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I think the unintended side effect would be more flagging of comments when its not warranted because users would lack the means of showing their displeasure wit

I think the unintended side effect would be more flagging of comments when its not warranted because users would lack the means of showing their displeasure without flagging or commenting. The users would complain that they needed a way to show their displeasure that wasn't as severe as flagging and downvotes would be brought back. > The official guidelines are pretty easy to follow and fairly effective in labelling the sorts of comments that take the conversation backwards. I think there are marginal cases for every rule.

h0l0cube 6y ago
> I think the unintended side effect would be more flagging of comments when its not warranted Perhaps, but I think having the >500 karma rule for flagging would ensure users understand the gravity of their actions, somewhat. I find up-votes on comments to be rare, and down-votes to be a couple of orders of magnitude rarer. Part of that will be transitive of the rarity of the down-vote privilege, but I think those people having been subjected to fairly received down-votes makes them use the power with a little more discretion once they've earned it. > I think there are marginal cases for every rule. Don't disagree with this, but the HN interface is a blunt tool. I'm of the persuasion that a flagging privilege would likely have a positive impact vs a down-voting privilege, but it's hard to know without an experiment, and also hard to measure. The system as it is, is 'good enough', and most members are conservative regarding the interface, so there's hardly a motivation to try.