I got something to say I’ll say it.
I prefer this account most of the time as it’s on an instance that doesn’t allow downvotes. It’s eye-opening what kind of comments and content get highly upvoted on Lemmy - it’s not all good. In fact, seeing some of the mass amounts of upvotes on sexist type comments is incredibly disheartening. It initially turned me away from Lemmy when I first joined.
Sometimes I do like to hop onto a different account and I utilize downvotes then. Usually try to save downvotes for vile opinions or things that don’t contribute to the conversation. It can be a good head’s up if a post is worth a curious glance. Hopping into the drama can be fun here and there.
Just to feel the room’s temperature, but I always speak my mind regardless (it’s Lemmy, if you’re not honest here where are you honest?). Unless I’m missing something, the post stands by itself (or not) regardless of votes.
I hide comment scores with Ublock Origin and also leave the sorting on old so sorting isn’t a clue. It’s a lovely world where only the logic of the argument is of any importance.
Sometimes I’ll turn off the filter and good arguments are downvoted to oblivion because they don’t instantly disparage ai or whatever. It also happens a lot that someone who is being completely petulant and who is clearly adding nothing to the discussion is upvoted to the stratosphere because the comment is in line with the lemmy hivemind. Quite jarring and clearly indicates the uselessness of scores.
nah… didn’t care on yt with starts, didn’t care on Reddit with arrows, don’t really care here either.
up/down votes aren’t a good metric… it’s like trusting yelp, except no bribes. people gonna hit whatever and do whatever.
About the same.
It depends a lot on the topic. For topics that are polarizing and those where I know I disagree with the popular sentiment, I’m more lenient with downvotes. But it’s always at least a yellow flag to have a lot of downvotes.
Nope, this is the most I’ve ever thought about it.
