Like I said, downvotes do have a purpose. And that specific purpose happens to be one that I believe many people could understand logically and emotionally. The exception would be if those 11 posts could attract an audience from outside of Hive. But this highlights another problem. Even though we are tiny, the community has never provided a concrete downvote criteria. If I could explain to someone, “avoid upvoting your own post 11 times a day, avoid posting anything immoral or illegal, etc.” it could make sense. But right now the reality is that anyone can and will downvote just because they feel like it. And often times the person will ask “what did I do so I won’t do it again?” They are met with silence so it’s a punishment without any chance to reform. When the answer is “you did nothing wrong, I just think you got too many votes” there is no way the average person will find that pleasant. Obviously, you can use logic to explain, but the fact is that problem targets emotion not logic. A very easy response would be “Wait. So many people wanted to encourage me that someone else said it was too much encouragement.” Very few “regular” people are signing up for that. And this isn’t even counting the fact that psychological studies show that basically people would be happier if they get 5 things that they keep as opposed to being given 20 things and then having 10 things taken away. Logic would dictate that you have 5 more things. But emotion interferes and causes you to miss the 10 things that you never really had. That is why seeing a reward one day and then seeing it lowered the next has a more negative effect than simply getting a small reward. Hive is very heavy on logic and very light on emotion and human nature. It might be possible that is why it is so hard to attract and keep people here.
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