When I first found out it was an interesting concept that I was pretty neutral on but the more I engage/lurk with the community the more I enjoy it.
I generally don’t post/comment much on Reddit because I tend to be extremely sincere and that’s not always well received. Usually I don’t get much hate, but what I do get is a lot of non-interaction mixed with downvotes. And it’s just really discouraging when I’m just trying to share my thoughts.
But having no downvotes here is so nice because I’m not afraid that I’m going to get silenced into oblivion. Either people will actually engage with me (and maybe disagree, but in a meaningful way), or they’ll move on and not randomly share their disdain via downvoting.
It’s such a small change but makes a big difference. I bet a lot of people feel the same as me - it’s more comfortable to engage here.
I guess I’m the only one that misses downvotes. I don’t take offense to being downvoted - the points/karma is completely irrelevant and I feel like it helps keep unhelpful or irrelevant comments and content at the bottom and out of my feed.
Yeah, my concern is that the trolls will be just as visible as the recent comments, and that we’ll get overloaded with “take my upvote”, “this is the way”, and “nice” comments which are essentially spam
Presumably those wouldn’t be as upvoted so they wouldn’t sort with useful content but I do think someone might go on forever posting like that with a
0score where a-1might give them a moment of reflection.No one will have any reason to actually make those comments other than intentional spam though. And I’d much rather filter trolls myself than let a hivemind decide for me who is worth talking.