well taking up the whole thread is not an issue or is it? I quite enjoy talking with you to be honnest.

If the thread is relevant to the topic at hand, then no, and I think this is relevant.

you could have just ignored them and do nothing.

I could have, but I chose to downvote a handful of comments that I didn't think were adding anything to the discussion, and I felt could have been seen on any top 100 reddit thread.

but I understand that we don't share the same value as what downvoting mean, and I'm ok with that.

I'm ok with that as well, and I appreciate that we can have a civil discussion about it. Like I've already said, it wasn't a personal attack or me saying "shut up". If I wanted to do that, I'd have commented that, and likely been deservedly downvoted into oblivion, because that's just not productive.

Edit; My first reply sounds a bit authoritarian, I think, and that's not what I want to convey- I'm not saying there can't be discussions that slowly veer off the topic of the post, but at the same time, if you're clicking into post comments, you don't want the first thing you see to be a 50 comment chain that winds up in a heated name calling argument, or two people just talking about PS1 emulators on your @knitting post, especially when there's no way to collapse comments currently (officially).

I understand what you're saying, but at the time, would you have rather I replied to each of the comments with 'I disagree', 'I don't like this', etc? That's just opening things up for unnecessary arguments that end up taking over a whole thread, which is sort of what's happening now.

Myself, and a handful of users by the looks of it, disagreed with the content of some of your posts, or thought it wasn't relevant / contributing to the discussion. I certainly didn't downvote the entirety of your contribution to that thread, and I don't intend for you to think it's a personal attack.

If you'd like to have a discourse on why I downvoted 4 of your comments, I, like many others aren't looking for the 'redditification' of another site, regardless of how similar the premise might be, and that's what I felt those comments were promoting, particularly 'gesundheit'. I understand wanting things to be 'just as good as they were', etc., but this is new, things can be better, and I personally don't want to see the site become reddit 2.0 just because there's been a big influx of users after the blackout started. You're entitled to want kbin.social to become something else, of course, and that's arguably what the voting system is there for.

People are allowed to disagree with things, although I understand if someone is just spamming the entirety of a thread with downvotes for no appreciable reason.
I'm in agreement with @eatmoregreenfood, that displaying your votes should be opt in, if available on the front end at all.
On a social basis, I don't think it matters; Whilst it would be preferable that someone explains why they disagree with something (assuming it is actually a disagreement, and not just malicious), I don't think anyone should be fearful of downvoting because the OP might call them out on it and expect them to explain, or forever see nothing from that user again. Disagreement isn't inherently negative.

We've all missed the memo, I just found out it's officially the kawaii boys international network.

Interesting, I thought it was just an abbreviation of the original Polish site, karab.in (which would also explain why 'subreddits' are called magazines, karabin = rifle). Either way, that's pretty seamless inspiration.

Slightly off topic, but why are we saying 'kee'binetters? Where is the 'kee' in kbin?