Shouting “brigading” doesn’t do much to change that.
It also ignores the impact of upvotes, which can be used to the same effect, yet doesn’t receive the same request.
Even someone downvoting a post is expressing their opinion. Current Issue is, person downvoting is anonymous, provides no reason and can’t be held liable for their own action. This is ironic, if they also put themselves out there.
Inadvertently, down voters have a larger say in shaping a discussion even though their level of participation is minimal instead of someone who takes the effort to provide a well structured opinion.
This balance of power is skewed.
If downvoting means to disagree, one should know why.
If one wants to provide why, there are replies for that.
It’s a qualitative instrument, making it quantitative will change the use. Meanwhile, abuse always finds a way.
Downvoting is simply that, IMHO, nothing more and nothing less than "I disagree with you".
So why is it tied to a quality of a post? You can simply reply you don’t agree. But that takes effort, so you downvote. But if you reply, that has no measurable value to tie to the quality of a post, even though words carry more meaning.
So somewhere your disagreement to something is perceived differently if you reply vs if you just downvote.
Downvoting is not simply downvoting, friend.