> Which you were, because you were attacking downvoters personally instead of their use of the downvote system. Fair enough. > I see; I thought you were offer

> Which you were, because you were attacking downvoters personally instead of their use of the downvote system. Fair enough. > I see; I thought you were offering an exhaustive list rather than the beginnings of a list. Perhaps I should have followed with some ellipses "..." > Can you back that up with anything? What 'consequences' should there be to downvoting things you don't want to see on a site built to be shaped by the voting of people who are present? The suppression of dissenting and contradictory voices. A comment like "downvoted because I disagree with your point about ..." creates value by focusing discussion on a particular area of interest. While just a downvote supplies nothing meaningful to the discussion and merely seeks to suppress some viewpoint in the most general sense. A definition of discussion is "an exchange of views on some topic", suppressing alternate viewpoints does not lend itself to creating discussion.