Remove the ability for users to downvote on arguments

[Monstarrrr]

Problem

Downvoting arguments makes no sense

Solution

Remove the ability to do so in backend

[purple-void]

why remove downvotes but not upvotes?

[Monstarrrr]

why remove downvotes but not upvotes?

Because upvote = ''I would like to know how to respond to this argument'', that way other users see which are the most interesting/difficult arguments to refute.

But downvote can't really be ''I don't want to know how to respond to this argument''.
Because if you don't then you just ignore it.
And there's no reason to downvote for bad arguments formatting or what not because we already manually verify their validity.

Lmk what you think.

[purple-void]

"i want this argument shown to other people" makes more sense to us, and the person can boost the post by upvoting it. "i don't want this argument shown to other people" also makes sense with downvoting available. that goes with the white paper idea: "Votes purpose is to highlight qualitative content while filtering out low quality ones, as well as motivate users to participate." good-quality posts with few votes could be hidden among many bad-quality posts with few votes. having the downvote option would help filter out the bad-quality posts.

[Monstarrrr]

"i want this argument shown to other people" makes more sense to us, and the person can boost the post by upvoting it. "i don't want this argument shown to other people" also makes sense with downvoting available. that goes with the white paper idea: "Votes purpose is to highlight qualitative content while filtering out low quality ones, as well as motivate users to participate." good-quality posts with few votes could be hidden among many bad-quality posts with few votes. having the downvote option would help filter out the bad-quality posts.

Unlike rebuttals, arguments are submitted as prompts for rebuttals, not as endorsements of ideas.

So what would we be judging?

• Judging the validity of the argument is pointless because admins already verify their validity before they're published, and if they lack content/improvements, people are encouraged to make edit suggestions, not bury them with downvotes (we encourage collaboration).
• Judging the effectiveness of a non-vegan argument at convincing people not to be vegan would be helping non-vegans more than it'd help us, imo: While the advantage is that we know which arguments to prioritize, we do not need to explicitly vote on the effectiveness of an argument to express that we want to know how to answer it. Instead, we could order by bookmarks, follows and total views, as those testify of the relevance of an argument without explicitly endorsing them with voting.

Therefore, there shouldn't be votes on arguments at all, but bookmarks, follows, and views.

Removing downvotes was a quick fix but imo we should to remove the feature from arguments altogether (votes would only be used for rebuttals.).

What do you think?

[purple-void]

there is no way to deprioritize arguments with bookmarks, follows, and views. bookmarks and follows will likely show a smaller indication of what users want because fewer people might use those. views might over-indicate users' preferences because users might click on arguments that initially intrigue them but realize from reading them they prefer not for others to see those. votes allow an explicit endorsement or disapproval of the argument's priority.