I hate that I always compare Lemmy to Reddit, but Reddit used to have (not sure if they still do) guidelines called “Reddiquette” that included guidelines about upvoting and downvoting. I don’t remember the specifics (and sending too much of my browser traffic to Reddit makes me feel dirty) but one of the guidelines was not to upvote/downvote on the basis of agreement/disagreement with the content.
On Lemmy, I’m honestly a bit lax about upvoting and downvoting at all. (I’m trying to be better about it.) Buy when I do upvote/downvote, I try to do so on the basis of whether the comment/post “adds to” or “subtracts from” the community or conversation. I can disagree with one comment’s take on some subject but still upvote them if they’ve given me a more nuanced perspective on the issue. If they’re just parrotting well-known talking points and not being thoughtful with their posts, I may downvote them evren if I agree with their ultimate stance.
I’m just mostly wondering how folks on Lemmy think about upvotes/downvotes and what implications that has for the content here.
I generally don’t downvote. I report a comment/post if they break rules. I block users that are stupid, mean, comment in bad faith, or are otherwise negative to my experience. I use an app that allows me to apply unique labels to users that only I can see if I am not quite ready to block them but want to be ready on next offense. I.e., someone who uses dog whistle language but I’m not sure it was intentional.
Most of the accounts I made for Lemmy are on instances that disable downvoting. That wasn’t planned on my part, but I don’t mind.