5 ms·
Ask HN: Increase the weight of a downvote vs. upvote on HN?
Social networks where there is no downvote button are known to become very toxic. People can say awful things against their opponents and get praise from people on their side. People on the other side have clapbacks as their only means of response.
Although Hacker News is by far the least toxic social network I participate in, I notice recently there has been a higher degree of toxicity. Increasing the weight of a downvote relative to the upvote could improve matters. It could be done as perhaps a week-long test to see if the community likes it, if it should be adjusted, or if it should be removed all-together.
- lambda_obrien 6y agoI'd prefer we just have a daily politics thread and remove all others. I'm really tried of seeing the same arguments over and over, no one agrees with each other, no one will compromise, no one wants to see their own faults, it's so depressing.
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoI think increasing the weight of a downvote would make the political discussions much more productive though. No one could hurl insults or make needlessly general claims. If you move political posts to one day it is going to skew the political discussion to be what happened on that day, regardless of whether what happened on that day is important.
- uberman 6y agoWould that not just make politically motivated stunts like the one reported here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25731528 more likely and effective?
- gus_massa 6y agoI think there are too many downvotes. There are toxic comments, but most of them are downvoted and already dead or gray when I see them. Do you have two or three examples of toxic comments that didn't get downvoted?