What do you mean? To downvote IS to disagree. To disagree will lead to downvote for those who actually bother with that stuff. They are the same things in this regard. You are overly concerned about how other users will view your comments. Don't be.

okay. just respond to the last sentence with the same point you started with. Whatever. I have no interest in chatting with you.

If you don't like seeing downvotes - turn them off.
Settings -> "Article Likes Preference".

Change it to good to turn off "negative" votes. Or none to turn off all votes.

Where have you been all this time lol. Thank you so much. :)

No, that's just one way to see it, and the way I see it is that people probably use downvoting in different ways. Some probably use it as you describe, some probably use it like I do, which is to indicate a bad comment, not just one I happen to disagree with, and some probably have different ways to decide what to downvote. In fact, you might even downvote a comment you agree with, if you find it bad enough, so even then, downvoting doesn't necessarily mean disagreement.

Hello again. It’s not working on my end? I got the preference set to “None.” last night (and saved changes), but it has yet to take effect from what I can tell…

Tested that can I can confirm the feature isn't working. I'll look into that.

It should be working now. I'll give example pictures.

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I think the voting system is fine, and should remain. In fact, I kind of like coming back to see what kind of vote activity my comment has received.

I don't really feel like it is widely abused or significantly weaponized. There are some users that consistently post what I would consider bad comments, and those people are subject to consistent down voting, as they (arguably) should be. I think that's really a benefit of voting.

I would not oppose separating up votes and down votes.  In fact, I think I like that idea. As I mentioned, I like to see what kind of vote activity my comments receive. But, if I come back to a plus one or a minus one or something, I don't know if that's because it's gotten a lot of votes both ways, or because not very many people have cared enough to vote.  Separating ups and downs would make the voting system more valuable to me, I think.

I haven't been paying as much attention lately. But, in years past, I often felt like this site was a bit too tight with the moderation. Trolling and shit talking are part of the deal in forums and social media. I don't think we should be trying to stop behavior that is normal.

There are some limits to how much should be tolerated, of course. And I want to make clear that I don't think the site is too bad with over moderating. It's just that I'd like to see it a bit looser (keep in mind that my opinion is based on observations over the past few years, and not so much the last several months).

I know there's some balance that has to be found. Banning people or otherwise discouraging them from posting is bad. But, allowing them to talk a bunch of shit that discourages other people from posting is also bad. It's a tough job for the mod team. I appreciate those that take on the task.

Regarding site improvements....

What is the status of the relationship between our team (mods, admins, developer, etc) and the owner of this site? I have the impression that ownership is essentially MIA. If that's the case, I wouldn't advise anyone to put real time and effort into improving this place unless they get enjoyment out of doing the work. Ownership could nuke the whole thing (either intentionally or due to inaction when needed) at any time.

In fact, every time this site goes down I find myself wondering if it will be gone forever. I assume that one of these times, it will be.