I like how it's easy to see how many up and down votes you have, and not just total like on reddit.
this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
9 points (61.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
48795 readers
414 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Never accept criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from.
I don't downvote (at least not intentionally - the buttons are right on the edge of my phone's screen, and I have fat fingers). I don't really see a benefit from it. I often wonder though about all the non-offensive, opinion related posts with one or two downvotes. Like are people really bothered by someone enjoying different things?
I do once in awhile but honestly I hate public voting. I would not mind a private ranking system for the feed that worked the way trustcafe works. I mean peoples public voting won't effect the way I peruse the feed but yeah some things are bad enough that I feel I should hit the down arrow. I upvote practically everything though as it marks it as read for my feed view.
Try to live your life without worrying about votes.
34 upvotes so far! Nice work!
load more comments
(7 replies)
I will gladly downvote anyone. People be saying some dumb shit.
Is it dumb or is it that you think it's dumb. To be or not to be. You see I disagree with a lot of people but I see where they are coming from so I don't think they are literally idiotic. I'm more apprehensive about living in a system where I only ever see what is agreement with whatever I think aka an echo chamber.
I will absolutely downvote some people I disagree with if I think they are making a bad faith argument or I think their view is bad. If the masses decide my opinion is wrong then it will work out in the end. If not, then it must have been a bad comment.
You are, I am, we are the masses. I don't mind disagreeing with people. I would be more bothered to be somewhere where everyone agrees and we have a culture of chasing off anyone who doesn't aka an echo chamber. I'll downvote people being mean because we can disagree and have civil discussion. Also someone blatantly trolling.
I didn't say I downvote based on disagreeing. I said I downvote based on if it's dumb. There are plenty of people that I disagree with that have salient points. The morons are the ones that get the downvote.
I use a Misskey platform to interact with the Fediverse as a whole (and especially with Lemmy and the threadiverse), among other reasons, purposefully because I can't cast downvotes onto others' contents. Even the "👎" emoji reaction, if I wanted to use it, doesn't count as a downvote from Lemmy's perspective.
Yeah, some things I see make me want to downvote, but I prefer commenting and replying as to why I'm disagreeing with that content, instead of treating human beings and their content as numeric computer variables (and as a former programmer, I'm well aware of how communication among living beings can't be replaced by zeros and ones).
The same applies in the other direction: I'm fond of people who disagree with me by actually stating what/why they disagree, instead of clicking a numeric button. If you ever disagreed with me and took the effort to try and tell me what you disagreed with and why, my sincere thanks for being a human being towards another human being!
After all, we're gathering on a set of social platforms whose main feature is discussion board and, IMHO, numbers can't possibly contribute to a discussion, especially open-ended discussions and artistic expression... if social interaction is to be replaced with numeric reactions, communication and content creation becomes pointless: why should I, as a content creator, spend the effort (sometimes I spend literal hours on the same reply/post/comment) composing something if the reaction will be numeric?
Don't up/downvote for agree or dislike. People are allowed to have differing opinions. I downvote for hate, or bad faith. Very little else.
Similar, if someone is just being mean to be mean.
I feel the same. The only times I (intentionally) down vote are for things like spam or people throwing insults around with zero substance. It's basically a button for increasing/decreasing visibility, and you get much more interesting discussions when it involves views you disagree with.
Social feedback is important. It's not supposed to feel good, but it IS vital to building a healthy community. You need a sense of social awareness to evaluate your own ideas, even if the responder can't clearly articulate their opposition.at the very least it says your presentation needs work.
Dialog also isn't free. It's easy to demand someone defend their position for you, but real, thoughtful articulation takes time and effort. Many will offer it freely, but not everyone can afford to entertain you and not every argument is worth the effort. Their rejection of your premises stil matter.
A world with only likes should terrify you. It's the world of the executive surround by yes-men driving his company and the world to ruin. Human life requires friction. Every dislike is your ideas coming into contact with reality.
I downvote comments that clearly break the rules of the community they’re posted in.
This. The original intent of the downvote on reddit was for things that actively take away from the conversations; not merely because you disagree with it.
Equally, the upvote was for things that contribute, not just for things you like.
Very fair.
Being downvoted yourself is not reason to start downvoting.
Now when people post links to videos without a text synopsis, that's a reason to downvote.
What if they're trying not to ruin spoilers?
Use the spoiler tags, that's what they're for.
Fair
I do know exactly what you're talking about.
When you get 5 or 6 responses deep no-one else is reading along it's just you and the other person. When each of your replies receives 1 downvote it's obviously from the other person just downvoting everything you say. It's just petty and childish and I'm not going to stoop to that.
