It's funny that there's a push to make the downvote button a "this is spam or illegal" button. I don't really get it. You're basically just turing the downvote button into a "report" button, but we already have one of those... > but, people should comment and start a dialog instead of just downvoting Yeah, and people should also read an entire article and not just the headline. Wow, look how that normative analysis didn't do shit to change anything! I upvote stuff I agree with and like, why can't I downvote stuff I disagree with and don't like? > BUT MUH CENSORSHIP! it's not fucking censorship if the community is saying "I don't like this content". You can still see the conent, it just might not be as high up on the front page as you'd like it to be you silly karma whore. BUT GUESS WHAT? /s/UnderWaterBasketWeaving is NEVER going to show up on the front page, but /s/guns will or /s/BigTittays will. Why? Because people in general like porn and guns more than underwater basket weaving. There are certain topics the the community in general will favor over others. Personally, I like to see downvotes, particularly on my own content. It means people don't universally agree with me. I can see a nice metric of "X people agree and X people disagree". But instead, every post only receives upvotes, and the moment someone receives a downvote they *literally* lose their shit. > BUT MUH BRIGADES! There are plenty of solutions to mitigating brigades on posts/subs. AOU and PMYB2 already have a detection system in place to find brigaders (pretty sure I saw this mentioned). The fact is, there are ways of avoiding brigades without nerfing the downvote button. --------------------------------------------- TL;DR: I want people to downvote because I want to see the opinions of the community. If you want the downvote button to just be a glorified "report" button, then just get rid of it. We can be the site of only upvotes, no one can disagree unless they leave a comment, but if you agree you can click the upvote button.