Upvotes and downvotes aren't about burying/promoting content. They're about maintaining a certain baseline of quality.
Talking about downvotes is flat out boring and it adds nothing to the conversation. Therefore, I'm disengaging from this conversation and strongly encourage you to do the same.
>Upvotes and downvotes aren't about burying/promoting content. They're about maintaining a certain baseline of quality.
You can maintain quality without encouraging or enabling negativity (downvoting). Simply upvote comments you think are quality.
The fact that not only was my comment downvoted, but also a comment agreeing with me, demonstrates that people were downvoting because they have a different point of view (which I personally believe is the main reason people downvote anywhere, including here), or for some other petty reason.
My annoyance with this is not just because a reasonable comment of mine was buried, it's because I see this happen all the time here. Totally reasonable comments being whited out at the whim of a couple of people, for whatever reason they like, is irritating and detrimental to a thread and to the site.
>Talking about downvotes is flat out boring and it adds nothing to the conversation.
And the best way to avoid that is don't allow downvotes for comments in the first place. They're not necessary, they encourage negativity rather than positivity, and they're wide open to be abused/misused.
>Therefore, I'm disengaging from this conversation and strongly encourage you to do the same.
Fair enough. Like you, I will also disengage from this conversation after having said what I wanted to say.
Edit: and 3 more downvotes (across multiple comments, not just this one) immediately (within a few minutes) after posting this, simply for having the audacity to reply to a post to me, thus proving my point about abusive, petty downvoting.
