I Am Highly Offended By The "Voting" System On The Boards.

The old forums also had a similar voting system, in regards to comments, and it's always been something that really made me upset. I honestly feel as though the reason boards such as these exist is to express how you feel about whatever particular topic by explaining yourself via posting your response or creating a topic for others to post on. When an element such as "voting" is added on, it introduces an element of shame, which creates a barrier that makes you feel like maybe you're simply better off not posting anything, when you don't have a commonly shared opinion.

This is even further backed by comments being "punished" by means of hiding comments after a certain amount of down votes. It almost gives you the feeling similar to when you're working in retail and you are required to kiss all the customers asses in order to keep your job. Closer to even bullying you might say. No one here has a right to express themselves if it's not something that others agree with, and to me that's counter productive towards the whole reason of having a public discussion area to begin with.

I've thought many times over the years about abandoning these boards simply for these reasons (which I stated above). When I see anyone getting down voted a lot, that hurts my feelings, even if it doesn't have anything to do with me. People are taking time out of their day to express themselves, and instead of any reward coming out of it, they're instead forced to deal with mob rule scrutinizing them via voting.

I understand that it's also a method of dealing with abuse, but there are millions of other solutions instead of "voting". As for determining "hot" or "popular" topics, the easiest method is to simply analyze which threads have the most discussion in them. After all, that's the whole idea behind a board such as this... discussion. Boards such as this aren't created to elect the next president of a country, they're made for a community to express themselves and have meaningful conversations, and voting is more a means of discouraging conversations than creating them.