Some posters are just plain irritating and it's nice to have a way of signalling that so I am with Ocean, Lemon and JanJal.

Anyway what would be better would be two different counters: total up votes and total down votes.

Reading past posts, it would seem that the original rational for having a voting system is to allow members to self-regulate by hiding offensive posts (without outright deleting them) without having the need to have a back-and-fourth which would further clutter up the boards and feed the flame war.

So now we are encouraged to report any post we find offensive and what would be the logical end of that process? Would posts now be deleted if the moderators deem them to be offense? So.....the moderators are now the sole judge, jury and executioner?

My gut feeling is that this will turn off many long time contributors and discourage participation. Whether this same policy will encourage new contributors remains to be seen.

I'm guessing the "thumbs down" feature was abused - hence it's removal - which makes sense. As Gokm is taking a more pro-active stance on bullying and abuse as opposed to lively and open discussions and debate - that could be an excellent evolution - but it doesn't really aid in Gokm cashflow generation.

Spamming a thumbs up button a la taboo faked ratings is rather pointless aside from satisfying those with exceptional egos.

Michael, studies have shown upvotes/likes/hearts can be abused by ads to self promote product or services. So not just self aggrandizement.

You'd think Facebook and Twitter have done their research for viewership optimization and bullying/abuse by focusing only on upvoting, like the recent change here.

Though lemon's integrated upvote and downvote buttons are implemented by YouTube, much of it done for algorithm to gauge viewing habits as practiced in Tiktok/douyin.

Trumpeter, mods being judge, jury, executioner have actually cleaned up the site rather well in recent weeks, wouldn't you say?

Cloud, downvoting due to irritation of certain posters is perhaps one of the reasons GOK opted for this change.

I have no problems with however the mods would like to run the forums, but it is such a drastic departure from user managed/driven transparency model that I'm sure will turn over more than a few apple carts. As to cleaning up the site, well, that's rather subjective.

The Alien in me would say the deletion of undesired post smacks of censorship and is rather insidious. But me personally, I wouldn't care either way.

Insidious? In a chat room, maybe, just maybe. Even Reddit has had to clean up its act. On a commercially run forum, it is normal. I cannot think of an ad carrying forum that does not moderate, delete, and ban posters.

I think in the end, it really doesn't matter. Upvote, downvote or no vote it's not a big deal at least for me. The moderators can do whatever they please.

I've never liked the personal attacks on this forum. Debate or discussion is great as it helps us see other sides of polarizing issues - but when a debate or discussion decays into personal expletive ridden bullying - that's just "uncivilized", so I'm glad to see that's been toned down significantly, if not eliminated.

The downvote function was a sensible feature that served some useful purposes as others have described above.

Sadly, it was irresponsibly abused by a number of people. To cite a few examples of senseless/trollish downvoting:

- There was a long period during which Alien/Ishmael would automatically get voted down every time he so much as stuck his head above the parapet.

- Jokes were frequently downvoted (leaving aside my own which may well have deserved it), lending a grim cast to the forums.

- Perhaps the quintessential case was a while back when @bilingualexpat got net -4 votes simply for writing “Most importantly, who knows what sorts of burden and anguish they bear in life? We need to be kinder to each other."

And perversely, even as the downvote system failed to deter trolls from plying their trade in the forums, I suspect it kept away some kinder people because its abuse fostered a climate that could come off as negative and intimidating.

So on balance, I am not sorry to see downvotes go.