What should I use it for?
In case of posts - should I downvote things that I don’t agree with? Or things that I don’t want to see in my feed (posts with low amount of votes fell more to the bottom)? Or things that I consider harmful/stupid/younameit?
In case of comments - should I downvote something that I don’t agree with? When should I use this button in case of comments. Or maybe I should not - cause what’s the point, actually?
I’ve been using the original Reddit rules: upvote things that contribute meaningfully to the discussion, and downvote things that do not.
EDIT: I probably should have said “downvote things that detract from meaningful discussion.” If it simply doesn’t contribute much, I just don’t interact.
I may be wrong, but I think you’re one of the few ppl who don’t use it for disagreement. I see downvote button as a weapon for killing discussion instead of filtering out meaningful comments. Because if someone doesn’t contribute, noone will upvote him, right? So what is the purpose of downvote? I think it is unnecessary addition, whose role is already carried out by upvote button (in case of comments) and hide button (in case of content).
You’re sadly not wrong about this.
In case of posts (links/text posts): I upvote posts I found to be interesting and worthwhile. I don’t downvote posts I don’t like or don’t find to be interesting. I downvote posts that don’t belong to that sub.
A note regarding to the last option: The post itself may be very interesting, and I might like the content personally very much, but I will still downvote a post about game programming in a sub about game design. Or a post about my most favorite 16-bit game in a sub about 8-bit games. And so on. The post itself can be great, but it has to fit, otherwise the sub will be diluted with content that is not meant to be there.
If posts don’t belong to the sub, they probably should be reported to moderators. I don’t think it is a responsibility of downvote button. I agree with the rest.
Imagine the sub is big. Lets say 500,000 users. There are many posts each day. Now you’re not wrong. A sub can decide that users shall never use the downvote button, but always report a post for a mod to decide if the post is allowed to stay, or if a post will be removed.
In that case, the mods have way more work. They have to decide on every reported post, no matter if there is one single report, or hundreds of reports for one post. The mods have to decide if a post will be removed or not. If you ask me, that’s quite a task. You’re deciding this for all of the 500,000 users, after all. It’s not just you and your personal opinion, but you have to think of the whole community. I ask: Is that even possible? What if you can’t help but decide largely based on your personal opinion, even when that doesn’t overlap with the bulk of the community? Or what if a mod loves to be a kind of an dictator and starts to remove posts even without reports - simply because he doesn’t like them?
The other option is to use the system to sort content. Content that most people like will be above, and content that most people find to be off-topic will be below, or even collapsed if enough people found it to be off-topic or inappropriate.
That way, everybody can help just by browsing and using the system. The power of the crowd, so to speak. Why go the problematic and long road to remove posts as a mod, when everybody can help shape the community?