I downvote for plagiarism/copytheft and obvious illegal content.

So I just down-voted somebody a minute before I read this post and now I'm a little bit curious as to what 'reseting' voting  powers is supposed to incur. As to my reasoning and logic behind the 'thumbs down',  purely instinct without much thought . I fear as if I go into too much detail about the story then I must be hurting that post/person.. I'm not here to hurt anybody but here to help those I can. Maybe I **shouldn't**  have clicked the arrow down but instead clicked nothing. After the thoughts collected, I could have easily replied and educated  the individual's thought process although, without knowing someone's sensitivity levels the danger still lingers..Now, most materialistic 'matter' we call value, without a clue of what' in the real world depicts itself to be; Starvation, homelessness, depression, addiction, murder, rape, theft, deceit,etc...and all for what?? So we can go about our daily lives wondering which pair of **Ray Bans** to buy.  I would rather get nothing than lose everything.  Namaste

My advice, downvote if the post takes away from the value of the platform, upvote if it adds to the value.  What adds or subtracts value is subjective but it is in everyone's interest to vote accordingly.

Sometimes an over-paid post is taking value away from the platform.  In this case you might downvote simply to maintain a sense of fair distribution of rewards.  Perceived fairness is the number 1 thing that gives people confidence in a community and currency.

Pretty sure my recent post was down voted out of homophobia. There were no comments to accompany the three down votes (all by men) to explain their reasoning, but given the content of at least one of the down voters previous posts assumptions can be (and have been) made that it was simple homophobia and nothing more. Which then leads to the question of this whole "value added" thing. Is it only value added if you agree with it? Or does a post add value even if you don't agree? It's sad to see homophobia driving people's votes but I suppose that's revealing as well. And to be expected.

IMO the downvote button should instead be a **report flag**, and treated as such.

So far the norm has been for downvoting to not signify mere disagreement but some sort of disapproval of the nature of the post itself (wrong category, spam, untagged NSFW, etc.). However, if we ever get to the point where usage explodes rapidly the new influx of users may not observe that convention and the norm would then change.

I have just joined, and voted down one post for being not very well written. And then I saw your post, so now I will read more about it :)
There should probably be some generally accepted community policy on that...

There will be many carefully phrased altruistic thoughts about downvotes, but in the end they will be used as both a valid curation tool and as a weapon just like on every other platform.  You should proably use downvotes sparingly, because they can hide a post from view, take profit from someone, and make enemies. 

 The courtesy of a comment when downvoting is expected but not required.  1 downvote can currently hide your post. I have been downvoted for politics multiple times already, with a few of them clearly being  just to hide my point of view from other viewers.  The use of downvotes for politics will continue to get worse until something is changed to make it more obvious or difficult to use as a weapon, just like on all the other platforms. 

My only advice would be to not downvote the top 100 steem holders, and take specific care not to discuss anything political, funny, or not-PC with them either.  (if you want to stay visible and make any money...)

In my opinion down voting should NOT be done because you disagree with the poster. It should be reserved for obvious spam or for a poster who is making personal attacks on others rather than attempting to oppose through discourse their viewpoints..

I have not even worked out how to down vote yet! But yer would for copied work and illegal or ethically wrong work only!