what if you are only granted 1 downvote per 2 upvotes you assign-- this would have a triple effect of promoting a more positive site-wide image and make downvotes twice as meaningful while also preventing abusive brigading of users-- just a thought- is the idea even feasibly applicable?
As a casual suggestion, it’s fine by me. I like the broad idea of encouraging people to upvote and encourage stuff they want to see more of, rather than focus on down voting stuff they don’t agree with. But I suspect most people already upvote much more than they downvote so the ratio of 2:1 wouldn’t affect many people’s behaviour (although be interesting to see some stats on that!). And my prejudice is the small number of chronic downvoters would work around any rule, just like the freekarma subs on reddit.
So putting aside the technical difficulties, it seems like a change that wouldn’t substantial modify general behaviour, and wouldn’t prevent bad actors (although it might make their lives a little more hassleful, which isn’t a bad thing). I think that’s why people have been suggesting psychological solutions, because developing a lemmy culture where people don’t care about points is probably less effort and more effective than adding ratios that don’t change much. But it’s not an awful idea, and if it was introduced it wouldn’t bother me. Tbh, I’d be fine with removing all up /down votes and we could go back to forum style of actually writing what you liked or didn’t about a post.