Do you rarely vote on anything at all?

Do you upvote when something is interesting but rarely downvote? Do you downvote when something isn’t interesting but rarely upvote?

Do you vote to signal agreement or disagreement?

Do you vote to encourage insightful replies regardless whether you agree or not?

I rarely interact with the voting system on sites, aside from the occasional missclick, that is. While I think it can be useful when searching for answers or tutorials, especially on topics you’re not familiar with and can’t judge competence vs BS, I think in more social spaces it leads to both echo chambers and karma farming, and it feeds social media addiction by giving you little validations for every upvote you receive.

I also think it prevents people from having more meaningful interactions. Rather than replying with 'This was insightful", “I disagree because…” or “that was really funny” You just make a number go up or down.

  • porcoesphino@mander.xyz
    6·
    16 hours ago

    I upvote if I want to promote the behaviour and downvote for the opposite. When I downvote I try to leave a comment saying why, if I think they’ll read it and be interested. Sometimes those comments are very unpopular and I get a chance to reevaluate my position.

    For shared information like links (which are most of the posts I see for the communities I’m in) I upvote if I think it is important for people to see or interesting and downvote if I think there is important context missing, it’s misleading (or sometimes if the source is) or is someone spamming.

    For commentary (so some posts) I upvote / downvote based on how much I agree. If I have something to add I’ll add it but if I don’t then “me too” isn’t a meaningful interaction to me.

    Mixed links with commentary annoy me a bit since you can usually spit them. And same for long posts. But, I’m not going to downvote or anything, I’ll just avoid the interaction unless some part of it is exceptional.

    A peeve of mine is when it seems like people are downvoting links / posts when it seems like the downvotes are because people disagree but also seem to think it’s important to be aware of. Say, a recent Trump action. Obviously it’s hard to guess intent but votes for subcomments can make it seem like a lot of people do this sometimes. But… a vote without an explanation leads to reading tea leaves

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      3·
      15 hours ago

      Similar but I don’t leave comments.

      • if someone is sufficiently trolling or argumentative, or blatantly misinforming I’ll downvote.
      • if a comment adds value to the discussion, I’ll upvote it, even if I disagree with it
      • if it’s a response to my post, be more generous
    • StinkyFingerItchyBum@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      12 hours ago

      I do this when I’m sober. When I’m drunk I downvote everything to frustrate LLM and profiling. When I’m on weed I upvote everything for the same reason. When the pills kick in, I up and downvote chaotically because I’m out of my gourd. On shrooms I don’t vote because my phone is always just out of reach as I swim ineffectively in the rainbow coloured vacuum of space.