Back in THE DAY, before social media with upvotes or downvotes, there was Usenet.
And one of the things that came out of those days was the rueful acknowledgement of the Usenet Nod, which was basically that no one responded to your post. Because if they thought you were WRONG, you’d fucking hear about it (at length), but most people, if they see a post that they mildly agree with, then they’re just going to nod at their computer and move on to the next post. They’re not going to go out of their way to respond.
If we did away with upvotes, there would just be silence after a lot of very good posts, because people would just Usenet Nod, and spend their energy telling that other asshole over there that they are wrong on the internet. Likewise, most posts that don’t have a lot of upvotes aren’t disliked, they’re just nodded at and moved on from. So, when at all possible, just imagine that most of the forum goers, if they aren’t currently calling you names or telling you where they think you screwed up, are reading your post, smiling, nodding, and then moving on to the next post.