I miss traditional message boards. No karma, no sorting algorithms, you just get new topics on top and replies are sorted oldest to newest.
You can have forum threads that go on for decades, but Lemmy’s default sorting system quickly sweeps older content away. I’m aware you can mimic the forum format by selecting the “chat” option in a thread and sorting by old, and you can sort posts by “latest comment” which replicates the old-school forum experience pretty well, but nobody does it that way, so the community behaves in the manner facilitated by the default sorting algorithm that prioritizes new content over old but still relevant content.
I also notice that I don’t pay attention to usernames on Lemmy (or Reddit back when I was on it). They’re just disembodied thoughts floating through the ether. On message boards, I get to know specific users, their personalities and preferences and ups and downs. I notice when certain users don’t post for a while and miss them if they’re gone for too long.
A well written post that is completely wrong, possibly offensive, and a net negative to the conversation doesn’t deserve immunity to down votes just because of how it was written.
A down vote conveys disagreement and if everyone who disagrees responds then there will be complaints of people getting dog piled. Down votes means letting off some steam for some people, sometimes as a counter to a crappy post or comment getting positive votes they don’t think it deserves.
There are also a very tiny number of times that I have seen down votes on something that didn’t deserve it. Overall the vast, vast majority of votes are up votes even for stuff that doesn’t deserve it and a few down votes doesn’t ruin anything. The system works extremely well, even if people have a wide variety of thresholds for up voting and down voting.