It might be that you are taking this board too seriously (yes, I want to be downvoted on a discussion of downvotes :-) Edit: a suggestion: you can have a mood

It might be that you are taking this board too seriously (yes, I want to be downvoted on a discussion of downvotes :-) Edit: a suggestion: you can have a mood button in the reply box - if you indicate to 'strongly disagree' then the reply post would be a downvote of the parent post, and additional upvotes of the reply would be turned into additional downvotes of the parent post. I think that would make it much less passive-aggressive. On the downside discussions would probably turn more adverserial.