At this point, Reddit should be considered an informational reference only. Most, if not all, of us have removed Reddit from our daily lives. Therefore, don't worry about the upvotes/downvotes over there because they matter less than they ever did before. If you need an answer to a question, use their search functionality.
IIRC, reddit uses vote fuzzing. I think it's an attempt to mildly curtail the effect of bots, vote manipulation, and bandwagon effects.
In other words, don't put too much thought into the votes on reddit. Or reddit in general, fuck reddit.
Yeah. Reddit vote scores have never been true. Don't ever bother paying attention to them.
I hope without karma we can do away with vote fuzzing.
With how unreliable tallying votes over federation is, we're kinda get vote fuzzing "for free" right now.
Unfortunately, I erased all my content on Reddit, but I asked this same question a year back on /r/selfhosted. It was hugely upvoted, revealing that I wasn't alone wondering why.
Tldr: the community is toxic to newcomers and people learning. There is a veteran circlejerk only feeding on very advanced discussions and novelties. There is very little room for curious, anthousiasts and people stuck in the anomalous state of knowledge. I wrote a post precisely about this a few days ago.
Anyway, I find this community, and Lemmy in general, a lot more friendly and rewarding to be a part of. I really hope it will stay this way.
There are self-appointed moderators over there who browse new and downvote anything that doesn't fit their vision. I was one of them, looking for certain "offenses." For instance if someone posted run-of-the-mill war news in an "interesting" sub, with nothing at all novel or intriguing about it, I would downvote it. So I guess I've got my gates to keep too.
But yeah, I had the same thing happen to me in a couple subs. I posted what I thought was perfectly relevant content, and it would attract a few downvotes right away, and then, usually, climb back up as less-zealous people read it.
There are self-appointed moderators
"self-important" - FTFY
I asked the same question on r/selfhosted a few weeks ago, and I was downvoted just for asking the question.
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/13elu4p/why_downvote_so_much/
Interesting. I suspected the same would happen to my post if I posted this question there.
I have to agree with the second reply there though (and will definitely downvote these kind of posts):
It sometimes feels like if you take any day in a vacuum and look at the posts, it's: 75% things that've either been answered 300 times already or are Googleable; 15% troubleshooting that would probably be better asked towards that software's community; 5% “hey there's an update!” spam (4% of that being from the 300 different no code internal apps builders); and MAYBE 5% original content, questions, or good discussions.
Well I think there should be a /c/selfhostingnoobedition where an answer (even if it is just a "Google search link") is expected. The amount of plausible sounding BS from googleing and getting stack overflow copies with unhelpful info or thinly veiled ads that has cost me time and money is huge, and I simply get directed to buy products while I am exploring (I don't know what I don't know), so I have gone here as my "Google". I normally try to include my due diligence in a paragraph labelled "source:"
BS from googleing and getting stack overflow copies with unhelpful info [..] I simply get directed to buy products
I copied "Googleable" from the original comment but yeah, Google results have become horrible. I use duckduckgo as default search engine, it gives decent results most of the time, and is not infested with ads/SEO spam. Use quotes to search for an exact sentence/error message, etc.
I normally try to include my due diligence
I have no problem with posts that include a good amount of research, unless they are for a very specific piece of software ("how do I configure feature X in software Y"), in which case, why not ask on that software's forum/support/issue tracker? I mean, I'm not here to read support requests all day, unless they are for an interesting/novel problem...
I think the idea of a dedicated /c/selfhostingsupport has value, but I don't want to discourage all support requests, only mundane or uninteresting ones.
Other types of posts that deserve downvotes in my opinion are "What should I self-host?" (mods should just make one and pin it), "Here is my dashboard" (same, there should be a pinned post for this).
Sounds like Lemmy is a better place for your posts! If you're still in r/selfhosted, let them know about us over here!
This happened on every sub I've posted on including when I posted a pic of my dog to r/awww. It's either a bot or a really miserable person. Possibly a bot made by a very miserable person.
Reddit is firmly in the “only SEO matters” stage, so they are definitely falsely reporting engagement even more so than they always were.
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