First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!! Had to say that since this my first post of 2022. 
Anyway...
This subject gets revisited every so often and my opinion remains unchanged: I don't really see the policy as a big deal one way or the other, but personally I dislike down-voting, mainly because my comments often get down-voted, seemingly because I often offer nuanced views about things and that's way too independent a thought pattern for most people. Either that or I dared write with more feeling than an Amazon Alexa response. It's discouraging because I tend to put a lot of effort into my contributions for them to just be lazily swatted down and stigmatized with the click of a button. Detractors should have to put more effort into their gripes than that, I feel. But then maybe there wouldn't be so many of those because most people are too lazy to actually explain why they object, especially if it involves writing more than one or two sentences.
I don't feel like I fit in very well as things are, so the unfortunate truth is that I become discouraged easily. Half the time if I see a down-vote by a comment I made, I'll just delete the comment to avoid the impending, humiliating pile-on that may hurt my reputation on the main forums as well, to say nothing of frankly my soul. And them maybe I'll think two or three times before offering another opinion on an article in the future. Maybe other people with higher self-esteem than me respond differently, but that's how it often goes for me.
There's surely a reason why down-voting ain't an option here on the main forums. I don't see why there's a divergence in the policy that way. Makes no sense to me.
