In the forum I was working on, downvotes were limited per 24h, so people eventually saved them for really bad / offensive / spam comments instead of punishing p

In the forum I was working on, downvotes were limited per 24h, so people eventually saved them for really bad / offensive / spam comments instead of punishing people for their opinions (except a few who even wrote scripts to downvote certain people systematically...). The problem is in my opinion that once people begin to act like this, their victims behave like this also. If you get punished for arguing against somebody, you learn to stop arguing and just downvote that person instead. It's a chain reaction.