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Notes -
Are you voting to shift the score because:
(1) This is actually good/bad content
(2) This guy is One Of Us/One Of Them
(3) Oh no, people are being mean, let me swoop in and act Lady Bountiful/The Saviour
(4) I have my own notion of what constitutes 'balance' and so if I think this is an unbalanced vote, I'll upvote/downvote to swing it, regardless of whether the content really is good/bad
Again, my objections are based on if upvotes are being used to measure quality, then they should only be used for quality, not rebalancing or being nice or "I think too many people dislike/like this" or any other reason.
I don't want somebody 'rebalancing' a vote I gave as criticism/approval just because they have a different notion of what should or should not be considered acceptable. And that seems to be where the upvoting/downvoting is drifting away from "this is quality content" to other reasons, which is why I'd be just as happy to have it permanently scrapped. I don't count up or down votes that I get. I certainly don't look at the upvote/downvote score when I'm reading other comments and deciding if I like or dislike the content based on that, as distinct from "what is the body of the piece?"
As to "prevailing bias", that's a subjective measure. I have a pro-life bias, but even if I vehemently disagree with posts about abortion, I don't go around "This site has a pro-baby killing bias, I must redress that by downvoting every pro-abortion comment. And then find other comments by the person who posted a pro-abortion comment, and downvote those, in order to defeat the prevailing pro-baby killing bias on here!"
Somebody else might genuinely consider "For some unknown reason this place permits unreasonable bias against the perfectly moderate notion that twelve year olds should have the right to be employed in brothels providing full service for clients, I must therefore vote opposite to what I believe is the prevailing bias". That is not voting on "is the argument advanced about why twelve year olds should not be legally permitted to be whores a good argument", that is voting in favour of one's own bias.
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