Do you care about up/down votes?

It depends, once I got like 20 upvotes and it was amazing to think them at 70% of Lemmy users read and agreed with my post!

Not really. Someone will disagree with me eventually, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in debating or earning their approval somehow.

They're helpful to determine the general community's take on something, even if there is little other engagement.

And if I'm being honest, getting upvotes is a sweet hit of dopamine. But I try to keep things in perspective.

It lets me feel like my time here is being useful if I get the upvotes. I try to limit myself to positive/fun/helpful posts or adding additional facts from other articles to someone's post of I feel more info is needed to get a full story, so if people reply or at least upvote, it feels like it was worth adding my contribution. If my humor/help isn't needed or wanted in a place, I don't want to both waste my time and annoy people.

I'm on an instance that only federates upvotes so I don't really think about downvotes or know if I am getting them.

I only care when I'm making a post, to help judge how people liked it. I don't pay attention to points inside threads really.

Yes. Downvotes allow a well educated community to bury misinformation

No, not at all. When you get a ton of downvotes but zero responses, assuming you didn’t just post literal nonsense, I consider it proof I’m correct and it’s just a truth people don’t like. When you’re wrong people will downvote you and tell you why, which should be a learning experience that a person should be humble enough to accept but just downvotes or responses only attacking you not you points is pure validation you’re speaking an uncomfortable truth

Yes, but actually no. Upvotes are are similar to seeing someone's smile or nodding in agreement. Downvotes are like a dead stare or shaking their head in disagreement.

If someone else is downvoted but seems to have posted in good faith or as a joke it means there is probably something I am missing. Maybe they are serious when I think it is a joke, or there is some context that is news to me.

If I have a commwnt that is downvoted significantly (like ten or more down than up, or only down) then I double check to see if I was unclear or maybe a joke didn't land. Mostly to make sure my intent came though.

If I clarify something and people just don't agree with it because they don't see the same nuance then I do think about it a but and come back later to see if maybe I was wrong or everyone else is a dumbass. Most of the time it is me not being clear enough. If they are dumbasses, oh well.

I also feel happy when a good comment gets upvoted to double digits. That is a nice feeling.

I don't care about the rating on other people's content. On my own I only care so far as to use it as a guideline for whether I actually was interesting.

On reddit I was a trolling karma whore, but here? Here I'm much more about engaging with people and getting 3 upvotes tells me that I gave the community something meaningful.

I use my post/comment history (and saves) as a way to know what threads to go check in on later. And I get a kick out of seeing a lot of upvotes and dislike seeing anything in negative territory. But I don't have votes in mind when I post.

Yes. It tells me if there’s any engagement.

Usually no, unless I've left a reply disagreeing then someone else comes along and downvotes them, makes me look like an ass who downvotes anyone I disagree with. I also check my own comments to see if people agree with me but I'll keep the comment up either way, if I do change my mind I'd rather leave a new comment or add stuff in an edit.

It's not too difficult to bot votes on lemmy so they're even more pointless than they are on reddit.

To me, it's a way to quantify how other people feel about my own positions. It's neither good nor bad to be upvoted or downvoted. People have unpopular takes sometimes and you shouldn't stake your identity on the amount of upvotes or downvotes you have.

Instead, upvotes and downvotes are most useful for other people to guage comments. Generally speaking, if a comment is universally downvoted, that likely means the position is unpopular enough that it adds no value to a discussion, and is therefore not worth engaging with.

I consider it to be a system built upon mutual understanding - that you don't have to seriously engage with everyone's viewpoints, and conversely, that nobody has to seriously engage with yours.

It becomes a problem when upvotes and downvotes are gamified like on Reddit, because Goodhart's Law demands that it stops serving its purpose when people are only attempting to optimize their upvote/downvote ratio.

When I see someone downvoted for no good reason, I tend to support them; upvotes don't sway me at all. My own stuff I see votes as a guide to how well I fit a community (except in one controversial group which attracts down votes – there voters are meaningless

I prefer to see both numbers rather than the sum. The variance sort of gives a 'controversial' score. Can't get that with PieFed yet, but I prefer the deduplication of PieFed over the split scores on Voyager.

I dont think it changes my pov, but it def does for other people on a large scale

you could say the same message in different parts of the same thread, and by chance one will accumulate more downvotes and one will accumulate more upvotes

for example: https://sh.itjust.works/post/39444493/18993947 and https://sh.itjust.works/post/39444493/18993522 say the same thing, but one has 42 updates and 8 downvotes and one has 120 downvotes to 23 upvotes

people need to stop looking at these numbers

Down votes are useful for estimating the exactly how badly damaged the sense of humour in the community is.

I check my downvotes every so often to see if I've made an ass of myself.

Edit: Good point. Warning added.

Usually, no. Not for myself or others. Too many people vote emotionally for them to be useful feedback in most situations.

They also aren't useful in short time frames on lemmy. I've lost track of how many people get whiny about votes, but they just didn't wait for things to balance out. It's lemmy, shit takes hours to spread and get seen, especially since not everyone sorts by new. Chill the fuck out.

But sometimes, they can be a warning sign, or an indicator of a successful comment/post. And other times, they can help realize you posted or commented in the wrong place.

