Not the worst in people, but I agree that it incentives undesirable behavior.

I've thought and read about this a bit. I don't have the answers, but I think the lack of willingness and desire to experiment is damaging to the social experience.

People change. Communities change. Culture changes. Social systems ought to adapt as the need arises.

Yet, here we are, painting over mold and nailing pieces of a system made a decade over that was toxic then, is toxic now, and will likely be toxic tomorrow. How would that ever work? We're not special. We're just another group ready to slip in the same slopes as the previous one.

Should we disable downvotes? Instances doing this never hear the end of it. Should votes be public to all? Dev thread brigaded. C'mon, let's think together, are we actually gonna be reddit, but federated, forever? Surely that's not what you want—Oh. Ohh. Well, my bad, then.

Easy to forget we all have our own wants, needs, and priorities. I'm sure I was the bad part of someone else's experience, just doing what I thought was best. Still, I'm... getting tired, of Reddit 2. I'm not sure it's possible to make it much better. It's all too entrenched.