Thanks, I appreciate that. I have no problem with people disagreeing with me as confronting disagreement is how people (self included) grow. However, I was taken aback by the amount of down voting I received merely for disagreeing with people here and the fact that by merely choosing to respond to people's arguments it would effectively guarantee even more down votes—a system tied to how much you can participate in the community—made it more concerning to me. At least on the discussion board side of the site, I expected down voting to be reserved for posts that were derailing topics, flaming, ignoring arguments presented to them, etc., not for posts with which one disagreed. As someone who does academic research in AI, I thought this could be a fun lively online community to discuss that, but having my discussion board topic posting privileges removed because people did not agree with things I said (and the main post didn't even assert anything, it asked for feedback), I've reconsidered that. I'm glad to see not all people here think this was an appropriate use of down voting, but I feel like the community at large has spoken with regards to how they use that and when this thread ends I'll probably be moving on.

Thanks for you support though, I do appreciate that.