When I first found out it was an interesting concept that I was pretty neutral on but the more I engage/lurk with the community the more I enjoy it.
I generally don’t post/comment much on Reddit because I tend to be extremely sincere and that’s not always well received. Usually I don’t get much hate, but what I do get is a lot of non-interaction mixed with downvotes. And it’s just really discouraging when I’m just trying to share my thoughts.
But having no downvotes here is so nice because I’m not afraid that I’m going to get silenced into oblivion. Either people will actually engage with me (and maybe disagree, but in a meaningful way), or they’ll move on and not randomly share their disdain via downvoting.
It’s such a small change but makes a big difference. I bet a lot of people feel the same as me - it’s more comfortable to engage here.
Right there is inherent inertial momentum with upvotes.
I’m still on the fence, because understandably the potential (and actual) for abuse makes downvotes very unproductive as a feature, but there are also situations where they are very powerful.
It takes significantly more effort to refute a wrong position than it takes to make it. Downvotes serve as an explicit balancing point against that in ways that a well written response does not. Additionally, nested comments usually get less upvotes than their parent comments.
It is what it is I guess.
Does that really balance it out, though? A downvote or pile of downvotes won’t persuade the person who made the bad argument that they’re wrong, nor will it persuade any lurkers. The bad argument can stand without an explicit refutation, or without the person who made it even knowing why they were downvoted (always a frustrating experience).
Here, you can still see which argument is the most popular, because you get the initial argument A, then because there are no downvotes we’re more likely to get a counter argument B, and then you can see easily which of the two has more upvotes.
And if people keep talking, there be more nuance this way, I think. It’s not limited to a binary option of bad vs good, and you can maybe more “I agree with x, or think you might have a point about y, but I disagree with z because…” Vs someone with a nuance opinion instead just deciding if they think it’s overall more bad or more good and voting in a way that erases the nuance.
Edit: also, people arguing in bad faith because bigotry can just be reported and booted altogether