Downvotes = “I disagree” or “this is bad and you should feel bad”?
I think I’ve settled on the latter. Disagreement is maybe best communicated by the absence of an upvote? And downvotes work best when they signal something that is just off base, and while not reportable, is not appreciated at a broad cultural level.
I think voting based on quality of content (and NOT whether you agree with it) is the best approach for healthy discussions. If somebody is a low effort troll, then for sure downvote (and maybe even consider reporting).
OTOH, if somebody makes a well written and thoughtful post about why Totoro is the best Ghibli movie ever, and meanwhile you think Totoro is not even in their top 3, then I would still recommend NOT downvoting 😃
Yes. This.
Upvoting things you disagree with but are well put and compelling is the litmus test in a way.
Vote for quality = a better platform
Vote for personal appreciation = a toxic platform ?
The problem is that there's no way to enforce this in practice. All of these conversations about voting culture, with examples and pontificating always just come off as "everyone who drives slower than me is a grandpa, everyone who drives faster than me is a lunatic."
Downvotes will always be an "I disagree" button no matter what anyone wants or thinks.
Low effort trolls want downvotes though. You’re better off just ignoring them.
For me, downvote typically means either "this adds nothing to the discussion" or "this was made in bad faith"
Yes. I upvote stuff I disagree with constantly. That's because I view the purpose to promote content that furthers discussion.
Downvote = "I think this should be less visible than it is."
Generally for disagreeing with something that's pretty petty.
But if it's verifiably misinformation, downvotes are more than warranted.
Agreed. The function of the down vote is to deprioritize that post/comment. People should use the down vote when they want to deprioritize that post/comment.
Its both. It will never, not be both. This idea that there should be some rule that we have to up vote things that we disagree with because it's well written is cope from people that needs to go outside.
Comments get downvoted because it failed to convince people to agree with the comment and that makes it a bad comment.
But as an intelligent person, you can also discriminate between something that doesn't convince you personally, and something that is completely without value or irrelevant.
When you refrain from downvoting in the former instance, you contribute to a more healthy discussion. Not every person that I disagree with is a bad person; similarly, not every comment that I disagree with is a bad comment.
Yes, it really bugs me when I get downvotes but not one single comment articulating what they are not liking or what they disagree with. I could not care less about the score, I'm here for discussion and also debate. I often find when I ask "why the downvotes" it's because people misinterpreted what I wrote (my fault, I need to be clear) or I used info they didn't have (something I know because of an area of interest that I think it's common knowledge in that group). Both can "fixed" by discussion.
I don’t disagree.
But
and that makes it a bad comment.
Goes too far. That a social media comment is the limit of what is possible as far as persuasion and learning goes, especially on difficult or controversial topics, is plainly wrong. Mind shifts can be hard work. And so there’s plenty of space in which a comment can be making a worthwhile point, politely and clearly, without it ever being able to be persuasive, just by the nature of the audience and topic.
There's also low-effort/value comments that agree with your worldview but are bad contribution to the debate. Especially on controversial topics.
I'm sure there will always be lots of updates for things that shit on the opposition, especially when the majority thinks the opposition is morally and intellectually corrupt, but I'd rather those posts/comments be demoted (or e.g. relegated to a shitposting community) so healthy discussion can happen. And the truth can be seen more fairly.
As a side note: some of Reddit's majority opinions which I broadly agree with, I found myself shifting away from, because most of its supporting posts are stupid arguments. And some of the opponents I've gained sympathy for, because whenever I check the source for hate against them, it's ill-founded. I tried not to take much opinion from Reddit anyway, but I love it when good debate frames the truth more clearly.
=This is Bad content, which i want to see less of
I think this is very close to the most solid answer possible. Like
This is Bad content
I agree completely with this bit. Downvotes are inherently subjective, as is the concept of Bad content. But to make a choice of what to downvote, someone has to identify something worth deeming downvotable, and screw it, that's a good way to deacribe what the majority of what falls under that umbrella.
The next bit is where I'd make a correction.
which I want others to see less of
You can't unsee that bad content, it's too late. And you can't guarantee that downvoting will dissuade its continued presence. The only correlation between the two involves an expected emotional attachment between the posters of the bad content and their scoring outcome, and that's not always here nor there. Bad content posters can be persistent.
But downvoting it has an immediate effect on the visibility of the Bad content for other people. It also labels that content. Doing so, puts it away from other people's eyes, and tells others that someone thinks it should be put away. Maybe they'll come to agree or disagree with that downvote, maybe it'll lead to you seeing less content. Also no guarantee. But that immediate effect, the visibility and the score, can not be taken away.
