I have been a member for several years now and have noticed, to my dismay, a growing tendency by one or many to set comments and posts made by others to zero. It is not so much the setting to zero that bothers me it’s the fact that they never post a reason comment or justification for having done so. They simply do -1 and set it to zero.
Speaking bluntly if you don’t have enough nerve to state why you’re decrementing someone’s comment don’t do it. If you dislike the common enough, thank it is asinine, or has absolutely no redeeming merit at all then say so and decrement. In fairness I also think that if you’re going to do a +1 you should also put a comment in explaining why. This is not as critical an issue as adding a comment for a decrement.
There are many posts and comments that I disagree with, some quite strongly. If my memory serves me correctly I don’t believe I have ever decremented a single comment or post. If I don’t like it I generally explain why. Even then I don’t decrement. I do know that decrementing is a time-honored tradition in the Gulch but I do think it’s time that a little common courtesy and respect is shown even if you don’t agree with the posting.
I’m almost, but not quite, to the point that I would like to see this automatically enforced. There are ways to do this via software as I’m sure you all know. At the very least I would vote for having the name of the responsible individual placed in a comment attached to the post. This annotation would be a permanent addition to the posting.
Michael G Minnick (a.k.a. MMinnick)