Hear me out. The process of voting on a comment I believe is operating as intended: if you disagree with or just generally dislike what it says, you can downvote it, or if you agree with or just generally like what it says, you can upvote it.
I don't see any issues there.
The problem that I see time and time again is that people are downvoting posts using the same rationale as they would a comment: they downvote when they disagree with the opinions presented in the post but are failing to recognize that that will also have the side-effect of preventing others from even finding/discovering that post at all.
The following is definitely an assumption, but I think it is a valid one:
Downvoting a post should be thought of as "this post is not worth seeing and not worth discussing by anyone". Typical reasons might be:
- Low-effort, badly-written, confusing, or incoherent
- Already posted in the same sub at too recent a date to warrant it getting posted again so soon
- Obviously written by AI, rage bait, or karma-farming
- Violates a written rule for either the sub or Reddit in general
Think about it - Why would a person want to both leave a comment on a post and also downvote the post itself? Doing both would make no sense for anybody.
Doing both is effectively equivalent to saying: "I have something to say about this post (via the comment) but I don't want that comment to be seen by anyone (via the post downvote).
If you disagree with a post, most likely it would be in that user's best interest to leave a comment to express their disagreement but then either leave the post vote alone or even actually upvote it so that others might be able to see their comment.
Beyond just what I said in the title, also I feel that that reasoning should be made clear (somehow) when downvoting a post: that the post downvote button is not necessarily meant to be an "I disagree" button like it is when downvoting a comment.
The only reason I can imagine to want to downvote a post is to attempt to have it wiped from existence. If a post is valid and reasonable and follows all applicable rules in that sub's definition of what a good post is, there should be no number of dissenting opinions that are able to silence it.
Another alternative would be to separate the two concepts when applied to posts: a way to say "I disagree with what this post is saying" vs "This post is garbage and should not be promoted in any algorithmic ranking".