No Stupid Questions

I downvote when I think something is contributing noise to its community rather than signal.

I don't get that - if a mod gets mad about downvotes they can hide them. They did that on the old NSFW, maybe it has to be instance-wide?

It's not something that would ever have occurred to me. I suppose if the Cocktails was being brigaded by abolitionists, or Hair getting brigaded by salty bald guys or something I'd be touchy, but overall I've found Lemmy to be pretty chill, so it hasn't come up.

I downvoted you.

yeah, I don't understand when people get hot against downvoting. Sure, it sucks if people don't like what you post, but people need to be able to voice both agreement and disagreement. I mean, in real life, if you're in a situation where you're not allowed to disagree, merely demur or agree, it's usually considered toxic. It's not healthy, at any rate. Making silence the only "no" allowed doesn't work because silence is usually taken as a softer form of agreement. And while people are usually allowed to comment negatively, this isn't great because people will usually want to avoid that unless they're in the mood for a fight. Not everything is worth an argument, and downvoting allows people to give their opinion without having to dwell on the post or comment in question. Allowing for some 'unfair' downvotes works because the majority will be for more rational reasons, like for posts that are cruel, wasting space, deliberate misinformation, and so on.

The other thing too is that people seem to forget we're not on Reddit, where the voting mechanism was used against people, whereas here only your own voting patterns are reflected upon you. I mean that we don't have the karma system which did make the voting a problem. Downvoting in the fediverse isn't going to affect the other person's ability to post again elsewhere. I can understand people getting very hot about downvotes if they had bad experiences on Reddit and assume the system works identically here (again, it doesn't! Although feddit.online (or PieFed?) will remove your ability to downvote if your ratio hits 0, and you can upvote some stuff and get your downvotes back :V ). I do wish documentation was clearer/easier to find. Gets a little confusing how each instance is a wee bit different, plus we say Lemmy, but there's also PieFed, and then there's also the rest of the Fediverse...

Yeah, in that manor it's somewhat like Reddit. Even if you have a clear and explained opinion that isn't the narrarive the masses are trying to push you get down voted into oblivion. Once you get a few down votes, then everyone just goes with the mob mentality that it's automwticqlly bad regardless.

An example would be abortion. I'm pro choice, but I could see how you could argue pro life as a valid opinion, even though I don't agree with it. I'd get lambasted because I'm not hard pushing that pro life is the worst thing in the world ect.

Lemmy reflects real life, I taught for 20+ years and I can tell you in my experience most people think they're incredibly smart and have the solution to everything. Once you challenge them with a valid question or give any pushback, you're called racist, fascist, islamiphobe, ect usually because they're just repeating something they heard from someone, possibly a lot smarter than them (sometimes not), and they never really formed that idea/opinion on their own and don't actually understand it beyond parroting it.

I am a Piefed user. My default settings auto-hide things downvoted by a certain threshold. I have notice that this by default hides a lot of bigotry or cruelty from me, so I don't bother changing the setting that collapses replies downvoted past a certain threshold. I think a lot of other are the same, or they just never change it because a lot of people do not mess with default settings.

I know that some people downvote as a simple dislike button. Alright, irrelevant, I don't care. But I also know that some do it because you broke the norms of the community or the rules or did something mean and cruel. There are enough trolls and dislike-downvoters out there that the most uncontroversial and on-topic post will still get downvotes. 10 downvotes to 200 upvotes is nothing to worry about. But 20 downvotes to 20 upvotes? Hmm, did I just post an unpopular thing and so I can ignore the downvotes, or did I make a big faux pas and was 1) unintentionally but unfortunately bigoted 2) cruel to another user 3) breaking a community norm/rule I failed to notice 4) perceived as spamming/self-promoing/LLM output (I write my em dashes with my own two hands on my keyboard) 5) anything else that people give deserved downvotes for because you're mucking up the discussion? Time to do some self-examination. There is noise in downvotes, but there's some meaningful signal too.

And the people who seem too sensitive about downvotes might be picking up on the signal, going "what did I do? I didn't do anything wrong, why are you mad at me?" and getting upset over that. I can certainly understand where they might be coming from if they poured their heart out and got a bunch of unexpected downvotes. Or if they are having a really rough day or something. "Is my picture of a pear really that offensive that people would downvote it? Or did I just get my post collapsed and hidden from everyone in !pears or !photography because enough people on All didn't like it, figured that downvote = dislike, and hit the downvote button? Man, (assuming !pears and !photography are moderately active) having the reasonable expectation that people would see and interact with my post, but having that frustrated because it is auto-hidden as if it were spam sure is frustrating." And if this is one of your first posts, at least on Piefed, I think if you get enough downvotes you might get marked with two exclamation points by your username for lots of downvotes. Kind of a caution sign, controversial content or spam or cruel or something. Nobody wants to be slapped with the "take care around this person" sign for doing nothing wrong but posting something the hivemind dislikes but that didn't actually do anything harmful beyond make someone look at a picture they thought was ugly.

I do not care about the fake internet points, but I do care about the consequences voting has on whether your post will get seen or not, and about the humans trying, in some small way, to judge my post through those votes in case I have actually done something objectionable.

I thought we are above Reddit with petty clamouring for points.

