Star Trek in 1966: has a bridge crew containing a black female, Russian man, and faaaabulous Japanese man, each of whom holds the rank of full Lieutenant on their own abundant merits
I see your points, and they do make sense, but I respectfully disagree with your conclusion. My reasoning is that, from my experience, a downvote has no nuance. A reply saying "this is wrong and here's why" with a hundred upvotes is useful. A downvote is basically the equivalent of flicking a peanut.
I disagree. Downvotes rarely add anything of value to the discussion that can't be expressed simply by not upvoting. There's no nuance to a downvote, and they're so often misused to the extent that I'm glad not to have to worry about them.
I'm on an instance that has downvoting disabled. I can't downvote. But, I also only see upvotes, and posts even on other instances are sorted by raw upvotes (not upvotes minus downvotes). If you downvote something, it looks exactly like if you'd not voted at all.
(edit: This took me like two minutes in Powerpoint, someone please make something, anything, that's better than this, otherwise this is what we'll end up with)
Star Trek in 1966: has a bridge crew containing a black female, Russian man, and faaaabulous Japanese man, each of whom holds the rank of full Lieutenant on their own abundant merits