I used to downvote fairly often on Reddit as a sign to disagree or to push down really disgusting bigoted comments. And to be honest, it became a habit to just downvote without replying. However, now that I’m on lemmy and not Reddit I’ve been actively trying to not instantly downvote things and instead move on or take the time to reply. Has anyone else been trying to do this?
I usually downvote not because I disagree but because I think the comment is low effort or written in bad faith.
I’ve never changed my voting habits. I downvote trolls, hate, spam, and irrelevant content. I never downvote out of disagreement, nor do I use the upvote as an agreement button. I will upvote people I disagree with/am debating with if I believe they are promoting relevant discussion. That is how voting is intended to be used.
I don’t downvote if I disagree but I can’t help but upvotes in agreement. Positive reinforcement is my thing.
They should make it so that replying to a comment automatically disables your ability to downvote it.
Would simultaneously prevent people trading downvotes while they argue back and forth, and encourage people to simply ignore trolls and move on without replying.
If a post contains incorrect information that could be dangerous, you should be able to reply to it and also downvote it so that the incorrect information becomes less visible. For example, if someone said you should pinch your nose and lean your head back when you get a nosebleed. You should be able to correct them and still downvote to make the incorrect information less visible.
Wouldn’t the correction be sufficient? Other users could read it and decide to downvote
I like this idea. Make the karma irrelevant so we don’t get those awful bots or the tit-for-tat arguments
Same. For me, upvote = adding something to the conversation. That’s why I upvote most comments I come across, and rarely downvote people.
Why do you think I joined the instance I did?
Downvoting is useful for pushing irrelevant/spam comments down but it is definitely overused.
Yup, I saw vote manipulation way too much on Reddit. 3-5 down votes on a dissenting opinion right after it’s posted usually tanks even the most well reasoned comment. Accounts like Unidan fly under the radar for so long.
up/down voting is simply a way to help comments you think are good, or agree with, become more/less dominant in the thread.
In some cases, comments are useful to explain why - but often that’s just not the case.
I dislike using downvote as a disagree button. Makes me feel like I’m discouraging people from sharing an opinion that’s different than mine. Even if they are wrong (in good faith) I think I’d rather they feel it is a safe place to be wrong and just own the mistake with an edit or a reply. I know it makes me feel bad (I know I should have thicker skin) when I’m downvoted for having an opinion so I don’t want to make others feel that way.
I agree about not using it just to disagree with an opinion, but I do think the ability to downvote is very important. It just needs to be clear that it’s supposed to be used to reduce the impact of stuff this is either harmful or just distracts from the conversation.
If I’m in a thread talking about what the best flavor of milkshake is, I will absolutely upvote someone claiming that chocolate is the best even though they are “objectively” wrong. They are however engaging with the conversation. On the other hand, someone who comes in saying that they hate milkshakes and prefer lemonade, while they’re not exactly wrong in having that opinion, it would be worthy of a downvote because they’re in the wrong place for that comment.
And then there’s the bots/people that if they lost the ability to ever talk again, the world would be a better place. Never feel sorry for downvoting them.
You have a point. I did find myself downvoting much of what I disagreed with on Reddit. I wouldn’t mind seeing everyone break that habit here. Maybe that should be stickied in some official welcome to Lemmy etiquette post.
I don’t think I have downvoted anyone in Lemmy yet.
But post and comment quality is much higher than Reddit.
I downvoted that post that was an advertisement for crypto
HackerNews has an interesting approach: You can’t downvote comments unless you reach a certain amount of “Karma”, and you can’t downvote posts at all, you can “flag” them, meaning you think they don’t belong here. Flagging doesn’t affect the vote count, but massive flagging does make the post appear lower in the feed, and alerts mods.
This, alongside the tight moderation and zero-tolerance towards flame wars in the comments makes HackerNews one of the best places on the internet imho.
Completely agree on all points.
An additional one I’d argue is a huge part of HN’s success is their employment of a full-time moderator, dang, who does a great job.
No, my up/down vote policy remains the same. I only downvote when I find the comment aggressive, rude or inappropriate. Occasionally I downvote something that is incorrect, but if the reason is that then I don’t downvote to negative values. I don’t think giving an incorrect answer deserves a negative ratio.
As time goes on I’ve been using the down vote more freely. Generally for anything I find low quality. I used to be more restrained with it but now I see it more as another tool that I have to shape the kind of content that gets promoted in the communities I interact with. It’s the only option beyond withholding an upvote to keep low effort posts, trolling, and bigotry out of your communities other than reporting, which shouldn’t do anything unless a post breaks the rules.
I’ve never much voted at all on Reddit, but here I upvote most things.
I think downvotes should be removed completely. They are useless, if a content is harmful or off topic you can just report it. With massive numbers of bots coming to Lemmy I think downvote brigades will be even more frequent. Why do we need to give a score to everything? Let’s just enjoy good content and try to answer to bad one
Come to beehaw, we don’t have downvotes.
Completely agree. Always thought voting was stupid in general.
Well, I already am! Ahaha
I personally found the 5th reply to the same comment thread a little repetitive. Unless there is anything more to add to the conversation a simple upvote/downvote on an already existing thread is probably enough. I don’t think I ever downvoted a post though, just because I sorted by top/hot.
Not really, I’ve only ever down voted something that I thought really needed to be down voted. There is a reason why the down vote buttons exist but they should really only be used when you have a good reason to use them.
It’s funny though, because I have the exact opposite problem, as I up vote pretty much every post I see. While that is better, I understand that it’s probably also bad in it’s own way.
I think it wouldn’t hurt to upvote more than what you normally do on Reddit while you’re on Lemmy. The community here is smaller and it’ll benefit a lot of more people interacted with the site by upvoting.
deleted by creator
The habit I’m trying to break is writing out a response and then not posting it.
