Forgotten ground rules of /r/politicaldiscussion.

This subreddit was started as a reactionary response to the r/politics format. Instead of becoming a dumping ground for circlejerk political news links, submissions were set in a way as to elicit the actual thoughts of an OP. The subreddit was built on discussion and the honor code was that you did not downvote if you were not going to leave a written thought-out response. Upvotes for comments you agreed with and written replies for comments you did not agree.

Some maintained that downvotes should be reserved for comments that added nothing to the discussion, but my personal stance was no downvoting ever because relevant comments were as subjective as irrelevant comments. As the subreddit has steadily grown so has this system been steadily eroded. It is not uncommon now to find an ordinary but unpopular comment with -7 votes with no replies or responses.

If r/politicaldiscussion is going to become that sort of place, we might as well go back to r/politics which has a lot more people and lot more topics/links/comments to upvote and downvote. If you do not agree with something, upvote a comment in disagreement or write out your own reply in disagreement. If not, ignore it. Downvoting is no different from what this donkey is doing, and this project was supposed to be opposite of that.