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I'm guilty of voting to restore balance, but let me explain:
I think the voting ethics ought to be something like the original reddiquette. If a comment adds to the discussion - if it expresses something relevant clearly, even if you disagree - then you should upvote. If you can't bring yourself to do that, then at the very least, you should not downvote. In a well-behaved forum, the score of an unpopular, but valid comment should never fall below 1.
On this site (but not on Reddit for some reason) I noticed posters who play devils advocate, or disagree with the majority were regularly be downvoted below 0. Examples: ( 1 2 3, all negative at time of linking ). This is bad. These might not be quality contribution material, but they're fair comments and shouldn't be downvoted. To quote the rationalist maxim, "Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever". I see a lot of bullet holes here. I do my part to patch them up as best I can.
Okay, that's a reasonable reason for upvoting for balance. But the important thing is that the comment needs to be of some quality; popocatapetl's "I'll upvote even bad content just to be nice" is what causes real damage, because if we're using "upvotes = good", then upvotes on poor content just for the sake of 'niceness' skew that measurement.
I really dislike the upvote/downvote or likes or other methods, because I've seen people degenerate into chasing upvotes or likes or reblogs, and get very distraught about "I left a post or comment and nobody responded to it, why aren't my reblogs/likes going up? Does this mean I should stop writing completely?" The danger is when people do invest their sense of "I'm doing something right" into "but I only know that by how many upvotes I get".
Feck the begrudgers. If they downvote you, let them! That never stopped me, it shouldn't stop you!
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Right, same issue. I am an egalitarian voter when scores are visible. Too high a vote and, so long as the post, while net improving the forum, has any noticeable flaw – I won't add to it. Too low a vote – and I'll prefer to avoid participating in the dogpile. And of course if my opponent gets to zero while not being utterly insane, I upvote him to encourage engagement.
When scores are not visible, well... gotta vote on the merits. But perhaps it makes for a worse environment in the long run.
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