I assume you wanted v/disagreebutton to grow.

Let me ask you how did you plan to ensure that this sub remained apolitical. I don't think it would be possible with a large userbase for a long period of time. A small community can stick by its rules and play nice. The bigger something gets the more divided it gets. Furthermore it would only be a matter of time before you removed something that you deemed political that others would deem non political or you would allow something political to stay on.

Furthermore on just the front page I got a person saying: "I don't think I was wrong pls upvoat me". Which I don't think is a good idea.

Upvoat brigades are most definitely capable of bad things.

Such as:

• Hilary clinton must win the election lets upvoat everything Hilary!

• Fat people are despicable lets promote our fat hating cousins in other subs!

etc etc I can go on all day really.

You had good intentions that I can believe. But ultimately I do not think a sub like disagreebutton should exist. On that note I do agree that the downvoat button is being abused.

you aren't helping anyone calling us morons and retards.

It's a bit hyperbolic and it allowed commenters to take it and complain about that part so that they can evade the dozen arguments in my post. Probably shouldn't have said that, but it still comes close to the truth though. A lot of what this sub has done in the past view days achieved the opposite of protecting voat.

then good luck because everywhere you go there will be idiocy.

I'm trying to find somewhere where the proportion of them is acceptable. It's all about relative size.

How do you know that a comment was wrongly downvoted and deserves upvotes?

It's in most cases really, really obvious to see. You don't need to be a genius to figure out that a lot of my comments in this thread were civil and contained quality arguments and were only downvoted because I dissent.

Can you tell me, honestly, that it isn't extremely obvious this comment didn't get downvoted because I dissent? : https://voat.co/v/ProtectVoat/comments/429616/1924819 If you honestly think that comment didn't contribute to the discussion, wasn't civil and lacked insight then I don't know what to say to you. To me it is so obvious that the downvote button is being abused, I can't believe so many of you can't see that. Those denying it are delusional morons. Again:

Honestly I am losing more faith by the day and perhaps am already in denial about how drained Voat is in stupidity because of SJW anti-SJW's.

I'm going to lower my activity here drastically because of all this. I thought I could turn things around and put Voat up on the track towards stimulating intelligent and informative debate again, but the mass of idiocy simply has become too large. I think I have gotten about 40-60 messages now from idiots all using the most delusional and retarded arguments. It's also been way too long since I have seen a really well-written analysis grounded in philosophy or whatever on this site--too many reasonable people have already left and are currently leaving the site.

Some have connected it to AskVoat now having a minimum requirement of CCP in order to downvote, despite it being very obvious it was due to every post from innocent users who just want to post and discuss questions was being brigaded and downvoted harshly (in order to sink activity and get people to go to /v/AskGoat). I went from being respected: https://archive.is/uKpZi, to losing legitimacy because of this accusation. People didn't realize I can both disagree with her actions as a mod and with every comment of her, despite being perfectly fine, being downvoted for that. People supported me to the extent I contributed to the effort of /u/she being burned at the stake (and also because I disagreed with and changed the sidebar rules and actively engaged with the community), wherein a lot abandoned camp reason and didn't care for each action being evaluated and analyzed on its own. They instead desperately tried to connect things and imagine ghosts behind things to fit their own narrative: they became delusional SJW's (People with paper thin skin who always find something to be offended about, especially if that thing only exists and is created by their own delusion) in the attempt to fight SJW's.

At every point where you defended that cunt, you were wrong.

So if I disagree with multiple things She does, I have to be against everything she does? Where did I support her wrong actions? I literally attacked her on a lot of her actions. The only point I defended her on was her every comment getting -20 votes despite being perfectly fine. This sub wanted me to become head mod: https://archive.is/uKpZi. Do you even know what has happened? Or are you so swept up in the deluded mob mentality that you don't even know what is going on?

Care to create an argument I can attack other than saying I am wrong? You have literally said nothing but saying I am wrong and an idiot, you are provided no evidence whatsoever, yet unsurprisingly get upvoted for it. All you did was do some jerking in the hollow circlejerk.

