Don't Be a Downvoting Dunce

Votes are for posts and comments, NOT PEOPLE!

When teaching a child proper manners, we praise him when he does well and we scold him when he acts inappropriately.  It may take repeating this pattern hundreds of times, but eventually (given that  most everyone prefers praise/reward to scolding/deprivation) the child learns some manners and becomes a suitable (if not outstanding) member of society, at least if the technique is consistently and properly applied.

For instance, let's say that your three year old child intentionally throws his food in your face.  Clearly, that's unacceptable.  So, to teach the child that poor behavior has consequences, perhaps you take away his food for that meal.  That's clearly a reasonable response under the circumstances and one that's likely to prove effective in reforming behavior over time.    

And then maybe later in the day the same child brings you a flower.  What do you do?  Do you reject it and scold him because he threw food at you earlier that morning?  No, you praise him, of course, and likely even give him a hug. 

By thusly incentivizing "good" behavior and ignoring or punishing bad behavior, the child eventually learns the necessary lessons.  

But imagine if instead you became so irate at the food throwing that you decided to "punish" everything the child does from that point forward.  Throws food?  Punishment.  Brings you flowers?  Punishment.  Blows momma a kiss?  Punishment.  Kindly strokes the cat?  Punishment again.   

("Whipping Girl". Photo by me.  Subject:  @steemed-open)

It's easy to see that an all-punishment-all-the-time system will be completely ineffective at teaching the child anything and will, in fact, likely contribute to the exact behaviors we found so undesirable in the first place.

Unfortunately, many here on Steemit, rightly frustrated as some users' gross misbehavior, have resorted to down voting those users (or at least refusing to upvote them) in most every instance, even when they say or do something nice or insightful. Bots, being currently incapable of discernment, are particularly guilty of this.  

And the effect on Steemit's ecosystem is predictably not good.  Such a voting strategy does nothing to teach Steemsters good etiquette and instead often turns them into vindictive trolls or even enemies of Steem.  Even if those users are incapable of wreaking havoc on Steemit itself (due to, for instance, a bad reputation score), they can still do Steemit's reputation much damage in the world at large.  As service businesses have long known, just one dissatisfied customer can undo the good public relations work of ten raving fans. 

While the customer, or in this case the Steemit user, may not always be right, they certainly are not alway wrong either.  PLEASE VOTE ACCORDINGLY.  We should be upvoting and downvoting posts and comments, NOT PEOPLE.