My current strategy is to never downvote (not counting the rare accidental misclicks that I don’t know about). Instead, I try to upvote other things that deserve to stand out.
Leaving something at 0 upvotes is still a signal, although it’s less distinguishable from “no one saw this”. This approach makes the decision of voting binary (to upvote or not) rather than one with 3 choices, which reduces mental overhead. It also allows me to focus on positivity and finding comments that provide value, and pay less attention to ones that don’t. In the end, I think there can be value in downvoting, but I personally just don’t feel that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.
Leaving something at 0 upvotes is still a signal, although it’s less distinguishable from “no one saw this”. This approach makes the decision of voting binary (to upvote or not) rather than one with 3 choices, which reduces mental overhead. It also allows me to focus on positivity and finding comments that provide value, and pay less attention to ones that don’t. In the end, I think there can be value in downvoting, but I personally just don’t feel that the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs.