What is the purpose of voting up or down on? I’m not clear what voting is suposed to achieve?

I never vote up or down on here in the same manner that I never click Like on any social media sites either, I don’t see what the intent behind it is.

  • Frater Mus
    2•1 year ago

    I think the primary purpose of likes / dislikes, upvotes / downvotes has always been to generate information that an algorithm can use to sort content, making it easier for the user to sift through millions of articles to find stuff that’s “higher quality” or “more relevant” to them.

    I think that’s what they’re for now. In ~2005 when forums like vBulletin started adding “thanks” buttons there weren’t millions of posts on forums to be algorithmically sorted. Forum owners were begging people not to overquote, make useless posts, or overuse mail notifications to keep server loads down. At least IIRC.