I always wonder why people care so much about getting downvoted. I get downvoted all the time but who cares, these votes are just some meaningless statistic.
- I want to formulate some idea in my head and writing down something in response to other people is a way for me to organise my thoughts. In this case, I don't really care about upvotes or downvotes.
- I want to help a specific person. Sometimes people post something and I think, "I'm pretty sure I can write something that will help that person out". Again I don't care about upvotes or downvotes. It's nice if the person responds and says that it helped them, though. It's depressing when they respond and you realise that they didn't understand at all ;-)
- To practice communicating. Ideally it's on a topic that I know something about. Upvotes are my measure to see if people understand what I'm saying. Downvotes are useful to show when I'm just plain wrong (which happens from time to time).
The problem with voting systems, though, is that it becomes a proxy for approval. People try to cultivate approval and it becomes important for them to write something that gives them that approval. I'm not immune to this, but it's something that I try to avoid as best I can.
I think it is reasonable to care about downvotes to the extent that it means you should probably examine your message or the way that you are delivering your message. Given that you want to communicate, excessive downvotes mean that you are not being successful to the bulk of your audience. That should be an inward process, though. Getting angry at other people for your own inability to communicate is understandable, but not productive (I'm not implying that you do that, BTW...)
You could say the same thing about half the things that piss people off. "Why do people care so much if a stranger flips them off?" Why do people care so much if a million people follow their blog?" When it comes to social interactions, irrationality is the norm, not the exception.
Honest question: is anything supposed to happen when you get towards negative karma points? I use a forum where there's a limitation on how much posts you can write on a given topic depending on your number of "karma" points..
For me there are 3 reasons:
- I want to formulate some idea in my head and writing down something in response to other people is a way for me to organise my thoughts. In this case, I don't really care about upvotes or downvotes.
- I want to help a specific person. Sometimes people post something and I think, "I'm pretty sure I can write something that will help that person out". Again I don't care about upvotes or downvotes. It's nice if the person responds and says that it helped them, though. It's depressing when they respond and you realise that they didn't understand at all ;-)
- To practice communicating. Ideally it's on a topic that I know something about. Upvotes are my measure to see if people understand what I'm saying. Downvotes are useful to show when I'm just plain wrong (which happens from time to time).
The problem with voting systems, though, is that it becomes a proxy for approval. People try to cultivate approval and it becomes important for them to write something that gives them that approval. I'm not immune to this, but it's something that I try to avoid as best I can.
I think it is reasonable to care about downvotes to the extent that it means you should probably examine your message or the way that you are delivering your message. Given that you want to communicate, excessive downvotes mean that you are not being successful to the bulk of your audience. That should be an inward process, though. Getting angry at other people for your own inability to communicate is understandable, but not productive (I'm not implying that you do that, BTW...)
P.S. This post can be filed in category #1 ;-)