Smooth, thank you for taking the time to be professional and explain. I have been away for a while so please be patient with me as I do some catching up. I'm interested in your feedback. I have been tipped off and really looking at this since this post.
Just like mostly everyone: I hope we can do a little better. I see the down-vote costs you your voting power and it is sometimes causing the other loosing party a great deal of stress which eventually makes its way full circle and turns into a debate. The whole process takes time away from all parties involved. Can we strike a balance that will save everyone time, energy, and value?
Lets consider that we could all benefit by reminding ourselves that we all have ideas for investments that are not easily communicated and require a great deal of research. It seems simple to me: have some boundaries. We could be carrot driven and let the market rewards work things out. Save the stick for fraud, child exploitation, theft or a crime in society. The rational is: Don’t underestimate how much we don’t know about what the other side is doing.
To really know someone’s intention, or even the truth from a lye, we need to spend some time investigating it and even then we will never get it right completely. Ultimately some might even opt for a system of discovery and justice; so it gets complicated fast. In my opinion, respecting boundaries will get us by in the mean time and working together will give us more solid solutions in the long term. It is just going to take some time and really it helps to keep an open mind to what we don’t know especially if we have other goals and don’t have the time to really research the intentions of the members in another group.
I don't agree with the framing of downvotes as a "stick". Downvotes and upvotes are voting where stakeholders want the rewards to go. Where stakeholders agree, the rewards flow, where stakeholders don't, the rewards don't. Sometimes, as with all decision making processes, this can be a bit messy and some people will sometimes get upset when the outcomes don't match what they would most prefer. This is unavoidable when there is any sort of collaborative decision making, but any stresses shouldn't be extreme in most cases, or alternately, adults generally learn not to be overly stressed when they don't always get their way.
Also, as voting is a method of identifying and reaching agreement, we don't need to determine or suggest any labeling of intention. A downvote does not imply bad intention, only disagreement. A lack of downvote may indicate agreement, or perhaps just neutrality. Any of these is okay, people are entitled to have different opinions or similar opinions or no opinion.
Best to you James, glad you decided to stop by after all this time.
Thanks for the welcome back! I get what your saying about stress. I live by this idea: how much stress we take on is ultimately our choice. More to my point, this maxim reminds me of the complexities, risk, and costs of development and also applies to the complexities of sorting out truth from lies in the presents of free speech:
I don't expect anyone to get that right all the time. It is easy to loose track of assumptions and, how do you know what you don't know? I'm still catching myself on something even after I really started watching my own mind with distrust. I think this maxim is on topic here and sets a healthy boundary and encourages learning when one is ready to learn: Also, here I'm taking responsibility and I welcome the competition to do better.
So I'm having good interactions with Dan N and Kenny and all this has been very interesting..