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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2423 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 1, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Can some explain upvotes and downvotes? This might seem like a silly question but I saw someone mention in QOC don’t use downvotes because you disagree.

But what I want to discuss is I never vote. I read and scroll. Stopping to vote just seems like a waste of time to me. Is my behavior weird and everyone else reads a comment and then decides if it’s good or bad?

I assume the voting system here is better than on Reddit and more people vote positively if it’s a good thought versus I don’t like this opinion. But I’m still completely clueless on who the people are who take the time to vote.

I could move this to main board if there is some culturally thing with voting versus fun.

I use votes a lot - it's how I build consensus. How does dropping an anonymous vote into a bucket full of other anonymous votes that people can only see 24 hours after a post and can never connect to any identities build consensus? Nefariously, that's how.

I upvote if I want to see more stuff like what I just said, and downvote if I want to see less of it.

But the vast majority of comments I read I don't strongly feel one way or the other, so I don't vote.

I am almost the same. I only upvote if a comment makes me pause and go, "huh, I didn't consider that angle".

Don't you feel a need to give something back after having read a good post? The tiny bit of moral support given by the very quick and simple upvote is the least you could do.

I like it when people upvote me and I see a lot of likes. To an extent I should vote more.

I sometimes vote if someone has written something I think is insightful. So I do cast votes very occasionally, but they're virtually all upvotes - I basically never downvote or report people for that matter.

Comments I find boring I scroll past and don’t vote. I upvote/downvote based off a mixture of information/entertainment I get from a comment and how much I agree with it. So a mediocre comment I agree with probably gets an upvote, but a really poorly argued comment, even if I agree with the conclusion, gets a downvote. I’m more restrained about downvotes though, I only downvote if I think someone is very wrong or making really bad arguments.

I don’t think there’s really right/wrong way to downvote as long as you’re not trolling though. People can have lots of different systems of deciding what deserves upvotes/downvotes, but as long as everyone is roughly aligned that upvotes are good and downvotes are bad, the good stuff will always get a lot of upvotes and the bad stuff will always get a lot of downvotes.

This is where I disagree since I believe there is a wrong way to vote and basically all of Reddit is an example of the wrong way to vote. Reddits voting system strongly pushes to censorship and groupthink.

The version of the voting system here or the people here seems to remove that issue.

I think the people here are just a bit less partisan is all.

Stopping to vote just seems like a waste of time to me.

Casting a vote takes literally half a second.

Is my behavior weird and everyone else reads a comment and then decides if it’s good or bad?

In most cases, you should be forming your opinion on the goodness or badness (or neutral status) of a comment simultaneously with your reading of that comment, not as a separate decision phase after reading it. If a comment is so profoundly thought-provoking that deciding whether it's good or bad (or not worth voting on) takes a few seconds, then you should not begrudge it that small amount of time.

But what I want to discuss is I never vote. I read and scroll.

A suitable response to this passage is an "I'm scrooling!" Wojak image.

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