I mean, yeah, they allow you to say, "I disagree with this", and voice your opinion as an opposite to "I agree", but on the other hand they come with a lot of negatives.
- They encourage group-think
- Discourages controversial opinions from being posted
- Discourages commenting in general
- Controversial opinions are buried/hidden
I'm not saying disable downvotes because someone's fee fees would get hurt, I'm suggesting to just let "shitty comments" (or so the community thinks) stay at 0 or positive (but with a low score relative to the good comments). The good comments would still technically rise to the top.
Downvoting in general is a shitty way to disagree anyway, because if you don't explain why you're disagreeing it's sort of useless. The only time they're really worth something is for spam posts, but they can just be reported, no?
Thoughts?
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[–] spryes [S] 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Generally this never happens though. If someone disagrees, they will downvote. It's too powerful to think "this opinion is bullshit, I want to hide it." Even if it's directly relevant to the discussion.