Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Asking why you're getting downvoted is usually the easiest way to get downvotes.
But I often wish I would get a comment about downvotes. It's easy enough to see why I'm getting downvoted when I post stupid shit, but sometimes I feel like even the most uncontroversial post or comment will get at least one downvote. I want to know when I'm wrong, so I can learn!
Like, the other day there was a post getting downvoted to oblivion and nobody told OP anything. I commented my reason and OP actually seemed to be learning from that, edited the post and the downvotes stopped accumulating.
I've seen completely normal and innocuous statements heavily downvoted here. Some people seem to just downvote everything and other people seem to downvote anything that already has downvotes. But one thing is for certain, it's treated as a like/dislike button, not as a meter for content that does or doesn't contribute to the subject.
I don't think either of the popular behavior descriptions of "upvote if it contributes" or "upvote if you like it" really describe why most people upvote/downvote. My personal downvote criteria is more of a checklist:
If any of those are true, depending on the severity I'll leave it be or downvote. I'd imagine most people are similar.
Those are all reasons I downvote too, but I'd lump them all into the "doesn't contribute to the conversation/community" category. I'll also report something if it's dangerous misinformation, or very hostile towards an individual.
I had a conversation with someone about one of my downvotes posts, which helped to understand yet another stupid derailing tactic that terrible people use to stifle conversation. I really appreciated their feedback, even if I didn't see any way to avoid the misunderstanding.