I saw this discussion in the comment section of some post, and it was about what the vote should be used for and how there is no official guideline for how to use it. I thought this was such a good question, that it deserved a post of its own. Related question would be if there should be multiple scores with different meanings, through which posts can be sorted.
There is no meaning to the vote numbers here on Lemmy, yet they are used to rank comments and posts. Doesn't make sense to me. Any metric that is the result of an unknown process shouldn't be used to sort comments.
Example: The 5 star rating at Amazon. Imagine if everyone would use it however they see fit? Some use a 5 star rating for simply receiving a non-damaged product. Some use a 4 star rating for a broken product, but the return process was okay. Some use a 3 star rating for receiving a non-damaged product. Some use the stars to rate the movie, some to rate the visual quality of the release (which can differ), some because their language wasn't included, some for the delivery, some for the packaging (which can differ), and so on.
As long as the people who feed the system use it for completely different reasons and by different rules, the resulting metric is... useless.
The fact that they are used to establish a ranking does give them a meaning : one votes posts and comments depending on whether they think they are worth showcasing.
A lot of people seem to vote posts and comments based on whether they agree with their opinion, and I think this is some (mild) form of propaganda.