(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like veganism), however I’ll often discover the downvotes are there for a more objective reason, such as misleading or outdated info in the post.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?
I notice it because its obvious in the interface but it does not reduce my clickage. heck if the post is so bad the posters history is real bad then I just block them and that is how I keep my feed tidy. almost never have to do that though but if I want to see bad content because I want to curate my own feed. I don’t need others to do it for me.
If a post in new is heavily downvoted, I’ll check the username. Sometimes it’s just Cheese! That lovable rascal, asking stupid questions in the “No Stupid Questions” munis. Sometimes it’s one of a handful of other users, drunkposting or similar.
But if I don’t recognize the name, I know it’s either trolling or drama. Trolling I downvote or report and move on. Drama I wade in and start shitkicking.
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.
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 bd spammier or more controversial or more factually wrong than it first appeared.
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.
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.
I usually glance at it just to see what I’m getting into.
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.
I don’t really know what’s going on in those posts I assume it’s some inside thing I don’t know about and move on since I only use Piefed and none of the other Fediverse or Matrix or anything at the moment. After my last earnest attempt to help someone here which ended in that person saying they were a cop, idk if they were trolling, but I don’t care, don’t catfish people that’s fucking garbage, I usually just ignore low vote long winded stuff now unless it’s something I feel is really genuine.
In my subscribed feed there are three types of posts that are heavily downvoted
- Wrong community, spamming, or stupid takes by the same five people: it’s usually visible from the title and I wouldn’t click on them anyway but the downvotes draw your attention to the community/user so you know to avoid clicking on the post so they kinda help.
- AI news: I guess people are just tired and mass downvoting them. I also wouldn’t click on them cause they’re not that interesting so the downvotes don’t make a difference.
- Posts with a normal looking title in an appropriate community. Downvotes will make me click on them more to see what went wrong as there’s usually an interesting discussion in the comments.
I don’t vote/comment much but this shouldn’t be affected by other peoples’ votes anyway.
I do, only to try and suss out if it’s a .ml drama reason for downvotes, or, just, like, something normal.
I used to, but I try to do better. Lately, I’ve had “blind voting” turned on in my app, so I can only see the score after I’ve voted one way or the other. Basically forces me to read and vote on the submission without being influenced by the current score.
The upvote/downvote thing mostly indicates whether a comment or post agrees with the current popular opinion of the social bubble it’s found inside. I’ve said the same thing in different places and see quite different ratios. It’s not very useful for analyzing the content itself, it just tells you what the room thinks of it.
No, I have disabled seeing votes. Don’t care about it all.
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.
