(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like veganism), however I’ll often discover the downvotes are there for a more objective reason, such as misleading or outdated info in the post.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?

  • emb@lemmy.world
    16·
    4 个月前

    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 be spammier or more controversial or more factually wrong than it first appeared.

  • DigDoug@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    4 个月前

    If I dislike a comment but notice that it has a decent amount of upvotes, I’ll reread it in case I’ve misconstrued what the OP was actually saying.

  • hansolo@lemmy.today
    4·
    4 个月前

    I do, only to try and suss out if it’s a .ml drama reason for downvotes, or, just, like, something normal.

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    4 个月前

    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.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
    3·
    4 个月前

    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.

  • Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca
    3·
    4 个月前

    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.

  • chunes@lemmy.world
    3·
    4 个月前

    I hide comment scores with Ublock Origin and also leave the sorting on old so sorting isn’t a clue. It’s a lovely world where only the logic of the argument is of any importance.

    Sometimes I’ll turn off the filter and good arguments are downvoted to oblivion because they don’t instantly disparage ai or whatever. It also happens a lot that someone who is being completely petulant and who is clearly adding nothing to the discussion is upvoted to the stratosphere because the comment is in line with the lemmy hivemind. Quite jarring and clearly indicates the uselessness of scores.

  • BigGovernment@lemmy.world
    3·
    4 个月前

    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.

  • LeapSecond@lemmy.zip
    2·
    4 个月前

    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.

  • Pamasich@kbin.earth
    2·
    4 个月前

    I discover posts usually exclusively through my notifications, where upvotes and downvotes aren’t displayed. And I don’t look at them until after I’ve decided what to do with the post.