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 think it also fundamentally changes the conversation. Valid but “unpopular” comments can’t get buried in downvotes. The voting system on Reddit was based on a sane logic that totally neglected to consider how people actually behave… the idea of up and down votes to crowd-source relevance and quality of content makes sense, but all anyone did was use it as an agree / disagree button which broke the idea entirely.
That’s my experience too. Downvotes are not supposed to be for disagreeing but they are used like that since people can’t handle someone disagreeing. :)