In the early days of the NOT Agoracom forum, as all of we battle-scarred veterans can attest, we were not fond of the ability to cast a negative vote as it were because it allowed in-house secret bashers to devalue contributors' posts.

It also appeared to make the forum seem like a popularity contest where the cheeriest posts ( though possibly devoid of any substance) were happily given many thumbs up. 

It also raised the question of misuse of the red hand if a post was somehow not completely optimistic, it may suffer in votes although the content was well thought-out and reasonably argued.

Here's what I'm thinking: if we could have only known then what we know now: we definitely are over-run with our shares of Tokyo Rose types here, I would guess the ratio good guys to bad guys is probably 2:1 and shrinking.

If we as a group resurrect the red hand, and vote regularly and often, our votes would offset any damage the bad guys do, and prevent them from taking over the forum when they attain president status.

In the end, I think we've tinkered with Agoracom's well-thought out policy, and they were kind enough to take away the red hand at our request, although it was not the best action for us.

Anyways, it's early, so I may have missed some valid points, but I wanted to run this past all the regulars to see what they think.

JMHO