-1 for this assumption >every post from innocent users who just want to post and discuss questions was being brigaded and downvoted harshly (in order to sink activity and get people to go to /v/AskGoat).

You can easily check dozens of posts before the announcement and find a strong anomaly in the amount of downvotes each post get. It wasn't an assumption. It was grounded in strong evidence. We will likely even be removing the cap soon at which point it will either get brigaded again which would legitimize putting the cap back up, or it wont happen again and we'll don't put the limit back in place.

-1 for ignoring that the downvote button worked until she infuriated the userbase. >If the majority likes to be naïve in thinking Voaters wont abuse the downvote button

I can't do anything about she and if you had followed the link you would have known I was against her becoming top mod and thought her actions displayed incompetence.

Your last longer argument is ignoring the reality that for example taking your analogy with soldiers that soldiers can fight for good things. You are saying it is a moral fact that brigading is inherently absolutely wrong: no matter the cause. If you accept that brigading is wrong if the surival of the planet depends on it, then you accept that utilitarian values have a role in the matter. Your argument also rests on the assumption that no one uses downvotes to stifle debate and silence or punish dissent, which is obviously the case. The whole brigade against AskVoat shows and if you aren't a complete retard then you knnow this to be true. If you are against intelligent, open and friendly debate then yes the disagreebutton is wrong, but otherwise you rely on a moral absolute of brigading being inherently wrong.

Here is an unrelated example from an article I wrote for criminology of why holding a moral absolute leads to self-contradiction:

The theory many use is the retributivist theory for the justification of crime which says that a person should be punished proportionally to his crime (eye for an eye). Even in my own country (the Netherlands) only 1% of the people (p.62) believe they would give more leniant punishments to criminals if they were the judge.

Taking the Aristotelean account of responsibility, the government would be forced to not punish harshly or use retributivism as a means to justify punishment because they would have to punish themselves. Research shows that if you have two criminals who are exactly the same and committed the same crime, then if you were to give him a prison sentence, he on average has a 50% higher chance to reoffend than if he were to have gotten a community service punishment.

We consider something a crime, like suicide bombing, because the bomber caused the deaths (causality), was aware of the consequences (intentionality) and wasn't forced to do it (had the freedom to do something else). The government knows (intentionality) that giving a prison sentence to a criminals, not resocializing them, treating them like shit to 'punish them' instead of a community service with the intent of making them a productive citizen will significantly increase crime or that their policy or actions will cause more crime (causality) and the government wasn't forced to implement that policy (freedom to do something better). So if they would uphold the policy of punishing more harshly, they would have indirectly caused more crime while they knew about the causal effect and had the freedom to act otherwise: holding the retributivist theory they would have to punish themselves, which is absurd.

Ethics is a much more complicated field than people think, especially because the science behind some of the policies are really non-intuitive. An example of that besides the research I showed above is that the 'Scared straight'YouTube actually has an adverse effect and potentially leads to more crime. Deterrence in that form, or even by giving harsher penalties doesn't work.

Edit: I'll use this edit to deconstruct the concept of brigading into the elements it is the conglomerate of and then try lead those elements into self-contradiction of the whole like I did with the above example. It is extremely difficult to do as it requires not only a profound understanding of the concept, but since I have not read papers with empiric evidence regarding to road to self-contradiction is also hard to prove. This edit might take a long time. For now I have in my mind that the theme of the social contract is part of it, there is also something fallacious appeal to nature going on...

First you fuck up askvoat with a terrible no down voat rule,

It was because innocent users who just want to post and discuss questions got brigaded.

You turned it political when you tried to use it as an army in the shebacle.

1. So a doctor treating someone becomes political when he treats a patient that is a politician? Now, he just treats the injuries. the sub upvotes all comments if they have quality and got downvoted for dissenting.

2. I am against stupidity

3. you are delusional if you think people don't use the downvote button to silence dissent and stifle debate.

4. Assuming a utilitarian position and assuming that the promotion of open and intelligent discussion are good things, then supporting those things through upvotes is good. I get that you and many other people are limited to thinking in moral absolutes and know jack-shit about philosophy or ethics, which is why are you morons. I never said I am against brigading and it isn't a mob.