Edit: Downvotes are long gone. Upvotes are now diamonds.

To Upvote or Downvote? Only Upvote? It's a reoccurring suggestion on the site. Most recent thread: Down with the downvote. Despite a seemingly overwhelming support to get rid of them, I'm not convinced the site would be better off.

I'd like to make the distinction that downvotes are useful, trollvotes are not. How many are trollvotes and how many do you just suspect? Why is it unreasonable to receive a downvote?

The suggestion to force feedback during a downvote puzzles me. If a downvote hurts, I think getting a reason for each one will hurt even more. It would draw more attention to them. Feed a troll a reason box and I'd expect an increase, not a decrease in use. Actually, the valid reasons are likely to hurt more than the trolls "opinion". We'd go from FUUUUU to Okay... :( If moderators reviewed reasons, we'd be making judgement calls on peoples opinions... nope, no thx. We have to ignore enough grief in our PM box over removing clearly stolen, inappropriate and remix submissions. I also believe knowing who downvoted our work would give birth to a new breed, Revenge Votes! I think requiring a reason is a complicated solution that in fact would cause more complex problems.

I've personally accepted that I'll inevitably get downvotes on anything I upload. Cyprezz Uploads: "Transforming Nyan Mage Tower of Pork-tarts!" Brace for DOWNVOTE! I know 100% will not like what I do. It's unrealistic. I think if a submission is good, an undeserved downvote will actually prompt others to upvote and offset it. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. In the short run a downvote may seem overpowered, which is why we get 1 upvote from ourself, 1 downvote and you're at 50%. Seems accurate actually, I like it and one person didn't, give it time. A quality submission WILL get more upvotes than down in the long run usually settling in the 75-99% range. I feel an upvote without the down isn't telling the truth and I can't seem to convince myself we'd be better off without them as attractive as knowing 100% will like my work, at least according to the site. I would look at the # of upvotes on my submission and wonder how many downvotes would it have? Would it still have 100%?! That would be quite the accomplishment. Or would it be 75-99% and is that really so bad? Damn percentage eating trolls.

I could code things to auto-detect the ogres based on behavior patterns. Have the system manipulate the vote? It could work... does for other systems. :D Would I only code rules to detect suspicious downvotes or take a look at the upvotes too? Perhaps there are a few patterns that are too extreme to ignore. Maybe we don't auto-adjust the votes but alert mods to investigate? If we block a trollvote do they take their trolling into the comments? WHAT IS THE ANSWER!!? I donno, stop yelling.

I think I'm playing devils advocate because I know if you're here and taking the time to comment, you care about your work and it's hard to understand how a downvote is going to be justified, ever. After all, it's our personal creations, it's art. Please consider the other side of submissions. There is lots of stolen content, 0 effort remixes and troll posts that downvotes not only make sense but help identify them as something that needs to be looked into. It also prevents them from getting popular. No downvotes? Then that obviously inappropriate project, texture pack, ripped skin is 100% liked and can only be upvoted. I think that would look worse than a trollvote issue.

What to do?