Community for asking and answering any question related to the life, the people or anything related to the USA. Non-US people are welcome to provide their perspective! Please keep in mind:
I'm like a drunken sailor with my upvotes.
Fwiw, that all sounds perfectly sober to me?
Maybe go get yourself a drink - I'll tell you what I'll grab one too - and then we'll re-examine in that light? ๐ป
Im upvoting this comment per one of the last bullet points. User insightfully commented about perhaps drinking a beer, heck maybe even two in a way that positively sparked discussion.
Uh oh, and now you've continued it, so I had to upvote you too - will this positivity streak never end? :-P
Reddit's century club taught me the concept of the "courtesy upvote."
Someone replies to one of my posts? Upvote.
Someone replies to one of my comments? Upvote, even if I disagree with them.
Someone makes a post interesting enough for me to comment? Upvote.
Upvotes are basically the ultimate participation trophy.
Reply upvoted!
I like that.:-) It helps to affirm that there are many responses someone could deliver - ranging at the low end to reporting the content and/or blocking the account, to the more neutral simply scroll past ignoring it, up to the positives of offering a reply, even with a (respectfully delivered) disagreement. The latter is not "negative" if the goal is communication, community, and/or seeking out the truth.
Edit: although I'm trying on purpose to not respond to every comment offered in an Ask-* style community even when I am the OP, to allow for room for others to speak as well:-).
I upvote if something is funny, creative, interesting, or if a poster is passionate about what they're posting and I want to send them some silent encouragement.
I virtually never downvote, because I think it's a lame function that armchair losers primarily employ to discourage others.
Tis better to give than to receive... and people who downvote are encouraging the critical nature inside their own heads that turns back and aims at themselves sometimes.
Or something.
For the most part, I upvote positivity and helpfulness and I downvote rudeness or useless/immature contributions. If I disagree with someone but they're being honest and not malicious... I'll either upvote them or just leave their comment alone, depending on the tone of the conversation.
On Reddit, I hardly voted on anything. There were just too many users and I felt like my tiny contribution didn't matter all that much. But here on Lemmy, I find myself upvoting almost everything. The community is smaller and votes matter, so I feel like I'm actually helping create communities here.
Yeah Reddit, in addition to having fallen to become a toxic hellhole imho (really wish I did not have to say that but... it's true so there it is), also became just EXHAUSTING to try to keep up in. Even an hour or two after a post came out, in the larger subs, the stream of comments got so long that you felt like you couldn't comment at all in it, unless you'd read through all the others first. Or worse, by the time you wrote out a response, others had said similarly but it looks like you ignored them - technically you did at that point I suppose, despite it not existing at the time when you started (which got MUCH more complicated if e.g. you started writing before your work day, then wanted to finish at the end of it, rather than write it all out in one go).
But ad revenue must always go UP so... screw whatever might help promote helpful discussions, and instead make something that encouraged the quickest of tweet-style short replies ("I also choose this guy's wife", "I too also choose this guy's wife, also", "likewise, I similarly choose to partake in this guy's wife as well" - I mean okay, we get the joke, it doesn't need to be repeated twenty times in a row as a response to the same identical comment reply): i.e., people were trained to speak rather than listen.
Here, people still can do that, but the training component is absent, and the fact that it's smaller makes it much less incentivized to do so.
silent, unintrusive thank-you
Most of the time for me it's "I want other people to see this"
If it's adding something to the discussion (regardless if I agree with their opinions), I upvote.
If it's off-topic, rude or factually incorrect, I downvote.
If it's a personal attack or bigotted, I report and possibly block.
If I upvoted someone who later in the thread does the above, I may switch my upvote(s) to downvote(s).
Otherwise I leave it alone.
In my case I upvote mostly when I think I'd like more people to see something. I do sometimes give courtesy upvotes to comments on my posts too. My instance doesn't even have downvotes, so I don't need to worry about those :)
Thanks for sharing
Thank you for participating by commenting.:-)
for being interesting and/or showing effort, and/or cracking me the hell up.
It's situational.
Voting on posts, other than when I fat finger a button while scrolling and don't notice it, is going to be about the community that post is in. Does it fit the community, and is it bringing something useful/good/interesting/whatever to the community. Sometimes a post just being on topic isn't enough to merit stopping to vote. But one that's not only on topic not contributes, that's worth the extra effort.
I wasn't ever prone to using votes as an agree/disagree button, but stopped entirely a few years ago on reddit, unless that was the way a sub operated. Obviously, a community where votes are supposed to represent something in specific, that's how you use them. Unpopular opinion communities, as an example, you don't vote based on it being a good post for the C/, you base it on whether or not the presented opinion is popular or not in your eyes.
Now, comments are more complicated. You can use votes as a like button without any issues. It won't fuck up the flow of things. But, in general, I tend to up vote more often in comments simply because it's much more common to find comments that are contributing to the discussion in a topical and useful way than those that are neutral to meh.
Thing is, I'll actually up vote things I disagree with, when they're part of a good discussion. There's been times I have to make myself do it because I disagree hard, and it feels "wrong" to say that it's a good comment anyway. But you kinda have to do that, or the whole point of votes in the first place gets ruined. It's supposed to be primarily a tool to help filter and sort the discussions so that the most useful stuff is at the top.
Not that I don't also fat finger comments, but I tend to do more of my comment voting intentionally.
But, again, comments are more situational. Up voting a short joke comment may well be useful, even when the comment is off topic because the comment is just that good/funny. We need those jokes and asides here and there, so "liking" them by voting despite being off topic makes sense to me.
But I'll up vote damn near any response to me. It's just courtesy. Someone participating in a conversation is inherently contributing to the community as a whole, and the post, even when it gets tangential or off topic. Unless they're dicks. Then they can fuck right off, and it's a down vote.
Mind you, I don't just go through and vote on everything, it would take more time and effort than it's worth on a personal level. It has to catch my eye in the amount of time my interest level is engaged.
I may not come from the US, but have upvoted a post and or comment once.
I upvote when I agree with someone else, or when its at least a neutral reply to my own post/comment. I downvote when I don't agree, or even disagree with the content of that post or comment. And I report when it's outright heinous and or violates that posts community rules.
Btw why is this in AskUSA when it's not even USA specific?
Could it have gone somewhere else? Yes. But it could also go here - it's not required to be "specific", just "relevant".
Also, USA cultural values do legitimately tend to differ from others - e.g. we say "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" when we mean merely "great" (oh wait, no, that's the other country that starts with a U...:-P), or in general try to "spin" things in a more positive light. Which is not always good. But it does feel welcoming, if that makes any sense?
I have an idea for an experiment: would you like to crosspost this somewhere else, perhaps AskLemmy, and we can see how the results may differ there?
I feel like the regular community members - FAR more so than mere mods and even admins - are the ones who create a sense of "community". Upvotes and comments make it what it is, regardless of the rules, e.g. just try saying that you like a Mac (or worse, WINDOZE) in a Linux community.:-P (Theoretically someone can like whatever they like according to the "rules"? But in practice, downvotes and angry responses will chase those people away - good riddance!?! - while upvotes and and positive comments will reinforce the ~~echo chamber effect~~ sense of "community").
I have no idea what country you are talking about nor what you were trying to say in that needlessly long response.
But as a Linux user you've offended me slightly, which I blow out of off proportion now.
So as a non us citizen, European actually, and Linux user I wish you good night, sir!