this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
29 points (96.8% liked)

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The other day, it was at 96%. This morning, it was at 88%. Now, a few hours later, it's at 80%. What's going on?

I've started a few communities and like it here. I try to be nice and upbeat. My posts have been received well, not seeing downvotes...

Profile screenshot

Edit: I'm marking this solved. I understand it now. Thank you all for being so helpful!

Edit Edit: After days of upvoting, I'm back at 96%. I juked the stats!

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[–] notes@piefed.social 24 points 4 days ago (2 children)

just a note...

attitude = percentage of what YOU upvote/downvote
reputation = what OTHERS think of your posts

sources:
1 - https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/
2 - https://join.piefed.social/features/

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 23 points 4 days ago

Username checks out

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

Ha, now I have even more questions!

That's pretty funny, really. I mean, it's saying I have a bad attitude and I think, a lot of the time, especially lately, I'm critical of things, which can be thought of as having a bad attitude. (Edit: It specifically describes downvoting as being part of a bad attitude. Not sure I'm in agreement with that at all. So, to be perceived as having a great attitude, I'm supposed to love everything here 100%. That's a pretty flawed way to experience the amenity of being able to up and down vote.)

As far as reputation, I don't see that called out anywhere.

Thanks for your input!

[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

It specifically describes downvoting as being part of a bad attitude. Not sure I'm in agreement with that at all. So, to be perceived as having a great attitude, I'm supposed to love everything here 100%

Not quite. There is more on the fediverse than you could possibly vote on, up or down. Which means that the stuff you are voting on is the stuff you have curated in to your feeds, and decided needs interaction. And it's reasonable to say that if most of the stuff you are choosing to interact with is stuff that makes you hate vote it, then you're probably not carrying a positive attitude

Edit - And for what it's worth, you have a 100% attitude on my instance, because we have downvotes disabled! :)

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've given like a handful of downvotes. Definitely not most stuff. I've given hundreds of upvotes. I'll check out the blahaj. Thank you.

[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Bear in mind, it's a ratio! As far as I understand it, anything above 50% means you upvote more than you downvote.

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

Thanks again!

[–] notes@piefed.social 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

in my experience, reputation doesn't really show up unless the user has a bad rep.... they're marked by a few caution signs

related post: https://piefed.social/post/234177

also... for reputation: from source 1 - "The ‘Rep’ column is their reputation. As you can see, some people have been downvoted thousands of times. They’re not going to change their ways, are they?" from source 2 - "People who get downvoted a lot end up with a ‘low reputation’ indicator next to their name. You’ll know it when you see it."

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Thank you. Makes sense. Just realizing now I had to ban a guy for stealing my posts yesterday and didn't really see mod tools that described him. I did notice he was getting destroyed by others for being a troll though.

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Interesting, who was that?

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago

I messaged you on this a second ago.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You keep saying "bad" but perhaps it's more like... "critical"?

That said, if you don't like something, why go to the trouble to rub someone's face in how you do not like it, rather than simply scroll down and move on with your life? Maybe even leave the community, block the OP, etc. - not liking something is not an ideal reason to downvote it, imho.

And the reason for that is that on the receiving end, someone getting a bunch of downvotes without anyone bothering go explain why, isn't a great feeling. It leaves them not knowing what it was that people disliked, and with the feeling that people are judging them but not before bothering to do a proper assessment. i.e. that the community is unfriendly towards them, maybe even full of people with a childish mindset.

I haven't even so much as glanced at your history so none of this is a judgement against you: I am just illustrating why a lot of people prefer to downvote responsibly, and therefore why someone might want to know what your "Attitude" score is, so that they can more properly pay attention or ignore when you interact with them - e.g. if you downvoted everything then someone receiving a downvote would not "mean" so much compared to someone receiving the literally only downvote that someone else has ever delivered.

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's not often I feel the need to downvote, but when I do, it's for trolling, fascism, bigotry, disinformation, etc.

