Comment by greggman3
5 years ago
And this is why HN should remove the downvote! Seriously (here come the downvotes). If you're downvoting this you're doing exactly what this article is complaining about.
> People are changing their behavior to get better scores.
> Social Cooling is a name for the long-term negative side effects of living in a reputation economy
There are plenty of times I don't post something because even though I strongly believe in the idea I know "the crowd" does not so it will just get downvoted.
Down-votes should mean "this comment doesn't contribute in good faith," or "this is a distraction".
How something could be well utilized, versus how it is utilized, may be two different things.
According to Dang, downvotes on HN are for disagreeing with ideas and opinions.
Interesting.
There's an obvious conflict of interest in reducing another user's karma risks their ability to also downvote. (Of course, just because it's imperfect doesn't mean it's a bad system.) If this is the intended usage then perhaps it would be fair to expand downvoting rights to other users?