I mean both in reddit and lemmy the concept of downvotes was never meant to be a "agree" or "disagree", even "like or dislike". It's meant to be a "good for discussion" vs "hinderance of discussion". AKA lets say we're discussing linux distributions, I come across this.

Person A: I like linux mint, it's much easier to install, I like the defaults and my printer just works with no setup.

Person B: "Linux mint is for noobs, arch ftw"

Within that, as I am personally a die hard fan of archlinux, so in the agree vs disagree system, I should downvote A and upvote B.

But in a discussion based voting, I'd perhaps respond to A with my pro's or cons of arch (though in this situation probably agree if the user in question sounds to be a newer user, though I may still make a case for possibly the pro's of using arch even as a starting distro.

Meanwhile person B, is hostile, gives zero details for WHY anyone should use arch, does absolutely nothing to open discussion or actually help anyone make an informed decision.

What downvotes?

I think they call it “rejection sensitivity dysphoria”

I don't see public voting as usefull. so I don't care on the whole. would love if I could rate everything for me personally and it would adjust my feed based on what I like. bonus if it can take my ratings of users and integrate what they highly rate. maybe drop down things users I rate low highly rate. still would be good to have checkboxes or stuff for how advanced a level it should use the ratings.

I'm on team Scaled myself. I've seen the most harmless, kindest, neutral comments down-voted. I assume some people think it is mandatory to vote. Personally, I try to only use upvotes and only when it is something that I strongly agree with or like. Otherwise, live and let live. I guess my philosophy is mostly "if you don't have something kind to say, don't say it" but more so transformed into my voting philosophy.

I'm gonna echo some stuff, so be aware.

I think it isn't just lemmings/lemmites/lemmizens/piefudlians/mbingos. It's anywhere humans can show support or non support via visible means. Like/dislike, star ratings, whatever. I've not seen any more or less butthurt over votes here than reddit. Maybe less in focused communities where folks tend to directly engage more anyway.

But it comes down to feeling disrespected. Talk to folks in meatspace and ask them about this kind of thing, and if they care about those points, that's what it often is. They feel like some stranger was rude to them.

Secondary to that, there is also he contingent that has an emotional investment when they vote, so they assume the same in others. In other words, they use voting as a dislike button as opposed to a ranking system. So, they think anyone down voting them is just dismissing them via emotional reaction.

Anyway, as long as there's a sorting method based on votes, it has an effect beyond that, so you kinda have to be careful to keep it in mind. Me? Other than fat thumb mistakes, my down voting is for off topic, non useful, off-vibe, or otherwise ill fitting comments and posts, usually. Low effort comments will get one sometimes, if the post matters.

Up votes are similarly doled out, though I'm not above throwing one purely because I like it.

I always say you take the downs and the ups as they come. Don't whine about it, don't pretend ups mean anything about you or even the subject, it's not like you win anything by virtue of votes. Hell, even mentioning them in a thread should be limited because it derails things more often than not.

I'm with you on sorting by new. It's not the downside that you see posts in reverse order, so if there's a dozen posts about the same thing, you won't know it until after you've interacted with the newest, which may not be where the good interactions are. But it's still better than the artificially placed sorting.

Downvotes are a digital shame button. They are community signals for what members consider inappropriate for the community. Like a lot of other shaming techniques, they are usually frustratingly lacking in nuance, prone to pile-ons, and are as often deployed in bad faith as good. Maybe more; I'm not sure how to measure or even define "good faith" and "bad faith". I have a gut feeling for it, but my gut is sometimes wrong.

Getting a lot of downvotes is the social media equivalent of your community telling you "your behavior is unacceptable, be better, or at least different, or shut up". That's a difficult thing to hear from a community; some people handle it more gracefully than others.

Doesn't bother me. In general I feel I've earned my downvotes. I can say stupid shit or phrase in an insensitive manner. Some cases can be good feedback and cause introspection.

By pattern I've think some individuals dislike something (or many things) I've said enough to downvote every post of mine they see. If downvoting me makes them feel good, I'm happy for them. The block button is right there though...

I say what I'm gonna say, and sometimes I get downvotes and other times I don't. I downvote bad takes, trolls, or other things that I feel I strongly disagree with.

Use it as a barometer. If you're constantly getting downvited for your posts, perhaps some introspection will tell you why. Otherwise, don't worry about it. They're fake Internet points and some people just won't agree with you. You can't please everyone.

There are only upsides to going into your settings and hiding downvotes entirely. It's pure masochism to have people's boos broadcast to you in real time.

I think most clients will have an option to display upvotes/downvotes separately.

Voyager certainly does, anyway…

I've no idea, man, I thought made up internet points were dumb on reddit and I thought if they weren't counted cumulatively, here, people would be less dumb over them.

but that was a foolish expectation to have, however grounded in reason it may seem.

Although many people use a downvote for disagreeing with someone without actually adding to the discussion (lazy imo), upvotes were really originally meant to sort out the more important or relevant, or hot topic of the day vs. the regular posts, and downvotes for off-topic posts and replies. Basically a way to moderate the content of the forum without being one.

Dunno, it doesn’t particularly mean anything. You can’t please all of the people all of the time.