I get where you’re coming from with the assumptions you made. It’s obvious to you, but it might not be to everyone. As they say in programming, “explicit is always better than implicit”. Relying on the reader to infer what you mean instead of just telling them explicitly will always risk misinterpretation.
And laughing at people because they don’t understand things is the fastest way for this to become like Reddit, which I really hope doesn’t happen.
I feel like this is a good approach. Honestly an invisible voting system might be better cause how many up or down votes something has prevents others from fully forming their own opinion.