[–] OpenStars@piefed.social 1 points 3 days ago

You do you:-). But even then there are other things that could have been done instead, e.g. submitting a report to a mod or blocking someone, or leaving a community that is stressing you out. Ofc downvoting is perfectly fine as a choice as well, which will show up in your Attitude score that you are someone that does that, i.e. someone who is "critical" of content that you see on the internet and often interacts with it in that manner. It is up to you and also to the people looking at your profile to determine if you want to consider that "bad" or not, though I sincerely doubt that such a score (of 80) would ever qualify for that term.

[–] rimu@piefed.social 16 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Average attitude is about 66%, btw.

Attitude can be below zero, if downvotes are more common than upvotes. So the range is -100% to 100%.

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 10 points 3 days ago

Far bigger range than I was expecting. Ok, I guess I'm doing fine. Thank you for chiming in!

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Really? That's a little disheartening.

I'm sitting at 98%.

Edit: oh, I see it can go to -100. It adds up now.

Maybe the scale could be more clear?

Edit2: Something like:

80% (positive)

and

90% (negative)

for -90%

Or ideally something better.

[–] wjs018@piefed.wjs018.xyz 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Attitude, like others have mentioned is given by:

(upvotes cast - downvotes cast) / (upvotes + downvotes)

If you want to see exactly how it is done, here is the code reference. Basically, it is just a number between -1 and 1 (-100% to 100%) based on the votes you have made. It can be different on different instances depending on what has federated to where. For example, on instances with downvotes disabled, everybody has a 100% attitude!

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Thank you. Since I'm so new, I get it, the proportion is ~~bad~~ not yet optimal.

[–] wjs018@piefed.wjs018.xyz 6 points 3 days ago

When you don't have too many votes cast, it doesn't take much to cause a big swing. There is a section in the code where it doesn't actually calculate the attitude until after 3 votes are cast, but perhaps that should be increased.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

To add a bit to the good answers here... 100% is not "the best" score. We do want people to downvote bad stuff, whatever that is. Low quality, misinformation... I think downvoting that goes without question and these downvotes contribute something to the network. So you'll end up with a score in-between. Other than that, most people here use downvotes sparingly. They reserve downvotes to carry some weight, for content they want to discourage. Some minority of people hand out downvotes more generously. And from the maths perspective, I think that's not "wrong" either. In the end those scores of posts and comments get used for ranking and we want interesting stuff to float to the top and other stuff towards the bottom. So I (personally) roughly go with the masses, I don't downvote on opinion or disagreement, I more or less downvote something if it's clearly bad behaviour or wrong. Other than that I leave it as is. And I'm generous with the upvotes at least in the comments, because they feel nice to everyone. I'm a bit more reserved with posts. But that's just what I do. Ultimately you're fine. You should start to re-think what you're doing once you end up with a low ratio or in the negative numbers. Because that means you might be at the wrong place and your subscriptions and feeds show you lots of stuff you don't like and maybe you should subscribe to stuff you do like to read. 80% is clearly fine. And my single-user instance reports 90% for you. But as I said, we're not aiming for 100%. And people are different and while we have some prevailing opinion on how votes should be used, it's a bit down to the individual user to decide.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

In my experience it does not draw on very long periods of data, so most of the time I will be at 100%, then if I spot bad content it'll drop significantly. Nothing really to worry about at all.

[–] wjs018@piefed.wjs018.xyz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Specifically, from looking at the code, it counts the most recent 50 votes on posts and the most recent 50 votes on comments for the calculation.

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 1 points 3 days ago

Oh, that would have a much more dramatic short term effect than if it were considering all history or the like. Thank you.

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

This is what I figured. Thank you!

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Not sure about how it's calculated, hopefully someone else can help

[–] Bonus@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago

Thanks. I bet, being as I'm new and all, it's probably just more volatile at first. Once I have more for it to be based on, I'd imagine it would start to make more sense.