I’m curious what, if any, guidelines people self-impose to try and engage in a productive way online (both on Lemmy and elsewhere). “Netiquette” if you will.
A couple of rules that I think are good practices, but still see too often, are:
- don’t pile onto the most downvoted comment. Kinda like don’t feed the trolls, but it’s more about not letting yourself get rage baited. Instead, downvote them and move on.
- don’t give a non-answer to someone’s question. Ex. if someone asks how to do X, don’t answer with, “Why are you trying to do X? You shouldn’t want to do X. Do Y instead.” Instead, explain what it would take to do X, and then offer Y as a possible alternative and why it may be a better option. But assume they already know about Y, and it doesn’t fit their use-case.
For that last one, finding a thread where someone has asked the exact question you want answered, only to find a thread full of upvoted non-answers is up there with the dreaded “nvm, I figured it out - 10y ago”.
Downvotes are not for disagreements.
What are they for? Like/dislike?
Downvotes are for low-quality content, bad-faith content, etc.
Most bright-line example of this is: if OP asks “what’s your favourite fruit” and somebody says “bananas,” don’t downvote it just because you dislike bananas.
It gets harder when somebody says something you disagree with politically, but argues it well and in good faith. I would still not downvote in this circumstance.
For an example of when I would downvote: if OP asks “do bananas contain potassium?” and commenter says “No, only potatoes contain potassium.” – this is low quality content, they could have confirmed their answer with a quick google search.
I only downvote when something is blatantly factually false or posted in bad faith (i.e. obviously trolling and I can’t think of a good-faith reason why someone would post this).
If I merely disagree with something, I write an answer explaining why, or if there already is one that I agree with, I upvote that.
I saw somebody suggest that the voting buttons should be used to indicate whether the comment benefits the discussion or not.
I suppose the same would be true of the original post; does the post benefit the community.
For example, posting a blog of why Mitsubishi is the best car maker to a photography forum is a downvote, true or not. Posting that veganism isn’t a sustainable lifestyle to a vegan sub is an upvote, but you’d better be ready for some backlash.
That veers into subjective territory, though. From your example, going to a vegan community and declaring that you don’t believe veganism is sustainable would be seen by most as not contributing to discussion, but just trying to troll or incite a flame war. I’d consider that detrimental and downvote.
On the other hand, asking “How can we make vegan lifestyles more sustainable?” would be something worth upvoting.
Communities are not necessarily places where people go to debate or have deep discussions, often it’s just to find solidarity and meme out with good vibes. I’m not going to go to the Elden Ring community and say “Elden Ring is trash”, even if that’s a valid opinion for someone to have, because that’s not really the right place to have that kind of discussion.
Point taken. It was probably a bad example. I was trying to find an example of something that would be an unpopular topic rare hat would ultimately benefit the community.
I disagree