My issue with the downvotes is that it is regularly brigaded even if it’s not an organized effort. Legit contributions get shouted down to being hidden while other non helpful or downright dangerous info is kept above it. On reddit with the smaller subs it doesn’t matter especially when it’s a post because it’s still going to show in the sub. And while lemmy/fediverse is still small and growing, this will most definitely push plenty of people (likely me included) to not be as active because the majority of people don’t seem to be capable of having a real conversation and instead just downvote and move on.

The one thing lemmy and the fediverse has going for it is not having karma attached to your account so you don’t have people looking for upvotes for legitimacy and you don’t have downvote troll farmers who see how far negative they can get.

I could also see keeping the up/down and total so long as it’s hidden (but accessible to those that want to see it). I’d also be okay if downvoting enough of a specific accounts comments or posts automatically hid it from you (without blocking them completely).

In general I try to go back on downvoted posts to see if I was unclear to improve it for next time. But I am guilty of relying on prior voters knowing about context and end up using group concensus to vote posts up or down when they are a bit unclear on intent, so can’t really blame others that donthe same.

I’m not sure why, but it was the beginning of your second paragraph where my urge to reflexively downvote you (after having been primed by seeing the existing score) was strongest. It might be because I skimmed over the “that can be addressed” part, or just that “disruption to the local area” is a relatively weak criticism and citing it as your primary example set off my reactionary spidey-sense a little.

Frankly, I’m not sure what you could’ve done differently. Maybe change that first sentence to something like “That said, the reasons locals oppose large scale projects aren’t always entirely invalid?”