Asklemmy

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Why vote on posts? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

49 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What is the purpose of voting up or down on? I'm not clear what voting is suposed to achieve?

I never vote up or down on here in the same manner that I never click Like on any social media sites either, I don't see what the intent behind it is.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What is the purpose of voting up or down on? I’m not clear what voting is suposed to achieve?

I suspect content voting systems were a way to attenuate the proliferation of "me too", "this^" or similar posts on forums.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think the primary purpose of likes / dislikes, upvotes / downvotes has always been to generate information that an algorithm can use to sort content, making it easier for the user to sift through millions of articles to find stuff that's "higher quality" or "more relevant" to them.

It's the same idea behind aggregating TV or movie reviews from thousands of people. It allows you to go to sites like Metacritic / Opencritic / Rotten Tomatoes and sort by average rating to find TVs / movies that are more likely to be worth watching.