This is a good reason to remove downvotes, and the site is better off without them.
That being said, one of the useful things about downvotes is that they help to hide bad comments/discussions (sometimes to protect viewers before mods can remove them) and discourage feeding trolls. When a comment is sitting at -17, it's clear that the community has expressed its disapproval of the sentiment. But when a terrible comment is at 2 points with no replies, it's ambiguous as to whether the community has rejected its sentiment or just has no opinion on it. I feel like this could lead to lots of unnecessary back-and-forth ("this hasn't been called out yet and somebody needs to tell this person they're wrong") and just increase the portion of space/mental energy dedicated to bad comments.
There might be a way to find the best of both worlds, like a repurposed downvote which does not affect visible score at all but auto-hides the comment if enough people downvote. It would prevent individuals from essentially bullying or harassing people, but would also keep the comment hidden by default (which signals that the comment is not something the community endorses, and also serves as a kind of catch-all trigger warning for comments that haven't been removed yet). Bad actors or colluders would be a lot easier to catch, too.
This is a good reason to remove downvotes, and the site is better off without them.
That being said, one of the useful things about downvotes is that they help to hide bad comments/discussions (sometimes to protect viewers before mods can remove them) and discourage feeding trolls. When a comment is sitting at -17, it's clear that the community has expressed its disapproval of the sentiment. But when a terrible comment is at 2 points with no replies, it's ambiguous as to whether the community has rejected its sentiment or just has no opinion on it. I feel like this could lead to lots of unnecessary back-and-forth ("this hasn't been called out yet and somebody needs to tell this person they're wrong") and just increase the portion of space/mental energy dedicated to bad comments.
There might be a way to find the best of both worlds, like a repurposed downvote which does not affect visible score at all but auto-hides the comment if enough people downvote. It would prevent individuals from essentially bullying or harassing people, but would also keep the comment hidden by default (which signals that the comment is not something the community endorses, and also serves as a kind of catch-all trigger warning for comments that haven't been removed yet). Bad actors or colluders would be a lot easier to catch, too.