I always thought it was a pretty smart idea on Reddit’s side to have the posts and comments be automatically upvoted by their author, saving them the tough choice between playing fair or boosting their initial reach a little; and if you had particularly low self-esteem, this enabled you to reduce your own points by not one, but two, by self-downvoting.
Here, both upvotes and downvotes (or rather, favourites and reduces) start at 0, and you have the option to upvote your post manually (which I’ve already seen some people do) - which, while currently does not increase your reputation, does give you that small initial boost by making it look like people are starting to engage with your post.
What do you think - should the posts and comments be automatically upvoted by the author? If not, are you fine with people upvoting themselves, or do you feel it’s unfair towards the ones that don’t do it?
I don’t. A post that’s been voted 100 times and down 95 times is completely different from a post that’s been upvoted 5 times and not downvoted at all. That’s good information to have, both as a poster and a reader.
Also, enough people use downvotes as an “I disagree” button that I don’t think they ought to be counted (or should be counted minimally) when determining what content rises to the top, or we’ll end up with another echo chamber.