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For me I'll only downvote if they're derailing the conversation or being a jerk. I won't even downvote if I think they're objectively wrong or just don't agree
by bobloblaw45 7y ago
For me I'll only downvote if they're derailing the conversation or being a jerk. I won't even downvote if I think they're objectively wrong or just don't agree with them. I'll upvote good arguments.
I do this because of how downvoted comments get hidden and they only show the added total of votes. If one person has this view then others must have the same view. And let's be totally honest here, people aren't going to go through an entire thread to unhide every single comment in every thread they visit. Hiding wrong comments are a missed opportunity to set other people straight. I've learned so much more from the old forums from the early to mid 00's where wrong comments were quoted and set straight further down the page than on Reddit where all those comments were hidden. And because of that back then it was far less of an insult to be called out when you were wrong, because it was natural and normal.
Now when people downvote subjective things, that's where it really destroys the community. Say the up/down vote split on a comment was 900/1000. This is obviously a hotly contested issue with a small percentage of people thinking negatively of it. But if you were to only see the total (how the site does it now) you'd see -100 and the comment is hidden. Looking at this now if you didn't have an opinion before you might think this person is "obviously" an idiot and people start calling them a troll. This isn't just a ding to that commenter either but the other 900 people that up voted their comment. Do this enough and that other 900 people will start looking elsewhere. Now if the sub is some fanclub for something that's another story. But there's subs that are suppose to be more broad that have succumbed to being dominated by a side and drove away any opposing views.