I really do think that the downvote option is "toxic" nobody likes going to their thread and seeing downvotes. It really serves no purpose other than closing threads.

This means you have 4 options for the downvote system

1.) Keep it as is.

2.) You could make the downvote option invisible (it doesn't directly affect your points showed on the forums but if a thread gets too many downvotes to upvotes it would be closed.)

3.) Separate the downvotes/upvotes. You would be able to see exactly how many people liked it and how many disliked it.

4.) Completely remove the option.

you're implying they'll update the forums. good effort, but they don't sell forum skins/avatars yet

Thing
is
you
want
a
way
to
stop
an
annoying
person
who
types
like
this
to
get
blocked
so
that
the
two
page
paper
they
wrote
doesn't
take
a
month
to
scroll
through.

Only show downvotes once a post is closed

Only show upvotes if a post has a lot of upvotes

this will encourage people to have opinions of their own rather than snowball off the current rating and while go a long way with dealing with the sheepness we suffer from now

I hate the whole downvote upvote thing they got here. It turns this place into Reddit.

I think we should keep the voting number Invisible until the people actually upvote or downvote.

Most of the time, people downvote because everyone is doing it, or vice versa, not even bothering to read what's being said.

The upvote/downvotes system does provide one other useful function currently:

Identifying correct/incorrect information.

For example, let's say you're new. If you make a thread asking "Do Riven's spells benefit from life steal or spell vamp?", you're going to get both correct and incorrect responses. The vote system will distinguish them.

I used that example, because that sort of thread happens periodically on GD, and you can see this exact thing play out. You get people saying "Spell Vamp" with upvotes, and some people saying "Life Steal" with downvotes. The votes serve as a way for people who know what's actually going on (luckily, they are the majority on the forums it seems) to weigh in without bloating the thread.