Karma system in the official forums?

[Shougun]

People don't like dissenting opinions; being told their wrong. Same reason many yell "troll" if someone has an opinion they don't like. Having tons of upvotes on Reddit probably makes some feel like they have some sort of 'status', It's addictive. Many people aren't necessarily looking for actual discussion, just those things to reinforce their own opinions as fact.

That also ties into a shift in presentation styles, from calm and attention to detail (at least the potential for it) to more clickbait / yellow journalism - getting the smack down in, is something people both like doing and spectating. Quippy, less useful, more biased information, yay........ yaayyy... us... lol. Primal part of people likes the blood sport and their team winning, information be damned xD.

Someone might spend a lot of time to layout this nice groundwork and another person will go in with a two word reply and 'totally own them!!1!1!11' and while you might have something sort of like that currently at least the system doesn't hide posts and elevate the silliness of such actions. Post still there, nothing hidden, maybe get some upvotes but you can't do much in terms of hiding the info without spamming / derailing (which the moderators do and have punished users for). Although that's why I wondered what would happen if they hid likes, makes it even more less rewarding for people to make the less contributing 'smack down' posts.