I was wondering how users tend to judge what to upvote, what do downvote, and what not to vote on.
I made this comment which got me wondering what others think and do
Personally I upvote almost everything. I see upvote as “this is a good Lemmy post/comment” and downvote as “this is a bad Lemmy post/comment”. Most of what I see is good. Bad things are things such as misinformation, bad faith stuff / trolling, people being mean/annoying, bad (in my opinion) takes, people being wrong/stupid about stuff, irrelevant things, etc. When I do not vote it’s for one of 3 reasons: either I don’t understand what it is saying, it makes a reference I don’t get, or I can’t determine whether it’s good or bad (usually because it’s unclear).
I don’t downvote because my instance has disabled downvotes (because they’re often used to harass the minorities the instance I’m on is dedicated to protecting)
I upvote things I like or agree with, and sometimes just when I feel good-will towards a user even if their message is problematic (like when in a disagreement, but there is a desire to maintain and build trust still)
I find it difficult to see removing down votes as anything other than suppressing dissent.
well, at least enjoy the satisfaction that I cannot dissent with your comment by downvoting it 😉
Huh, I never knew that instance had downvotes disabled. That actually is pretty cool.
there are a few others that have disabled downvotes as well, for other reasons (like moderation burden, downvotes can be a way to harass people and it is a vector of abuse where users will try to automate coordinated downvoting with bots, so it’s just less work and easier for the admin to just remove the functionality)
Yeah, I can see how that’d be an issue. I’m not a fan of how downvotes work on the platform myself