RE: Reflections on the past, present, and future of VYB (Part 1)

the majority of people don't downvote

That's true. My comment wasn't clear. If the downvote power was lowered, I did say:

More people would then have to downvote in order negate instances of abusive/exploitative behavior.

Which won't happen. So lowering it will effectively disempower the community and those same problems will creep back up. Give an inch, they'll take a mile.

The biggest problems stem not from the downvotes themselves but the reactions to them. Things get blown way out of proportion sometimes.

Community members are being manipulated and eventually disempowered because of that. Have to sit on their hands; sit on the sidelines and watch as members get dragged through the mud, bullied, harassed, thinking if they step in they'll just become a target and treated the same way. Like OMFG there's a guy running around claiming to see demons, scrambling around trying to save everyone; because he got caught doing something stupid he even admits to, so people downvoted him, but he didn't like that.

Before him others were off running their little smear campaigns as well. Seems like those who hate the place and the people use downvotes as their weapon of choice (without pushing the actual button) to make everyone look bad by using scare tactics and playing mind games. Politicizing every case, pumping peoples heads full of nonsense; and that's what creates a WTP. Then they sit back and go, "See. That's what you get for downvoting."

It's ridiculous.