I haven’t really posted a lot to r/selfhosted (or Reddit in general), but whenever I did, there was always someone who voted my post down in less than 30 minutes after it was posted. Maybe because of this (or maybe because they were actually perceived as low quality posts), these posts never received a lot of engagement with their 0 scores.
Today I’ve made a little experiment and posted the same article both here and to r/selfhosted. On Lemmy, it received a few comments and some upvotes, but over at Reddit, it was promptly downvoted to oblivion.
I’ve never really used “New” on Reddit, but I’ve decided to take a look at it, and to my surprise it looked like r/selfhosted’s New page was full of genuinely helpful posts, but I’ve never got to see them as their scores were all zeroes.
What gives?
At this point, Reddit should be considered an informational reference only. Most, if not all, of us have removed Reddit from our daily lives. Therefore, don’t worry about the upvotes/downvotes over there because they matter less than they ever did before. If you need an answer to a question, use their search functionality.
IIRC, reddit uses vote fuzzing. I think it’s an attempt to mildly curtail the effect of bots, vote manipulation, and bandwagon effects.
In other words, don’t put too much thought into the votes on reddit. Or reddit in general, fuck reddit.
Unfortunately, I erased all my content on Reddit, but I asked this same question a year back on /r/selfhosted. It was hugely upvoted, revealing that I wasn’t alone wondering why.
Tldr: the community is toxic to newcomers and people learning. There is a veteran circlejerk only feeding on very advanced discussions and novelties. There is very little room for curious, anthousiasts and people stuck in the anomalous state of knowledge. I wrote a post precisely about this a few days ago.
Anyway, I find this community, and Lemmy in general, a lot more friendly and rewarding to be a part of. I really hope it will stay this way.
Sounds like Lemmy is a better place for your posts! If you’re still in r/selfhosted, let them know about us over here!
