Largest Iceberg Humans Have Ever Seen

No, that's an anecdotal example.

The troll button is a negative rating (which can have a negative affect on a person's account depending on how many posts they have), this is used to combat trolls and allows forum members to self moderate. However, post ratings can be taken away from members who abuse the feature.

The "Dislike" and "Disagree" ratings are neutral and do absolutely nothing to a person's account. Such is life: some people just aren't going to like what another says or agree on a topic. If you don't want people to dislike or disagree with what you are saying....then don't say anything at all...because there will always be someone with a different opinion, not matter how rational or logical your argument is.

These ratings (along with the other positive, neutral and negative ratings) help keep everyone in check with reality. Facebook/Twitter....neither have a dislike button and their content is 90% garbage. If you remove the possibility of ever hearing or being told someone doesn't like or agree with what you are saying you will end up in an echo-chamber and nothing of use will ever be said. If you wish for everyone to agree with you and never have someone disagree or dislike one of your posts I suggest you go post in those echo-chambers instead of here. They are much better and keeping your feed full of things and people that will always agree with you.

Dislikes aren't going to make a bit of difference to you or anyone else. If you feel you have been wrongly given a negative "troll" or "abhorrent" rating then privately report the post or publicly create a thread in the appropriate sub-forum and explain why you think it was given in err. I have removed many negative ratings because a user unknowingly or accidentally clicked the rating or was just being a dick by giving a negative rating. A moderator will make a judgement call on the rating (or contact the user that gave the negative rating) and either remove it or let it stand (they almost always get removed).

However, with neutral ratings....I'm not going to waste time with that because it is impossible to tell if someone honestly disagreed or disliked a post or if they hit it on accident, and it really doesn't even matter. Understand that tone gets lost in text and a person might not be reading your post as you meant for it to be read. If someone read the post you're using as an example with a lot of sarcasm it could have been taken the wrong way. Someone also could have misread your post and thought it meant something completely different.

TL:DR Chill out, it's just a neutral rating.

Edit: Negative ratings will have no affect on your account. Negative ratings can get a member banned if their negative ratings to posts ratio goes above a certain ratio....unless the user has more than 500 posts. Established and contributing members can only be banned by a moderator through the warning points system or by an admin.

DI members have banned several trolls (and rather quickly) without any moderator/admin needing to get involved. See here: Notable Members | Dumaguete Info

 

Especially education,the mushroom syndrome comes to mind!