The discussion revolves around the possibility of disabling downvoting for the original post (OP) while retaining upvoting and downvoting for replies, to prevent “downvote brigading” or “trolling” PrettyGirl. JammyDodger suggests a CSS workaround, but PrettyGirl points out it can be easily bypassed using browser tools. The conversation highlights the need for a more robust solution, referencing an existing open topic on the matter JammyDodger. PrettyGirl acknowledges that downvote trolling can affect replies too but emphasizes the OP’s vulnerability, and decides to move the discussion to the ux category for further input.
Is it possible to disable the “downvoting” feature for the original post in a thread, while retaining the “upvoting” feature?
I aim to prevent “downvote brigading” or “downvote trolling”.
However, I would still like to keep both “downvoting” and “upvoting” options for the replies to the initial post.
My CSS is rather threadbare, but would something like this do the trick?
article#post_1 .post-voting-button-downvote {
display: none;
}
Thank you for the reply.
However, the issue is that a user with knowledge of HTML and CSS could use the browser’s Inspector tool to manipulate the CSS properties and make the button visible again, couldn’t they?
It seems there isn’t a way to fix this with code snippets. It would be beneficial if the plugin author could add more customizability to this plugin.
“Downvote brigading” or “downvote trolling” are common occurrences in posts where voting is enabled, so we must have a way to disable the downvoting functionality.
It would be able to be unhidden using the browser inspector, though I think you could easily uncover who was doing that and moderate them accordingly.
There is an open Contribute > UX topic on removing the ability to upvote and downvote the OP. This would mean using Likes/Reactions as the positive ‘upvote’:
But if you don’t feel that covers your use case you can create a new Contribute > UX topic and suggest it there. 
Though couldn’t the downvote trolling also occur on posts as well as the OP?
Thank you for the reply.
I will think about opening a topic in Contribute > UX .
Yeah the downvote trolling can happen for replies as well. However, I believe the OP is the most vulnerable person, and imagine asking for help on something and everyone is attacking you with downvotes.
Edit: Moved the thread to Contribute > UX