I greatly dislike downvoting. Fundamentally, in my opinion, it's an act of censorship. Especially on sites that ultimately hide that information after a certain threshold, as HN does. It's no different in my mind than turning your nose up at someone or trying to talk over someone in a real-life conversation (assuming those still happen). I would much rather upvote the good comments, so that they rise to the top. I probably spend half my upvotes on this forum and others to undo what I consider to be unfair downvotes. If there is a comment I don't like and it bothers me, then it's better for me to reply to it rather than just signal my disapproval at it.

The only time I would downvote personally is for something like spam, and I rarely even do that.

I just think it's better all around to be positive instead of negative.