That said, I do downvote comments that I feel deserve less prominence for whatever reason.
As an aside, piefed shows a user's "attitude" on their profile. Your's is 98%, mine is 62%. I think that means 62 of my last 100 votes were upvotes.
Exactly, also thanks for the knowledge. Still new-ish to the fediverse and unaware of all the differences of different locations. I could see that being valid to be public, like if someone is at 4% they're just miserable.
I'm indifferent, really. You can make the most benign post/comment possible and someone will downvote you for it, so you'll get used to it. Plus, too many people here think downvotes are for disagreeing.
And just to prove my point, I downvoted your question for absolutely no reason. Idc how you vote in return, if at all.
Have a nice day ❤️
I upvoted you actually. Like anywhere online I've seen very negative people who get joy from others feeling bad or thinking they have made them feel bad. I always want to have a candid discussion with someone like that because it's very curious to me.
So far the people I've been able to accomplish that with are very discontent in their life or something specific in their human experience but it's a very small sample size. Most keep with shallow discussion more so like they're playing a character.
Not really. I'm (somewhat) apprehensive to downvoting because all votes are public. So, I'm not gonna downvote someone who disagrees with me. I will (sometimes) downvote someone who is being an arsehole. If they keep doing it, I'll block 'em.
Also, I don't really get into comment chains to start with. If I say something and someone has something constructive to say, we might have a conversation. That's fine. But if it's negative, chances are I just won't reply to it in the first place. If I feel like maybe I've been misunderstood, I might clarify, but I'll only do that once. If the conversation isn't going anywhere, I walk. It's that simple. If you want a punching bag, I think these days you can get ChatGPT to do that.
Nope, the points are made up and it lets me vent with the smallest possible impact. My voting ratio is highly positive despite not having any hesitation slapping that dislike button, because most things are worthy of up voting.
People have the right to find my shitty opinion shitty
I'm not arguing that one shouldn't have the ability to downvote. More so asking if anyone else is generally apprehensive to downvote and more specifically enjoys opposing opinions. I find in most circumstances not just of Lemmy that people are more so looking for agreement aka an echo chamber without any dissent aka an echo chamber.
Because this medium isn’t workable for argumentative conversations.
That begs the question, which medium is.
Reddit, Twitter, Lemmy, etc. Most text based social media
Bruh, read these two comments back to back and see if you're seeing what I'm seeing.
I generally shy away from downvoting even things I dislike. I don't want to fall into an echo chamber where all I see are only the things I agree with.
This is not how Lemmy works. If you don't ever up or down vote anything, and if you have your client hide the up/down votes on all comments and posts, you will still see the same content as someone who prodigiously votes. Votes here are, in the truest possible way, optional.
But for people who do utilize up/down votes, they are a signal. Sometimes they're a weak signal, sometimes a bad signal, and yet other times might be a strong signal from the community. How to evaluate the signal is a matter of continued debate.
Now, as an aside, a major difference in the Fediverse compared to commercial social media networks is that the block functionality here is used for more than just dodging abusers. Precisely because there is no algorithm, blocks and mutes are how users curate what they don't want to see. This alone does not create a so-called online echo chamber, the same way that most people don't want to see a steaming pile of poo on their morning walk. People reasonably deserve to have a pleasant experience online. And depending on their life circumstances, this might be a lot better than their IRL situation.
Retaliatory downvoting is a lame thing to get caught up in. A certain type of reddit person will downvote every reply you make to them. Most often I think I'll be 'the bigger person' and ignore their pettiness.
I get into these comment chains from time to time where really no matter what I post whoever I’m talking to downvotes...
I suggest avoiding such comment chains. If the person you are talking to is downvoting everything you write then you can be certain you are wasting your time.
I downvote with some hesitation. Maybe I just don't get it.
Downvote if the person deserves it. You don't know that the person is the one downvoting you versus someone else. Although if you're in a conversation with someone who you feel deserves to be downvoted, you're probably better off blocking and moving on.
Not always but in some contexts it's kinda blatant aka you're deep into an unpopular thread and like ten comments swwp back and forth and get downvoted literally at the same moment they respond. It's unlikely anyone is clicking through who dislikes one side but doesn't favor the other aka no upvotes for the other.
As for deserving. I usually don't feel like someone is deserving, even if we are in disagreement on something. I appreciate views that are different from my own. It seems that's not a common behavior. That is people will downvote just because they disagree which necessitates an echo chamber.
I down vote very little. Used to down vote more until I discovered the joy of not voting. Now I get off on being withholding.
Vote edging lol.
Plus I wouldn't touch some of these posts with a ten foot vote. Sick fucks.
view more: next ›