Okay, so this topic comes up pretty frequently, so I'm going to go at it again. I, for one, completely support what pg is doing.<p>The overall goal here is not to make any one person feel like a special snowflake. It's to keep conversation at the absolute highest possible quality. To that end, pg and and the editors curb a lot of behavior they find contrary to that goal. They kill spam. They kill articles that are too far away from our core topics. They ban trolls. They ban people who aren't quite trolls, but still have a negative effect on conversation. At the low end of the penalty scale, they sometimes take away your voting privileges, for awhile, or potentially forever. I'm guessing that means: we like what you have to say just fine, but we think your voting patterns are harming the site.<p>I've noticed this happening to a lot of people, so I've used that feedback to modify my own behavior. I try to make about four or five comment upvotes for every downvote, at least. I don't downvote anything into negative points unless I think it is <i>really</i> harsh and goes very much against the grain. The details don't matter, but the overall outcome does: I try to behave in a manner that I think is good for the site.<p>If it turns out that pg disagrees with what I'm doing, I'm perfectly fine with that. If he takes away my voting rights or bans me outright, I will <i>still</i> think he's doing a good job.<p>Here's why I think so: just <i>look</i> at this place! Have you <i>ever</i> seen an internet hangout that got this old and/or this big, yet remained as civil and valuable as this one? I certainly haven't.<p>That says to me that pg isn't just doing something right, he's doing something <i>incredibly</i> right. I am frankly a lot less impressed by the community-building track record of any of the complainers.