I can’t say I never downvote anyone but I get into these comment chains from time to time where really no matter what I post whoever I’m talking to downvotes every response but I generally shy away from downvoting even things I dislike. I don’t want to fall into an echo chamber where all I see are only the things I agree with.
I like how it’s easy to see how many up and down votes you have, and not just total like on reddit.
I’m using boost so that doesn’t seem to be a thing. Are you mainly on the website or another third party app?
Mainly Voyager app. Checked the piefed site, looks like it groups together and you need to long press over a vote to see distribution. Well, yeah, that’s worse.
I’ve been here 2-3 years and have up or down voted like 5 times. I just don’t care about it and don’t look at the numbers. Seems to work
People have the right to find my shitty opinion shitty
I’m not arguing that one shouldn’t have the ability to downvote. More so asking if anyone else is generally apprehensive to downvote and more specifically enjoys opposing opinions. I find in most circumstances not just of Lemmy that people are more so looking for agreement aka an echo chamber without any dissent aka an echo chamber.
Because this medium isn’t workable for argumentative conversations.
That begs the question, which medium is.
Reddit, Twitter, Lemmy, etc. Most text based social media
Bruh, read these two comments back to back and see if you’re seeing what I’m seeing.
I get into these comment chains from time to time where really no matter what I post whoever I’m talking to downvotes…
I suggest avoiding such comment chains. If the person you are talking to is downvoting everything you write then you can be certain you are wasting your time.
Don’t downvote for agree or dislike. People are allowed to have differing opinions. I downvote for hate, or bad faith. Very little else.
Similar, if someone is just being mean to be mean.
Yes its stupid because nobody uses them correctly. Its turned into a disagree button instead of “this doesnt belong here or add to the conversation” button.
Oh brother, this guy stinks
Nope, the points are made up and it lets me vent with the smallest possible impact. My voting ratio is highly positive despite not having any hesitation slapping that dislike button, because most things are worthy of up voting.
Yep. Same. It’s not that big of a deal, and it doesn’t even matter that you can go see what I downvoted.
I feel the same. The only times I (intentionally) down vote are for things like spam or people throwing insults around with zero substance. It’s basically a button for increasing/decreasing visibility, and you get much more interesting discussions when it involves views you disagree with.
Here, it is usually because I didn’t say things in the right way some leftists want.
Yeah the political aspect of Lemmy is quite ubiquitous and specific. I’m neither left or right in that I would prefer a science based political system that optimizes HDI, GDPPP, and environmental impact. Any dissent or questioning either way is typically met with downvotes in the respective areas where people have a political leaning right or left.
I do know exactly what you’re talking about.
When you get 5 or 6 responses deep no-one else is reading along it’s just you and the other person. When each of your replies receives 1 downvote it’s obviously from the other person just downvoting everything you say. It’s just petty and childish and I’m not going to stoop to that.
That said, I do downvote comments that I feel deserve less prominence for whatever reason.
As an aside, piefed shows a user’s “attitude” on their profile. Your’s is 98%, mine is 62%. I think that means 62 of my last 100 votes were upvotes.
Idk sometimes I’m reading a long a deep thread and someone who was arguing in good faith starts acting like a petulant toolbag. I will give downvotes then when they are 1-0, but I always kind of worry in the back of my mind that whoever I gave a downvote to will just think it’s the other guy. Other people read deeper on threads than you would think.
Exactly, also thanks for the knowledge. Still new-ish to the fediverse and unaware of all the differences of different locations. I could see that being valid to be public, like if someone is at 4% they’re just miserable.
Not sure why all your comments are being down voted?
I do once in awhile but honestly I hate public voting. I would not mind a private ranking system for the feed that worked the way trustcafe works. I mean peoples public voting won’t effect the way I peruse the feed but yeah some things are bad enough that I feel I should hit the down arrow. I upvote practically everything though as it marks it as read for my feed view.
Not really. I’m (somewhat) apprehensive to downvoting because all votes are public. So, I’m not gonna downvote someone who disagrees with me. I will (sometimes) downvote someone who is being an arsehole. If they keep doing it, I’ll block 'em.
Also, I don’t really get into comment chains to start with. If I say something and someone has something constructive to say, we might have a conversation. That’s fine. But if it’s negative, chances are I just won’t reply to it in the first place. If I feel like maybe I’ve been misunderstood, I might clarify, but I’ll only do that once. If the conversation isn’t going anywhere, I walk. It’s that simple. If you want a punching bag, I think these days you can get ChatGPT to do that.
Does it matter if people know publicly that you downvoted something? I feel like if I’m going to downvote I don’t need to hide it, but then maybe I’ve just got a confrontational streak sometimes.
Social feedback is important. It’s not supposed to feel good, but it IS vital to building a healthy community. You need a sense of social awareness to evaluate your own ideas, even if the responder can’t clearly articulate their opposition.at the very least it says your presentation needs work.
Dialog also isn’t free. It’s easy to demand someone defend their position for you, but real, thoughtful articulation takes time and effort. Many will offer it freely, but not everyone can afford to entertain you and not every argument is worth the effort. Their rejection of your premises stil matter.
A world with only likes should terrify you. It’s the world of the executive surround by yes-men driving his company and the world to ruin. Human life requires friction. Every dislike is your ideas coming into contact with reality.
I use a Misskey platform to interact with the Fediverse as a whole (and especially with Lemmy and the threadiverse), among other reasons, purposefully because I can’t cast downvotes onto others’ contents. Even the “👎” emoji reaction, if I wanted to use it, doesn’t count as a downvote from Lemmy’s perspective.
Yeah, some things I see make me want to downvote, but I prefer commenting and replying as to why I’m disagreeing with that content, instead of treating human beings and their content as numeric computer variables (and as a former programmer, I’m well aware of how communication among living beings can’t be replaced by zeros and ones).
The same applies in the other direction: I’m fond of people who disagree with me by actually stating what/why they disagree, instead of clicking a numeric button. If you ever disagreed with me and took the effort to try and tell me what you disagreed with and why, my sincere thanks for being a human being towards another human being!
After all, we’re gathering on a set of social platforms whose main feature is discussion board and, IMHO, numbers can’t possibly contribute to a discussion, especially open-ended discussions and artistic expression… if social interaction is to be replaced with numeric reactions, communication and content creation becomes pointless: why should I, as a content creator, spend the effort (sometimes I spend literal hours on the same reply/post/comment) composing something if the reaction will be numeric?
Your comment reminded me of this quote: “Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.” - Bertrand Russell
Thanks! I didn’t know about Russell’s ten commandments (maybe it’s widely known but I didn’t know until now), got to learn about these through your comment.
