Most forms of media do not have a downvote. Movies, music, TV, magazines, newspapers, etc. are all judged primarily based on their viewership numbers, ie sales. To the producer, your consumption of that media signifies your approval. If you throw money at it in the course of doing so, so much the better.
In these forms of media you don’t have a downvote to cancel out someone else’s approval. You can’t “unbuy” The Life of Pablo because you think Kanye’s a drama queen. You can’t “unwatch” last week’s The Walking Dead because you think it’s getting repetitious. You can’t counter someone else’s Emoji Movie ticket sale because you think the concept is stupid. You can’t anti-subscribe to the New York Post or Washington Post because you think it’s slanted. You can only choose not to contribute to the consumption, and talk about your decision with others. None of those options cancel out someone else’s approval, like a downvote does. Clicking a down button is just lazy, anonymous slacktivism.
A downvote on an actual serious attempt at art isn’t useful. The artist doesn’t know why there’s a downvote. Is it the anatomy? Lines? Colors? Composition? Subject matter? Characters? Technique? A combination of issues? Did the downvoter just have a bad day? Do they personally hate you for some reason? Downvoting is basically telling the artist to piss off after they smile and greet you in passing on the street, or yelling over the guy playing sax on the corner. Therefore I fail to see why the downvote is sacrosanct.
On the other hand, there needs to be some means of flagging an actual low-quality meme, an excuse-for-starting-shit-masquerading-as-an-image or other cut & paste drama bait shitposts for what they are.
For those reasons:
o Exclude downvotes from image score on anything with an artist tag, but actively delete shitposts which make use of artist-created images to get around that restriction.
o Encourage hides, which should have no effect on any score.
o For non-artist images with downvotes, continue allow them to be passively filtered if their total score exceeds a certain negative threshold.
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