I pretty much always win with votes. If I get upvotes, I think someone appreciated it. If someone downvotes, I think they’re a hater.

I won’t lie though; my adhd ass checks way too often in a desperate search for dopamine.

I don’t usually feel one way or the other about other people’s upvotes/downvotes.

But I try to use my upvotes/downvotes as a barometer for how well something I posted or commented on was received by the community. If I’m being massively downvoted, I will try to consider what about my post or comment warranted the negative reaction, and I might reconsider what I said, or at least how I said it. If something is upvoted, it does give me the warm fuzzies knowing that other people agreed with, or enjoyed, my content.

When in comes to my own posts and comments, my trust in vague negative reactions is long gone.

Some things that made me more suspicious of Lemmy users:

• Most criticism of one thing was vague and often mentioned my mental health. And the only non-vague comment was targeted at the involved Catholic beliefs/values and my unusual sense of humor.
• I banned someone for 1 day for saying "So, am I right in assuming that OP has untreated schizophrenia? Wtf is this word vomit?" and someone described this as "banned a guy because he said you write poorly" which is a very weird interpretation. I obviously would not have gived a ban if the comment just said "you write poorly".

For me, taking online feedback less seriously was a big part of growing up.

uuuuh, yeah. I usually assume that if I get a lot of downvotes or a comment I agree with gets a lot of downvotes, then my opinion must be wrong.
On the other hand, if something I am not sure about gets upvoted, then it's probably good. I trust others more.

Probably not a good thing, but I don't trust myself with opinions. Though it's not completely black and white either. It depends on where it is, who's giving majority of replies*, and some bit of reconsideration (e.g.: is it logical, is it harmful).
But in the end, it does shape my opinions into what I believe is "more correct".

Certain (more serious) decision-making for opinions may however take me 24 hours or even more. This helps me to balance out the effects of morning vs night-time emotional state**, which differs more with lack of sleep. If even then I am undecided, the upvotes win it and I take it as my own opinion.

I like to say it doesn't change my view, but it probably does more than I realize. Everyone likes to think they're immune to stuff like that, but we really aren't.

I don't, but I guess I do rely on them to float popular stuff up in my feed. After that, I couldn't care less.

My opinion? No, don’t care. For the other stuff I share I would like to know; how many people are interacting with the community, for instance. How big is the niche music Community I’m on? I can see how many people have subscribed (And I’m unsure if that is across servers, or just on the local server), but it tells me nothing if half of them have left since they signed up.

If something has no downvotes, I might second guess downvoting it. For example sometimes I downvote bad typos, but I usually won't if the post doesn't have any downvotes.

You already have a couple of downvotes...

I can get upset if my post gets a few downvotes, like -5 or something, but oddly when it reaches -10 or lower it doesn't affect me. Though it's rare for me to see my posts go that deeply down.

Upvotes on my posts feel nice.

When I see it with other people who get downvoted because their jokes are misunderstood or if their argument isn't well received but they meant well and it was on topic, I feel bad for them and give them an upvote (even when I don't agree with them).
Though some people deserve their downvotes, if it's clear that they don't belong in that community or are arguing in obvious bad faith. I don't often give out downvotes, but those people tempt me

Sometimes when I'm not doing too great and see loads of shit during my daily doomscrolling, I can get very synical, harsh and bold. When I get several downvotes, it can be a sign I'm in this negative depressing mood and I need to light up and be more open to others. It usually takes a while as first I fee like explaining myself making things worse, but in the end it let's me think "hey dude, stop, take some distance. You're not like this and your behavior is pulling you further down. Do something fun instead, stay away from comment sections and put away your phone completely and meet some friends or something".

It's a struggle sometimes.

Upvotes always help with the short endorphins boost, even though I don't want to admit it. I got rid of all social media except YouTube and Lemmy. Yes, I'm I search of approval, again, not what I'm proud of. Because I want to get rid of this addiction and doomscrolling.

I get a giggle whenever I see a throwaway shit comment of mine with many many down votes

No

Only when I'm checking to see what I said before someone replied. Otherwise, I never check.

Yes and no. The same comment on different communities can have vastly different results, so I think it's too easy to just "justify" why the ratios you don't agree with are there, while the ones you do are obviously "fair"

I treat downvotes/upvotes as disapprove/approve, and I care in the sense of finding out what I'm asking for or if I say something incorrect to be called out and perhaps to measure interest.

i hate useless circlejerk nonsense getting updooted to the ceiling, and good but disagreeable information being downvoted into the earth.

Usually whenever I see a ton of downvotes its people doing the exact thing and I keep seeing it. Person makes strawman (ex: I say "I like socialism" and person responds "uh ok tankie, what about the holdomor"). I respond like a dumbass (I really should stop responding to low effort bad faith actors). They "own" me because world will mass downvote anyone who says uncomfortable truth and mass upvotes popular lies (damn this place really is like Reddit). Then I become the uneducated person who makes assumptions because I made the stupid mistake of responding. Yes I expert to be mass downvoted on this because the entire system is meant to incentive opinions you personally agree with in mass hoards of floads not opinions of any inherent value.

The intention behind most downvotes is

Yes and I'm trying to stop it from happening.