A quick note to let all of you know that I've taken the unprecedented step of closing a discussion thread here, just after I mentioned to Rachelfs that I haven't ever done that in the past (well, not that I recall). At 128 comments, the thread responding to the recent decision of Disqus to stop showing tallies of down votes had become a distraction to serious readers of this blog, I suspect (and one reader vocalized this yesterday). And it was going nowhere.
It's clear to me that an interesting set of folks is highly incensed that it has lost access (so to speak) to that magical down button that these folks used to attack and humiliate (as they imagined) people they chose to target--while keeping their identities hidden and never leaving a comment to explain why they disagreed with something that had been said. And so I find it highly humorous that one of the arguments these folks who have done their dirty work in secret and silence now want to make is that their right to free speech has been infringed by Disqus's decision to stop showing a tally of down votes.
There are some interesting studies in . . . is the phrase we need here, "human psychology"? . . . embedded in this discussion of up- and down-voting at blog sites. Meanwhile, as my dissertation director always said after he'd delivered a devastating (and always extremely valuable) critique of the latest version of my dissertation, Onward and upward!