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Notes -
How do you use voting systems on social media/fora? (likes, upvotes/downvotes, etc.)
Personally, I almost only upvote/like posts when I'm sorting by newest - as that's when my upvote has the most marginal value to promote a post - and I virtually never downvote/dislike. Past the point where my individual vote has substantial value to the algorithm, I simply don't care to leave my petty display of opinion. For those of you who do use your votes, here are some questions to reflect upon:
I've never been a real heavy voter, I write a lot more than I vote, and I don't write as much as some. I suppose I feel like I don't enjoy the process of considering "does this comment deserve an upvote or not, does it deserve it more or less than some other comment", and such things. I probably do less than a dozen votes a month I guess. I kind of suspect there's a lot of heavy voters who write little to nothing as well.
I tend to upvote things that really stand out enough to think, I'm glad somebody made that point. Sometimes I upvote things that I think got beat up too hard or aren't popular enough to get a lot of upvotes due to the actual position being argued being not that well liked here. I don't really downvote much, even if I'm disagreeing with somebody, unless what they're saying is really over the top low-quality, though that often gets modded too.
I'd more tend to leave judgement to the masses in any argument I'm in. That's whose sake I'm really arguing for anyways. Getting at least some votes either way is a nice sign that somebody is at least seeing the discussion. I tend more to just not continue if I think the discussion is too low-quality to bother and nobody is watching rather than throw a bunch of downvotes around. Or of course if we end up basically agreeing and it doesn't feel like there's more worth saying.
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I'm selective, about 1 post a day get a vote from me each day, except answers to my comments (I tend to vote these more systematically except for the situation I'll explain on the 3rd question)
Yes. I routinely upvote posts I disagree with because they were well argued, and downvote posts I agree when I feel the poster argued it poorly or in an unproductive way.
Depends on whether I feel my reaction is emotional or not. If I feel like my negative opinion of the post is due to defensiveness about my position, I try not to vote (or I upvote to reward engagement).
No, does anyone do that? I mentally account for it on my posts.
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I'm speaking regarding this site, where there is no algorithm to have to think about:
Generally, I upvote things that I think are good. I downvote things that I think are bad. Many things I don't vote either way on. Having good insights is one of the most common factors behind me thinking it's good.
Occasionally, if I get to something that's been around for long enough to see the results, I'll upvote someone who's been net-downvoted if it doesn't feel like their comment warranted the votes to be as negative as they are.
If I'm in a one-on-one conversation a few levels deep, I think I upvote people sometimes, because it's nice of them to keep engaging with me. I honestly can't recall how often I downvote people when I'm in the midst of an argument with them—I think I'm more likely to do so if it's unnecessarily bad, instead of merely disagreement. I only remove the auto-upvote if I retroactively think what I said wasn't actually very good.
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I use the upvote as a "more of this, please" button and the downvote as a "less of this, please" button. The extent to which this correlates with agree/disagree vs well-reasoned/poorly reasoned probably varies with my mood, though I hope it tends to be the latter more often than the former.
I also try to be a little extra charitable with anyone who tends to buck the zeitgeist of whichever community I'm in, both as a check against my own biases and out of a desire to maintain what intellectual diversity we have left.
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I upvote things that I enjoyed reading for the quality of the argument they contributed, and downvote things that I don't think contributed anything. I try to do so independently of agreement/disagreement, but if I'm honest I probably don't succeed, I am much more likely to downvote someone who cites the dread pirate jim or whoever than I am to downvote somebody who cites Aquinas.
With the addendum that I automatically downvote anyone who tries to work the refs and complain about downvotes. "I know this is controversial..." downvoted. "I'm gonna get a lot of downvotes for this..." downvoted. " "Hot take here, but maybe [obvious statement]..." downvoted. If your comment has the word downvote in it, 99% chance I'm downvoting it.
I will say that I think up/downvotes are one of those discourses that is most full of liars. Almost everyone claims they don't care and it's stupid if you do, but most people do care at least some of the time. Everyone claims that the downvote button isn't a disagree button, or whatever weirdo shit they're claiming, but it obviously is used that way on every forum I've seen with the system in place. Everybody "knows" that upvotes don't mean a quality post and downvotes don't mean a bad post, but periodically you see the argument brought back up that my post has x number of upvotes so some people agree.
The reality of up/downvotes is that people use it primarily with the goal of "I would like the author of this post to feel good" vs "I would like the author of this post to feel bad." The rest of the motivation is largely extraneous.
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Selective/absent-minded.
I fairly-reliably upvote (and rate "high-quality" on the volunteer page) for convincing me of something, which requires that I disagreed - in the past tense. If I disagreed before and still do, well, why would I upvote it? Clearly it was untrue and/or not very convincing if I still disagree!
I mean, it depends. If someone's arguing with me in good faith and politely, no. If someone tells me to jump off a cliff, or someone's being disingenuous, sure, downvotes.
No. It's a community decision to not reward people for upvoting their own posts; the point of this would be negated if scrupulous people started undoing it.
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I only use it to downvote people I disagree with. There's an addon for Reddit that shows total down/upvotes for users, and it's nice to see how many total downvotes I've given them. I wish that was a thing on the motte too.
But I'm not very argumentative so I use it more for specific people rather than in general.
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