People on CD don't down vote much
I was wondering how points are distributed across answers on this forum, i.e. how many answers have 1 point, how many have 2, etc. So yeah, I was bored and I ended up counting the number of votes a some persons have got over the last couple of months. I had an idea that there might be more upvotes than downvotes, and that does in fact seem to be the case. The point distribution is showed in the graph below with the y-axis logarithmic. People definitely downvote a lot less than they upvote. Doesn't that mean that people aren't evil spirited on here?
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Devil's Advocate though: Is there really a penalty for downvoting? I mean, it's not like there's anything to actually 'spend' points on. Personally, I don't tend to downvote at all, though I upvote arguments regularly. I usually only downvote my own posts, and then when I inadvertently make the wrong choice out of support/dispute/clarify and end up casting a vote towards a side I didn't want to, and that only to negate the vote (and the point whoring too, I suppose?) I think most of the downvoting is trolls too- every so often you see one of them spamming debates on a new account just to farm the points for a downvote spree. 1
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People are pretty kind. The reason why it someimtes feels otherwise is probably because humans have a strong negativity bias. This bias was pretty useful for our prehistoric ancestors, but now that we live in a pretty safe time, this negativity bias probably makes us more suspicious of each other than is fair. 1
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