The issue is that I often don’t want to comment and engage with some of the psychos that show up on the internet. Downvotes are a passive way to help move hateful/ignorant comments to the bottom of the thread. Having downvotes publicly accessible is giving these psychos a way to directly engage back with you.

https://youtu.be/09kXTL2IcVA

Wikipedia mainly survives on wealthy benefactors. Amazon donated a million or so recently, for example.

I’ve been harassed across subreddits before by one person because I disagreed with them on something. You can block them but all the sudden they pop up on another account. Some people are just crazy.

I think the issue is just that having votes publicly accessible can lead to harassment. Sometimes I want to downvote bigots or idiots and not want the possibility of them engaging with me.

Did you use any tools to help build this or did you do it by hand? I remember sethbling put together some kind of world edit tool that did something similar years ago.

It sucks because journalists do need to make money to continue reporting. Spamming sites with ads is bad for the reader’s experience too. Not totally sure what the solution is.