Upvote:

• I can tell some effort/thought went into the post/comment

• It contributes to the correct community

• Is somewhat original

Downvote:

• It doesn’t belong in the community

• Is spam

• Post/comment is rude or contains unnecessarily offensive material

• It’s a Reddit’ism such as commenting “This” below something they agree with

Neither:

• It’s a hot take I don’t agree with

• It’s been posted several times (including cross-posts because I typically sort by all)

I usually downvote people who are clearly pandering for fake internet points

Upvote if it is not spam so it becomes hidden.

Downvote if spam so it becomes hidden.

Block any community I have zero interest in interacting with. Any regional, political, or sport community

I mean, the problem with upvotes and downvotes is that at one point they were supposed to have specific uses, but they’re unenforceable, so it’s really just a “here, community, you manage yourself with the numbers”.

Of course, “misuse” of the downvote is rampant, and so you should always interpret them with a grain of salt when you see them, on your posts or otherwise. Just because you got downvoted doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the wrong or that you deserved it.

Likewise, just because you got upvoted doesn’t necessarily mean you contributed much to the discussion or that the info you provided is true. So be critical of yourself and your own conduct, and use your best judgment when voting, but at the end of the day, it’s internet points and you should judge a post or comment on its contents and not immediately by its votes.

Upvote: useful contribution

Downvote: clear nonsence I think is worth my effort (itt rarely is)

Neither: rest.

It depends if I agree or not. Usually I don’t upvote or downvote.

Do I want to increase the chance of other people seeing it? If so, upvote

That’s my only rule. Downvotes are disabled on this instance

Upvote: I like this post/comment (for any reason)

Downvote: this post/comment is off-topic/spam, objectively wrong, or contains logical fallacies

Neither: in all other cases

Based on these criteria, I’m very liberal with upvotes and don’t downvote much.

Upvote for quality content, downvote for useless trash.

I mostly try not to do much voting though, and rarely comment. I find people are too positive on lemmy, and while that seems like a good thing, it often leaves no room for dissenting opinions to be expressed.

For me I:

👍 anything positive-sum

• could be anything from useful tips to strangers encouraging/complimenting each other

👎 anything zero-sum

• racism, sexism, anything that incites hate/violence or is joyful for oneself at the cost of others

and neither for anything that is ambiguously between P-S/Z-S, or requires further knowledge/skill/context in order to correctly parse

• like any topics that requires advanced physics I abstain because I wouldn’t know left from right so it wouldn’t make sense for me to upvote or downvote

I always upvote if they make me laugh. I try to upvote poeple that make good pionts and contribute to the discussion.

Down voting is more complicated but I just try to use my best judgement. If the person acts like a troll, or deraling the post or just plain being mean. It’s really hard sometimes to seprate someone asking an innocent question and someone trying to rile everyone up.

I upvote if I agree.

I downvote if I disagree.

And I skip when I don’t care.

I also up vote anything that stimulates conversation, even if I disagree with the comment. Unless it’s click baity or the sorts. What makes lemmy great is the posts with great comment threads that you can get lost in, where people are polite