There are different cultures for upvoting and downvoting for different websites:
As a passive user of Reddit, I’m aware of the voting culture there. Depending on the subreddit, it might be as bad as any other forum on the Internet which is a wilds of impoliteness and inconsideration. However, you might end up with one that’s better. Obviously, this varies widely depending on the subreddit(s) one is using.
As an active user of Less Wrong, I tend not to downvote too much. Voting there is on the basis of whether something adds to the level of discourse, in terms of moving it in a direction of greater or less quality.
I try to treat how I vote on this forum based on the sentences that go along with the votes. For example, I upvote a comment on this site if I actively find it useful, i.e., it provides a new framing or new information which clarifies or enriches my understanding of an essay’s subject matter. There are lots of comments that I don’t find ‘useful’, per se, in the sense that I don’t learn anything new from them. However, I don’t (want to) downvote those comments because I don’t want to imply anything is wrong with them when I don’t really believe that. Such comments are just-so to me. I believe I would only downvote an essay, article, or comment on this forum if I believe it was actively harmful to people’s understanding, because it would decrease clarity, or level of discourse. I would like to think I would do this regardless of whether it was from a position I agreed with it not.
Generally, I tend to be liberal with upvotes, and conservative with downvotes. However, this is a personal preference based on my perception that online communities with voting systems tend to be less friendly than I would like them to be, so I try correcting for this in the opposite direction in what small way I can as a user.
There are different cultures for upvoting and downvoting for different websites:
As a passive user of Reddit, I’m aware of the voting culture there. Depending on the subreddit, it might be as bad as any other forum on the Internet which is a wilds of impoliteness and inconsideration. However, you might end up with one that’s better. Obviously, this varies widely depending on the subreddit(s) one is using.
As an active user of Less Wrong, I tend not to downvote too much. Voting there is on the basis of whether something adds to the level of discourse, in terms of moving it in a direction of greater or less quality.
I try to treat how I vote on this forum based on the sentences that go along with the votes. For example, I upvote a comment on this site if I actively find it useful, i.e., it provides a new framing or new information which clarifies or enriches my understanding of an essay’s subject matter. There are lots of comments that I don’t find ‘useful’, per se, in the sense that I don’t learn anything new from them. However, I don’t (want to) downvote those comments because I don’t want to imply anything is wrong with them when I don’t really believe that. Such comments are just-so to me. I believe I would only downvote an essay, article, or comment on this forum if I believe it was actively harmful to people’s understanding, because it would decrease clarity, or level of discourse. I would like to think I would do this regardless of whether it was from a position I agreed with it not.
Generally, I tend to be liberal with upvotes, and conservative with downvotes. However, this is a personal preference based on my perception that online communities with voting systems tend to be less friendly than I would like them to be, so I try correcting for this in the opposite direction in what small way I can as a user.