Well, just to add to the ocean of opinions, this is my personal view on downvotes:
While an upvote generally symbolizes "great post", "good content", or simply "I like it", a downvote can have many different reasons behind it, from plagiarism, hate, milk-crap, to other, less obvious reasons. Even though the only downvotes I got were from bots with close to no mana, I still could not help wondering WHY.
I believe what is much more important than punishing a user with a downvote, is to let them - and everyone else - know the reason for the downvote. Maybe flags of various types could be useful: one for shit-posts trying to milk system rewards. Others for plagiarized content, yet others for spreading hate, etc. In my view, being too successful is a horrible reason for downvoting, but if someone wants to pass them out, so be it. Just please let us know the reason. That way it would also tell the community about this downvoter, and each individual user could decide if and how they agree.
BTW, thank you for posting about this very important issue, and starting this conversation!
Idk man, kinda feels like I have to explain my upvotes too. Like, some of the upvotes I hand out aren't good post or nice job, I just feel sorry for the user to have a sucky content and nobody likes but they did their best. Nobody questions the reason for an upvote because its positive. But when you got some stake to piss on other people doing their best, upvotes can just be as toxic as downvotes. Want to see grown ass men draw crayons on fictional characters then get tipu! The same amount of $ earned by an artist who has more mastery on their craft side by side on a mini trending? I tell you, there's no fairness in having favorites and it's manifested in upvotes too.
Well, I don't know... I just pictured that grown ass man with his crayons, trying hard to color within the lines. 🤣 Ridiculous as it sounds, I still can't feel bad for him, even if he gets bigger rewards as others (or even me) who put tons of work into a post. On the other hand, seeing only one downvote (worth 0.000nothing) by a bot on my otherwise well received post, it actually hurts.
I don't feel bad for the guy, I just think it's an eye sore to stand near or above posts that show better outputs as it just sends a message on what the platform wants to value, or just the community. But those situations are mostly from curators that have ties to the author rather than an organic tip from strangers. If people lost money each time they upvote, we would see less voting activity unless its a self vote.
It's not permissible to just downvote a post because you don't like a content? But it's ok to upvote because you like the content? Idk, blurt seems to be a wonderland for having no downvotes and their trending has a lot of trash content.
Well, let's put it this way: you're always free to use your downvote, since it's yours. I never do, as I realize its effects can be taken quite seriously (as I know I would take them). But ultimately it's up to you what you do with yours. Still, I would recommend you to give an explanation for your downvote, because not knowing how I deserved it would bother me more than the loss of rewards.
Yes! Very well said. Also there is the inevitable fact that we will observe to see if these rules apply to everyone or not and sometimes they do not.
For the time being, I think acidyo and a few others understand these problems and are eager to address them. It’s not always easy though because everyone disagrees on how to go about doing things. It really is a mini society. Nothing less
And I did not even come close to starting this conversation. 😝😝😝 I am very late to it. I was just throwing in my two cents to try and build some understanding between acid and Kenny who were two beacons of hope for me when Steem had far more problems than Hive does does today.
Mini society i true. So let's hope this problem can be straightened out, because one of the worst things I have seen over the years on this chain, is losing some dedicated members of this mini society. And that's a loss for all of us, so we should try to prevent it as best as possible.