Intuitively, showing both the upvote and downvote count would display the full information. The total and the percentage can be derived from that (and yea humans are bad at maths but you'll be able to estimate well enough probably).
I also like showing both counts separately so that a +50 -10 post doesn't appear equivalent to a +100 -60 post.
Could you perhaps show some screenshots of how the different options would look? Preferably on both mobile and desktop. I think that would make it a lot easier to choose.
It’s also an easy way to show new users one basic front-facing feature on Lemmy that is different from Reddit - which is a good idea on its own, but especially because Reddit used to display upvotes/downvotes this way and then removed it entirely, probably for manipulative reasons.
It’s good to be able to customize, but better to have the default option be an improvement over the alternative. Even more-so when the change isn’t jarring.
I remember when reddit removed the simple upvote + downvote and added "vote-fuzzing" and upvote percentage. Everyone hated it, but there was no alternative to switch to.
Yeah, I was confused about what it was (I thought it was some indication of how fresh the comment was for sorting purposes). A percent isn't interesting when most comments have like 5 votes or whatever, and it's still not that interesting even if there are more.
Personally I like upvotes/downvotes. Both are pretty useful information to have and those are the two numbers that my brain translates most cleanly into seeing what's going on.
Also I want to put in my perennial pitch for the software to display a popup or something the first time you vote, saying hey warning your votes are not private on any federated software! Don't vote with an expectation of privacy.
I think it should display only the score. But when I hover with my mouse it should show the upvote and downvote count.
The same goes to the mobile version, but instead of hovering with a mouse I can hold my finger on the score and the app displays the upvote/downvote count.
I like a more simple and clean approach, I believe this helps bring less tech-savvy users to lemmy.
I think score, then in smaller less noticeable text, upvotes and downvotes. I don't think upvote % adds much value as you have the information to calculate it already.
My original motivation was trying to limit information overload, and go from 3 pieces of score info, down to 2. This will all be configurable, but I'd like the default to be really simple.
i prefer to see the total score as a primary, with the up/down score as a secondary (on both posts and comments). percent is really only useful on posts and could be counterproductive on comments.
I don't think you'll ever get a concrete answer on this because different people treat even basic numbers differently none the less assigning value to them. I like upvoted/downvote view because I like being able to see what's controversial. It means a comment is both important to show a dividing line but also might be misleading.
Edit: note of course, I'm saying this while on an instance that doesn't even federate downvotes at the moment.
I'd thought that originally, because a lot of former reddit (now lemmy) apps use score + ratio, but it seems like people really do prefer the simple very old reddit style of upvote + downvote.
Either way it'll be configurable in the next lemmy update.
If the server's going to enforce this then I feel like the default should be total up and down, as all the others can be calculated from those two numbers by the clients. Other methods I would foresee be used by instances that somewhat wants to hide or fuzz the numbers, so that'd be an opt-in thing that defaults to maximum transparency.
I honestly love the way Alexandrite does the interface on Lemmy.world. I used photon for awhile too, but the way Alexandrite does voting made a positive overall experience that was more pleasant long term, (a.Lemmy.world & p.lemmy.world). Alexandrite simply ignores the down vote count and displays the total. Overall negativity is not clearly seen unless the count goes below zero.
Long term this makes a more positive overall experience across the spectrum of emotions in real life, especially for someone struggling through disability. The only way I would change this is to add a negative vote view in the ... extras.
Post rating is good already. Upvote button, score, downvote button. This could be same for comments, but horizontal. And on hover just show upvotes and downvotes individually as it's done for posts already.