Memes: upvote if I find it funny Text posts:

• upvote if agree
• do nothing if disagree, but the post is valid
• downvote if OP is trolling, or rude, or otherwise makes me uncomfortable

But, there are exceptions

If there’s a community I want to support I generally go in and upvote every comment on every post. Unless it’s mean, then it gets a downvote or a removal if it’s bad enough and breaks the rules and it’s in a community I mod and have god-like powers in.

I try to upvote anyone that responds to me, even if they disagree with me, or I with them. It feels petty not to.

Upvote:

• I really like what they said
• It feels like "this needs to be seen by more people (or by OP)"
• It’s useful and accurate info relevant to the OP
• It’s basically the comment I was going to write
• The comment replies to me, engaging in positive discussion

Downvote:

• It’s completely irrelevant or inaccurate to the topic at hand
• The comment is needlessly aggressive, especially towards another commenter
• Too many typos, spelling mistakes, emojis, or grammatical errors
• The comment is solely a link to an image
• It’s a duplicate comment (I’ll usually upvote the one with the most upvotes to counteract this one)
• It’s useless (e.g. “This”)

Somebody replies to a thread I made? - up vote.
Somebody replies to a comment I made? - up vote.
Somebody makes a post interesting enough for me to comment? Up vote + all other comments upvoted.

Ignorance or bad info? Downvote.

If I see a post and I want to see more posts like that in that community, I updoot. If I want to see less posts like that in that community, I downvote. Nothing more complicated than that.

So if you post a cute cat pic to a community about cats or cute things, I'm updooting it. Not even super concerned with how well I looked that specific pic, I want to see cute cat pics there and you provided one so you get the updoot.

But if I'm in a discussion-based community and you post something with a clickbait title, I downvote. Doesn't matter if you're technically still on topic, I want to see less of that nonsense so I downvote it.

Contributes value to Lemmy? Upvote!

Is a troll, propaganda, pointless, or a personal attack? Downvote!

for posts:

• is spam? downvote. report if I am not on the best of days.
• is the post trying to follow the “let’s be awesome to each other” tenet? upvote.

for comments:

• do I agree or like it? no bearing.
• does it relate to the post, or expands on the info and encourages dialog? upvote.

Parallel to the join-lemmy.org documentation (see below) I upvote what I want to see more of, and downvote what I want to see less of.

“You can upvote posts that you like so that more users will see them. Or downvote posts so that they are less likely to be seen.” ~ join-lemmy.org/docs/…/03-votes-and-ranking.html