In either scenario, it's a communication tool. It may relate to your wishes for content, but mechanically, its impact is felt by a third party.
Dude wrote an entire essay for my two-sentence comment.
Valid points, though
Downvote = other people probably should ignore this post. It isn't likely to do any good for them. Upvote = hey, everybody! Look at this!
Downvotes = “I disagree” or “this is bad and you should feel bad”?
I withhold downvotes until it means "this is disinformation, or misinformation so wrong-headed it could mislead those new to the topic"
Same, and also "this has already been said in this thread. You should have upvoted the existing comment." Basically a tool to improve signal-to-noise ratio of the discussion.
Neither; downvotes = this doesn't contribute to the topic and/or doesn't contribute anything relevant to the conversation.
That's what a lot of us agreed it was for a long time ago, but most people use it as an "I don't like this", or "I disagree" button. Some people even use it as an "I don't like you personally" button. There were a few times on Reddit when I got into an argument with someone and they went through my profile and downvoted everything they saw until they got bored.
i will downvote anythong that is false, misleading, doesn't contribute to the conversation or classic reddit humor adding to the same joke
I stick to the original "Reddiquette" which I wish more people stuck to or even fucking READ for a start.
Downvotes were meant for off-topic and spam nonsense. They were NEVER meant for disagreement. If you disagreed with someone you were encouraged to comment in response. It fostered a much better and interesting community with people of differeing views not afraid to voice their dissent.
You would literally get right and left-wingers having heated but civil debates with each other and neither would be getting heavily downvoted. Can you imagine that happening on Reddit nowadays?
When Diggers and the general populace jumped on Reddit downvotes just turned into a spiteful and underhanded way of saying "Fuck your opinion and I don't feel like justifying it".
This resulted in echo chambers where people were too afraid to voice their true opinions cos they'd get downvoted and at worst banned from the subreddit by over-zealous mods who'd forgotten what downvotes were for.
I have a personal theory that this accelerated the polarisation of politics across the English-speaking world. Maybe if Republicans* didn't get so heavily downvoted they wouldn't have turned to places like The_Donald and 8chan to vent in like-minded echo chambers. They could discuss things without getting villified and have their views challenged in a civil manner.
*NB. Shouldn't matter but to be clear I'm a left wing Brit. I'm just using Donald Trump/Democrats as a will known divisive issue.
I LOVE Lemmy because it has the oldschool Reddit vibe where people will disagree and neither person is downvoting the other. They just have civil discussion. Much better!!
Personally I NEVER downvote unless it's utterly meaningless, pointless or just downright spam. I recently added one more trigger for me to downvote though: Low effort bullshit like "This" or puns that add ntohing to the conversation except to garner upvotes for their 'comedic' value.
There's difference in disagreeing in opionion and thinking someone is just wrong. In the latter case, I find it reasonable to suppress their comment using downvotes.
This right here. For a while after moving to Lemmy, people were using voting like this. Now it's back to downvotes everywhere on things people disagree on.
Originally up- and down votes were intended to crowd source filtering and rating content in a community. So voting up for things you want to see more of and vote down spam or content that is unfit for the community. But people will tend to upvote things they agree with and downvote those they deem wrong - I also find myself doing something like that. I now try to follow these rules:
It helps that lemmy currently shows the number of up and down votes instead of just the score, it gives a bit more inhibition before downvoting stuff.
On Reddit I only ever down voted things that were actually bad advice. Things people shouldn't do.
Disagreement is maybe best communicated by the absence of an upvote?
There is a quote "You can not not communicate" but on the internet you can. If I get no upvotes, I don't know if no one has seen it or people actively ignored it and it's a bad advice to feel disagreed on when no upvotes.
I personally feel frustrated when I get downvotes but no comments because I don't know why I'm downvoted. Some instances here in the lemmyverse (like mine) don't have downvotes enabled so I don't even see downvotes.
I think it's best to engage in a conversation if you disagree in a constructive way and downvote without comment if you feel this is beyond help.
If I want an article to be read by others, I give an upvote. I'll downvote if I don't want it. It has nothing to do with my side of the idea or the event. For example, a rape news was shared. My upvoting does not mean that I support the incident, it just means that it will come to the fore so others can see it.
Upvotes mean "people should see this". Downvotes mean "there is no reason for anyone to see this".
Yep. I'll up vote news of a hate crime or something, but downvote things that are directly hateful.
Context always matters and a lot of the big sites fail to understand the difference between talking about things like racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia and somone being those things.
Don't feel bad. I down vote things I don't want to see. Others much want to see that but I am putting my 2cents in.
