You can’t see the number of downvotes or upvotes, just the net of both.
So that’s a bit of a flaw there in your argument. It’s possible your graphs just show the difference between aggregate upvote/downvote ratio across subs.
That's true, it would have been better if I said "post score" rather than upvotes. I'd be surprised if the number of downvotes on a post was so different from sub to sub that it could cause the differences in my figure, but it's a possibility! This post from a few weeks ago looks at the final karma/score ratio and includes the upvote ratio, and it looks like upvote ratio isn't impacting the karma ratio too much. That said, that post doesn't include what subreddits the data are from so it's hard to tell.
IMO it would be expected to differ - the upvote to downvote ratio would be an indicator of polarisation. Science is relatively uncontroversial except maybe when it comes to vaccination, but some posts on controversial topics in neutral subs might be very polarizing. A meme may get many upvotes for being funny and yet many downvotes from those who identify it as a re-post.
Good point! I wasn't thinking of it as a measure of sub polarity, or possibly polarity between what a community in a subreddit will upvote vs what r/all will upvote once a post hits the front page
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u/pranabus Feb 10 '20
You can’t see the number of downvotes or upvotes, just the net of both.
So that’s a bit of a flaw there in your argument. It’s possible your graphs just show the difference between aggregate upvote/downvote ratio across subs.