Everyone will come up with their own metric and the results will be an average of both and other things.

Sad part of the design is that I need to interact with a post to get it off my feed so if it's an some stupid meme or whatever i just downvote and move on to clear up all the repeats.

The setting is off by default but you turn on hide post after interaction in the settings.

Downvotes = disabled on my instance

More like get this shit outa here

Downvote for bad technical advise, I think the person is a bad actor/bad faith argument, or if the person turns ~~hostile~~ to ad hominem attacks. I try not to downvote if I'm putting the effort into debating someone.

edit: for clarity

I think someone else mentioned the same here, but as I've browsed down the opinions, I wonder if it's good for different communities to have their own subculture on what votes mean.

For sure, outsiders dropping by might vote 'counter-culturally' and unhelpfully, but you can get a general sense of understanding in a community.

For r/all-alike stuff I'm sure things are different.

I only downvote hateful stuff or obvious bots and spam. The same as I do on anything with upvotes and downvotes.

I like it to gauge what the general consensus is. Agree or not.

Upvoted. Feel bad that i disagree. 😵

The latter. If it's just disagreement a quick reply is best, and sometimes it gets worked out just fine.

It's weird how nobody ever goes off on these philosophical treatises about what a downvote is REALLY supposed to be for unless they copped a shit ton of downvotes for their awful takes

To quote the famed philosopher T. Soprano: "Alright, but you gotta get over it."

I think of it like a digital facial expression. Upvoting is akin to smiling or conveying some other positive emotion like affirmation or understanding (even if the subject matter is inherently negative). Downvote is the opposite- someone says something irl that makes you frown or grimmace, or you know they're telling you a lie, your expression can convey that without a single word. Here, downvote.

There's no real etiquette - if you feel like you want to give an up or down vote, just do it and don't put too much thought into it.