This isn't reddit getting downvoted won't mean you can only post every 10mins. You can post as much as you want
Downvote = “I think this should be a little lower in the sort priority”
It’s the opposite of an upvote.
A downvote for me is: this is content i don't want in my feed
Up = I like this
Down = I hate this
If you have more ups than downs: The viewers commonly liked it.
If you have more downs than ups: The viewers commonly hated it.
It's simple and it's how it's always worked, and likely will continue to work, regardless of any deeper sentiments some people may have about it.
I wish there was a new button that simply meant "I have no opinion on this one way or another." But I guess that's simply non-engagement.
I use it as:
up = this should be here
Down = this should not be here
Course I have my own biases but. I don't want to see people get downvoted for saying things I don't like just because I don't like it. Also anyone who downvotes honest questions is just being mean.
I dont believe you.
It doesn't have to be a button. Just let users see how many other users saw their comment. If a user scrolls into the comments section and stops on my comment for a second or two, that counts as a read.
Alternatively, tally up the total number of user-seconds spent viewing my comment. Or maybe an average. Just something that lets me know I'm not a ghost!
100% you should feel bad. I hope everyone i downvote cries themselves to sleep
Sooo ... if this is sarcasm I'm not sure I quite get it? People shouldn't be so sensitive about downvotes and the like?
Are upvotes for agreement ok though? Or should upvotes be reserved for quality content?
Yep. As said by @sunaurus@lemm.ee it was the concept I was reaching for I think.
The thing is, downvotes mean whatever the person downvoting feels like they mean. Personally I don’t downvote anything, only upvote.
It would be interesting to have a bot that looks for bad actors—by that I mean users who abuse the downvote and do not use it the way the community agrees that it means. And have a mod review and take action if necessary.
Depends on what kind of post it is.
General discussion threads, sure - 'up' = 'good content', 'down' = 'irrelevant'. Irrelevant could be because it's not to do with the matter at hand, it could be hateful, trollish, whatever.
Post asking for a specific fact, like in ye olde askahistorian? Up = correct, down = incorrect. Doesn't matter how well written or how good the intent is, downvoting for disinformation.
One of the things that Slashdot got right was being able to upvote / downvote with a reason. (Perhaps only being able to upvote / downvote occasionally too, which stops brigading.) Made it possible to filter on why things were good, save ruining your fake internet points when you were mistaken about something as opposed to being an arsehole.
Interesting! I’ve kinda thought this myself, that having a sort of sentiment meta data attached to online actions would be an interesting way to go, kind of as a substitute for the body language and gestures we use and pick up on in real life.
Enter: the wheel of upvote options and the multidimensional spectrum of downvote options. Don't worry, I'll ask Google to analyse my life history and feed it into the emote-i-vote.
Come to think of it, I like the attach emoticon thing in GitHub (and lots of other social media? But I've liked it in GitHub) to get a relatively convenient and concise expression of "I like your message in this particular(ish) way"
I think wrong information and rudeness should get downvoted, nothing more.
Let say there is a news story of a horrible event. I will up vote it so people see it and read it to learn. I am not up voting it because I am promoting the horrible event.
I enjoy reading thoughtful content that I disagree with. I downvote based on perceived intent of the comment or post. If it’s just mean, hateful, trolling, wildly off-topic, or anything like that it will get a downvote.
Somewhat vague but I think of it as "this doesn't belong here." It seems to be the most fitting - something could not belong because it's irrelevant, or because it's rude, or because nobody wants to see it. All up to interpretation, I suppose, but better that than a hard rule than I either don't feel good about sometimes or that prevents me from downvoting things that probably should be downvoted but don't explicitly break that rule.
The only times I've really been downvoting is if someone is giving out completely incorrect information, like in a support thread or something, and confusing matters. It's not a personal judgement or anything, just trying to keep things clear for the person asking the question.
If I disagree with a comment, well no biggie. Sometimes it's worth discussing like adults and sometimes it's just a subjective opinion. If it's offensive, I'll report it and block the user.
Everyone will come up with their own metric and the results will be an average of both and other things.
I think we have some scope to try to establish and monitor cultural norms.
Depends on what kind of "I don't agree". If somebody asks for people's favorite food, I'm not going to dislike all other answers... But if it's a more serious question, and an answer just has a really bad take that I don't agree with, that's getting a dislike.
Sad part of the design is that I need to interact with a post to get it off my feed so if it's an some stupid meme or whatever i just downvote and move on to clear up all the repeats.
The setting is off by default but you turn on hide post after interaction in the settings.
On Reddit, up/down was intended to be used as relevant or not relevant. Then Facebook came around with the Like button and changed the standard.
