I am hoping that I am misunderstanding a portion of what the new voting involves
I have read the github notes, including being able to SCALE how many people you could counter act.

This is how I am interpreting it

• You will be able to vote against a vote, rather than specifically the article/comment the vote was applied to.
• You will be able to designate X amount of people that you are essentially in opposition to, and X is based upon steem power up to a maximum of X=256. If you are maxed out on X and wish to designate someone else, you would need to first stop opposing one of the people you have targeted as being opposed to.

Is that correct? That is how I am reading it and I am really hoping I am wrong.

If I am not wrong is that not essentially endorsing warfare, and almost little personal vendettas? If I set myself to be opposed to something another person does without reviewing everything they say is that not wrong? You may write about Religion and I disagree with you, so I now designate you one of my ENEMIES. So now I automatically oppose things you vote on. If you write an article about technology and it has nothing to do with religion. TL;DR or even don't read anything you say, I just vote against you. This seems absolutely horrible if that is indeed what this is.

I've been wanting to say something for awhile, but I kept getting distracted by life.

Why are we encouraging countering things in this matter? In a community where we could practically eliminate most uncivil behavior we now could potentially be setting up to have ENEMIES.

The word enemy is not used in the documentation.

Yet is that not essentially what it is?

Where is the compelling reason for a down vote?

If I like cheese, and hate caviar. I buy cheese. I don't go remove caviar from the shelf so other people don't see it and can't buy it.

Why does how many people dislike an article even matter?

I like obscure progressive metal music? Do you think I care how many people don't? I do like knowing there are other people out there that share my interests, and it is cool to have a way to link up with them. Yet in truth, I don't care how many people don't like it.

Allowing people to essentially remove things from the shelf is no different than censorship. All you are doing is changing it so people get to vote on what to censor.

Sure it is technically NOT censored as it is still in the blockchain and if someone is so inclined they can go write a new way to view the blockchain. Most people don't have that ability, so I guess they are just out of luck.

I see reason to flag abuse, spam, and plagiarism. I honestly cannot see any value in a down vote. I don't see how it truly matters.

You could say it matters for curating and picking good content. Yet that is simply a scale.

If I have 10 votes for something, and 100 votes for something else there is still a scale to compare them by. Yet it has no negative aspect.

All negative voting provides is a way to tell other people how much you truly hate the things they are interested in. It gives you a chance to rub their nose in it.

Without down votes they could clearly see that more people like one thing, than another. Yet they are not trying to tell people YOU ARE WRONG, and I AM RIGHT.

I see value in the down vote if your goal is anger, strife, and enmity. If we want warfare then these are the right steps to take.

So ask yourself the following, then maybe you can explain it to me, because I cannot understand it...

What is the value add for a down vote?

What positive thing can you do with a down vote that cannot be accomplished without it?

So far I've read @dantheman's blogs and I can see it as a perspective, which were really well written. I would have responded to them much like this, but like I said life interfered, and I've needed time to truly think about what he said. I do not see it as the ONLY solution, and perhaps not even as being a solution. I see it more as trying to hold onto something just because, that is how it is done somewhere else. That doesn't necessarily mean it is correct or even the best choice.

Steem/Steemit/Steemtools is awesome. We all see a vast opportunity to change the world. Should one of the first things we do with it be to tie it into systems we already have plenty of evidence cause strife and hostility?

I admit... I truly cannot comprehend the value of the negative vote. So far I haven't seen anything that explains it in a way that makes sense to my mind. I am open to changing my mind, but I haven't seen anything that convinces me it can do something POSITIVE that cannot be accomplished without it.

This being in context of choosing content, and curating.

A negative vote could settle a tie breaker/race like condition, but is that a good enough reason to have it? Could we have for example the trending page showing the top most voted posts from different tags, rather than being the top earners. Top earners are not always the top voted. That would make for a much more diverse trending page. It'd also make such tie situations very rare. I personally would rather have a rare tie, than warfare.