Ideas
Forum Votes on Comments are more like Opinion Shaming
As I've been checking out how the forums have been run, I've noticed that to Comment on a topic with a differentiating opinion, the comment will most likely be subject to down vote. I can assume that this makes it really hard for someone who would like to discuss or debate the topic on another viewpoint. I know it is for me.
X topic is this. X topic is for it. X topic's comments tend to be all for the topic are Upvoted, and all against Downvote. This system of voting on comments is very intimidating. I also believe it can sway opinion on how folks may treat the debate or discussion based on up/down votes within comments. It's terrifying going into a forum thread knowing if you write anything the basic opinion of the thread is going for, you'll get down voted. It can Silence differenciating opinion.
TLDR: Upvotes and Downvotes are fine on the general Idea of the topic to gauge interest, but I don't think it's good for the comments!
Customer support service by UserEcho
I think this is more about the nature of the support site, and what it's good or bad for. It's good for technical discussion of the site and improvements to it, but it's really not very good at all for discussion that involves "sides" at all.
It might be a good idea to use a different approach for things that are controversial, that excludes the idea of voting in a particular direction based on anything other than technical merit for "solving the problem" - like policy decisions.
Going to mark this one as "Completed" for now - but this is a good point.
Varka
Thank you so much for responding.