Coming from the perspective of Digg, Reddit was about sharing external content and giving something an upvote was used to promote that content while a downvote was used to discourage that content from being seen. It was democratic in that the users were relied on for ranking posts without the need for moderators having to establish rules and remove things.
Then Reddit employed an algorithm and most people visit Popular and All making it a shitstorm of irrelevance. People upvote stuff they like that has absolutely no reason to be posted in a sub. Never mind everything that's gone on with Reddit in recent months, it's users' inability to properly use the upvote / downvote buttons that has caused the site to become absolute trash.
Here, we have the added tool of the Star to indicate that we like something while at the same time downvoting it because it's not relevant to the sub. The problem is that the vast majority of people don't want to think about or put any effort into anything. At this point, anything that looks like a thumbs up is getting selected because they like it.
If you disagree with someone, you shouldn't do anything unless you have something to say. Engage with them in conversation and express your point of view - this is "social media". If others feel your point is relevant you should get an upvote; if you're off topic you should get a downvote.
Reading over the other comments here, I think most people are expressing a similar perspective. It's about rankings, not feelings.
I've always been partial to "irrelevant to the discussion".
For example: if a post is detailing increased temperatures compared to a previous year: ✅ Comment saying "This is most likely an effect of global warming" ✅ Comment saying "This paper is potentially biased as the paper/publication is sponsored" ✅ Replies to these comments discussing the legitimacy of their claims (for or against them) ⛔ Comment which is promoting their own content (even if related) with no discussion of the linked post ⛔ Intentionally incendiary comments. "Liberals will say it's climate change I bet." ⛔ Completely off topic. "Ok but guys let's talk about SCARING THE HOES for a second here. Straight flames."
Too many people use a downvote as "I disagree" when a comment may actually provide a different viewpoint and - as long as it's respectful and open to counterpoints itself - can be a nice addition to the discussion.
Downvotes = disabled on my instance
Haha yep.
And beehaw too. Wonder how many others.
I feel like this is a good approach. Honestly an invisible voting system might be better cause how many up or down votes something has prevents others from fully forming their own opinion.
I think someone else mentioned the same here, but as I've browsed down the opinions, I wonder if it's good for different communities to have their own subculture on what votes mean.
For sure, outsiders dropping by might vote 'counter-culturally' and unhelpfully, but you can get a general sense of understanding in a community.
For r/all-alike stuff I'm sure things are different.
Downvote for bad technical advise, I think the person is a bad actor/bad faith argument, or if the person turns hostile to ad hominem attacks. I try not to downvote if I'm putting the effort into debating someone.
edit: for clarity
Yeah if someone say something I disagree with but isn't factually wrong I'll just leave it be.
More like get this shit outa here
I only downvote hateful stuff or obvious bots and spam. The same as I do on anything with upvotes and downvotes.
Upvoted. Feel bad that i disagree. 😵
I like it to gauge what the general consensus is. Agree or not.
It's weird how nobody ever goes off on these philosophical treatises about what a downvote is REALLY supposed to be for unless they copped a shit ton of downvotes for their awful takes
To quote the famed philosopher T. Soprano: "Alright, but you gotta get over it."
I don't that's entirely fair or true across the board. I haven't received a ton of downvotes or anything, but realised that I didn't know what to do with the downvote and that some were clearly using downvotes where I don't think I would have.
For my, it was more sympathetic. I was thinking about people who do get downvoted and whether I'm ok with that.
I think of it like a digital facial expression. Upvoting is akin to smiling or conveying some other positive emotion like affirmation or understanding (even if the subject matter is inherently negative). Downvote is the opposite- someone says something irl that makes you frown or grimmace, or you know they're telling you a lie, your expression can convey that without a single word. Here, downvote.
There's no real etiquette - if you feel like you want to give an up or down vote, just do it and don't put too much thought into it.
I generally don't downvote unless somone is being bigoted or hateful.
There's some part of my brain that applies display:none to the upvote/downvote function on every platform.
So if I don't vote on your content it's not because I hate it. My brain is just wired to automatically edit out anything that's not content. Mostly this means ads, but voting features seem to have been caught in the net too.
I feel this very much, but yet I've upvoted you... The brain is weird.
And I downvoted because "I have special eyes" posts are cringe.
Hmm interesting question never thought about it, maybe both/varies from post to post
The latter. If it's just disagreement a quick reply is best, and sometimes it gets worked out just fine.
No
Lol, point taken. It has to be an actual rebuttal, and I guess that does take time. Downvoting everything you don't immediately agree with seems like a bad policy, though.
Downvote = I disagree
I disagree so I gave you a downvote
.