The only good downvoting did was inflame others into an online ego war. It's better that people actually take the time to [civilly] address a comment than to passive-aggressively down-vote it. It also bullied people whose comments may be correct but others simply wanted to annoy that user, which happened quite often. I prefer the helpful comments being brought to the forefront of the threads through the new system, it allows me to view the top 5 or so without sifting through hundreds of posts.
I posted my past prior post without reading your response here. I can understand those concerns, but I submit that the down vote system could have been fixed with a few protocols..
Let down voting be "earned" via a formula of number of helpful posts, level of participation, and/or other factors. Also, your old system allowed competing up and down votes to cancel out each other. It would have been better with a system that showed the total number of up AND down votes.
Anyone abusing the down vote could have the privilege revoked. People don't always have time to civilly offer detailed comments in rebuttal. Sometimes the comments are so absurd they don't rate a detailed explanation, the down vote stands on its own.
I think there's something to be said for having a preponderance of reader opinion. The current "up only" option is less than ideal.
Peace