So, ever noticed how you have 20 downloads but have only 1 upvote? Well, you are not alone. Literally almost everyone else is having the same issue.

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Why your builds are not getting more upvotes

Upvote to Download ratio and how it effects us

*Graph displaying Upvote to Download ratio of 120 user builds, ranging from recent builds to the 1000+ upvote P-51*

What is an Upvote to Download ratio? An Upvote to Download ratio is a number that tells you how many upvotes your build will get for every so many downloads. You can calculate this yourself.

So, if your build has 4 upvote and 20 downloads, your upvote to download ratio is 0.2, or 1 upvote to every 5 downloads. You can get the latter by making the decimal a fraction.

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So why isn't the number of downloads and upvotes equal?

From what I can see, the issue arises from two things.

-The public users
-The silent majority

These two groups contribute to the problem, but for different reasons.

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Public Users

Have you ever downloaded a build to try it out but forgot to come back to upvote it? Perhaps the thought of upvoting never crossed your mind. No matter the reason, it happens to all of us.

We, users with Simpleplanes accounts, do not always upvote the builds we download. This could be cause by many thing, from simply forgetting to do so too just not believing the build deserves your upvote. This is part of the reason why our upvotes do not match the amount of downloads.

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The silent majority

There is a large mass of invisible users hidden from our view. They watch and observe in the shadows, downloading your builds without leaving a trail. Who is this mysterious group?

0 point users and people without accounts.

Yep, they are why so many builds of our builds have so much more downloads to upvotes. They simply can't upvote your build.

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Putting it all together

*Close in on former graph*

So, whats with the graph? This is the ratios of 100+ user builds, ranging from 1:4, a build with one upvote and four downloads, too 9:12500, the most upvoted build on the site. With this, we can see that the ratio between upvotes and downloads decreases the more upvotes you get. But why?

This is due to the silent majority.

The silent majority comes into play once the build becomes popular. This could be reaching the front page making the highest rated for day/week/month. This is where the silent majority will see your build and begin downloading it.

Till then, users get their downloads primarily from users like me and you, who will occasionally scroll through hottest and newest or find the build through a teaser. This happens till the build fades into obscurity or reaches an area with large amounts of traffic, which is where the silent majority picks up.

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Conclusion

Your builds are not getting as many upvotes because a large section of the downloaders don't upvote it. This happens because either they can't, choose not to, or have some other reason.

Is this an issue? Not really

Can it be solved? No