My understanding is that voting in the Gulch should function to highlight good and valuable discussions. It seems to me, though, that there has been an awful lot of emotional voting going on lately. A brief perusal of the recent "abortion debate" threads are easy evidence. Please don't get side-tracked here; the point of this thread is not to continue that debate. But it seems very clear that people up-voted and down-voted comments based on whether or not they aligned with their personal beliefs, rather than on the basis of the particular argument, according to the value of seeing the thought processes involved. Personally, I find value in seeing the arguments on both sides, but find it frustrating to have to dig way down to the bottom to find some really interesting thought. That's not how it is supposed to work here. Even if you disagree with a position, up-vote it if it is a good debate or a good point to ponder. Likewise, just because you like or agree with a comment, it may not be the best contribution to the argument at hand, so perhaps you should not up-vote it.

This view of voting was particularly appealing to me when I joined this Gulch not too long ago. But I wonder if the concept will survive.

Edit: More evidence. In this thread, about prayer, the poster put the topic of his post in a comment. That comment was voted down. Granted, this is probably not the best place for a question about prayer. But to vote down the topic of the post means that the reader has no idea what the post is about until he reads the whole thing. This comment, as much as people may not "like" it, is very important to the thread and should be voted up. See for yourself: http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts...