Article Downvotes should be removed - Yay or Nay?

[derpysquirtle64]

Ryuu96 said:

zero129 said:

Can agree 100% with the removal of double votes, and i never knew you could see the comments once they where hided. But i think the up votes can be good for a reason as they would make the top comments go to the top but i still think the down votes dont work as like you say some users follow others around and just down vote for the sake of it and then it becomes a pile on even if the comment is valid and fine.

To clarify, I'm not saying to remove upvotes from articles.

But I do wonder if upvotes in threads specifically are hurting discussions, there's an argument to be said that they remove the useless "agreed" posts but I also imagine they discourage posts of "I agree, for these reasons" when you can just slap an upvote to the comment and move on.

And I say this as someone who receives a lot of upvotes, Lol. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate them but it also sometimes makes me wonder from time to time if they hurt discussion.

I have to kinda disagree on this one. If someone has nothing to say except for basic "Yeah, I agree", then it won't hurt discussion in any way. The simple post of "Yeah, I agree" doesn't really add to discussion much. So, having an upvote button is nice because it helps to keep the threads clean from such basic posts. And if someone wants to go in detail, then nothing really prevents them to quote and post detailed opinion in addition to upvoting the post