(For instances that allow downvotes, obviously.)
I ask because if I see a post with more than a handful of downvotes assigned to what otherwise seems like decent content, I consider it a yellow flag, and I’ll often go to the comments section to try and discover why the post is controversial.
Sometimes I’ll find it’s truly a matter of personal disagreement (such as on a hot-button topic like veganism), however I’ll often discover the downvotes are there for a more objective reason, such as misleading or outdated info in the post. On many occasions this additional digging has led me to change what would have been an upvote from me to no vote or even a downvote. On the flip side, if I see a post that I like but that looks a bit fishy, if it has hardly any downvotes relative to the upvotes, I’ll assume that it has passed Lemmy approval (a kind of Cunningham’s Law I guess) and is therefore probably okay (e.g. I see a reference in a ScienceMemes or HistoryMemes post that seems too bonkers to be true).
So what about you all? Do you use the upvote: downvote ratio to guide how you interact with posts?
I hide comment scores with Ublock Origin and also leave the sorting on old so sorting isn’t a clue. It’s a lovely world where only the logic of the argument is of any importance.
Sometimes I’ll turn off the filter and good arguments are downvoted to oblivion because they don’t instantly disparage ai or whatever. It also happens a lot that someone who is being completely petulant and who is clearly adding nothing to the discussion is upvoted to the stratosphere because the comment is in line with the lemmy hivemind. Quite jarring and clearly indicates the uselessness of scores.