I often see downvotes due to people disagreeing or not understanding there can be different perspectives. So yes, I can agree with this very much.

However, it also needs to be stated the up and downvote mechanics are completely open for personal interpretation and there are basically no rules. So everything is fine.

What if someone judtify settler colonialism and genocide

My baseline is to upvote everyone who replies to me, cause it's neat that you're here, contributing to the fediverse.
I only downvote trolls and bad faith actors.

I'm amazed how worked up people get about down votes.

The vast majority of things I see, I neither upvote nor downvote. They have to be either extraordinarily good (exactly what I would have written or extraordinarily insightful) or extraordinarily bad (bad faith, blatant falsehood) for me to do that. When I disagree with something, I write a reply explaining why, or upvote one if there already is one, but I don't downvote what I merely disagree with.

My personal standard is I try to upvote people I reply to, since whether I agree or not the fact that I'm replying means that they're engaging at least (I often forget to though). It's lazy to downvote just because you disagree.

Downvoting is an honourable duty of its own though. Especially if something is irrelevant or low effort I wish more people would downvote, it's helping your fellow users.

This would probably do better in Unpopular Opinions

Where the rules are made up and the points don't matter.

Something, something, who's line is it anyway

Well I have no idea how anything works but I imagine upvoting or downvoting would be recorded as activity, so downvoting the post/comment would actually make sure it got more views right? (As many apps default to active being how to sort posts)

I sort of agree, but I think any comment that facilitates further on-topic discussion is worth an upvote. It doesn't need to be exceptional in any way. In rare cases I've upvoted incorrect comments before to put more visibility on the correction in the response.

But 100% agree with not downvoting comments just because I disagree. Anyone I bother replying to, even if I vehemently disagree, I probably don't downvote — because they led to more conversation.

It's only when I see a comment so self-evidently idiotic or trolling, that I downvote and move on without further engagement.

I think upvoting incorrect comments is a bad thing; if incorrect comments have a net positive score, readers might get the impression that they are correct.

I don't believe there is a sort method where downvotes show mass downvoted contents at the top

I see it more as a "this person is a moron/ arguing in bad faith" button for comments, or a "this doesn't belong here/ is spam" button for posts.

I got banned from that for being too unpopular.

Re the upvotesTotally. Me too. IMO, the best thing you can do is reply intelligently. I don't care about for, against, up, down or any of that.

Re the downvotes. I'm thinking just ignoring them is most appropriate. Blocking even. You can't talk to everybody.

Well if it's a coherent argument then we argue.

Is there a chart somewhere that lists how each sorting is determined? I just assumed active would have been total votes with a decay over time. Never looked into it

I don't even remember.

So I figured I'd just look it up in my history and couldn't find it. Then I remembered that when they remove your post from their community they also remove it from your history. That is disturbing. I mean they're literally editing history.

Nope it ain't in the modlog either.

The moderators here have a special kind of attitude.

It's situational. My one upvote isn't usually going to have a big impact other than offset some of the downvotes. I would want the response to have higher upvotes than the incorrect comment and if I thought my vote was tipping that scale I wouldn't. But like most voting processes, I'm just one drop in the river and for the most part the river will go where it goes.

I have had people literally tell me that I am wrong and bad and cite the downvotes as evidence.

I recently had a post locked. The moderator cited "he got reports", which are basically secret downvotes.

https://lazysoci.al/post/43278559

Not being able to distinguish between a shower thought and an unpopular opinion (no kidding). And doubling down by insulting the mods.

A gentleman doesn't care about downvotes.

Someone got big mad rofl

one should rarely downvote but be prepared to downvote. Downvoting a curtesy you do for the community for things that are not just something against your opinion but is stuff no one wants to see. Rude, aggressive, mean swearing or such.

That's a pretty good argument

What have you been saying that pisses people off so much?

Consider the consistently rude, aggressive and dumb. Would you be better off just blocking them?

Block enough and it could be pretty sweet. Like, early 2000s IRC sweet.

A lot of it. I don't go in for smalltalk and I come here to probe the wall of the bubble more or less exclusively. I like scifi ideas.

Some tell me that I'm just trying to sound smart. Some seem to be triggered. Some seem to get upset by even considering the subject. Sum that up and there's like 1% left to talk to.

I've been aggressively blocking recently, pruning the mass down into something better. Seems to be working.

There's a bot I downvote on sight. It spams reddit threads to communities it moderates so reporting would be fucking useless. I won't block it because someone has to tell it that it sucks.

Hmm. That's smart. I think I saw that bot.

yeah. Im a big block proponent while im a minimalist for downvoting. blocking it about your own personal experience so yeah, use as liberally as you want to. downvoting effects the community though so should be done with a higher level of prudence. I mean I feel the same with upvoting really. Problem is if everyone does it differently its kinda not gonna matter in the end. I had blocked a domain and did not realize it blocked both communities and users so had to back it out. I hope they improve the software to allow domain blocking seperately for communities and groups. Its a shame but the wikipedia guy has a really neat thing with trustcafe where everything. users, posts, replies, groups, etc. can be rated between 0 and 100 where 0 is essentially blocking and 100 is essentially subscribing. everything starts at 50 by default until you rate it. I may be slighly off on the specifics but that is the jist. unfortunately it was not made to work with federation though and ultimately I chose federation as my primary thing but I would love if the whole federation framework worked like that.

What, in your opinion, is the greater crime, removing a post or insulting a mod?

Being hated by idiots is the price you pay for not being one of them?

Well, don't be surprised if people have a bad response to someone being rude/blunt/argumentative.

If you want to change minds you're going to need to work on social skills, too.

Based on what you said your goal is I think you're going to need to grow a thicker skin if you don't plan on changing your approach, or you'll need to work on your presentation and conversation skills if you want a more positive reaction from people.

Yes, same for me. If a person is hostile and trolling. Although the latter can also be subjective.

Rude, blunt and argumentative, eh? And change minds? I think we have different kinds of conversations.

No, I just want a nice conversation.

I find aggressive pruning makes the bush bloom better.

I feel like it's okay to downvote abusive or dishonest posts.

If I'm being 110% honest, if it's a comment being down voted, I'm probably about to start trolling that person. Life is too short to not fuck with unreasonable people.

Nice conversation takes conversation skills, or finding people that already think like you do. Based on this conversation it sounds like you'd prefer the latter.

I'm guessing I'm getting pruned, so have a good one buddy 👋

Sometimes I receive a share of downvotes. Which only bothers me when I really have no idea why, because usually I want to know if I am on the wrong path and improve.

Lol. I've seen worse

Yeah, that's happened to me a few times too. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding, sometimes my opinion just doesn't really mesh with some other folks. Sometimes I'm just being a dick and deserve it.

Without knowing the details of what you're talking about, I'd say on first principles the owner(s) of an instance has the final say on what posts they allow on their platform because it's their platform, they don't owe you anything. The benefit of the fediverse is that anyone can have their own platform so if you don't like one platform you can post elsewhere. Just as it was with forums before the tyranny of centralised social media. So I'd be inherently more sympathetic to a mod removing a post than someone insulting a mod but it may vary depending on details, such as if the mod was doing a bad job for their platform.

TRUMP SHOULD BE ARRESTED