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Lately HN has been like this. Some posts/comments are flagged and downvoted for slightly controversial opinions, despite the neutral or even positive or curious

• dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Some posts/comments are flagged and downvoted for slightly controversial opinions, despite the neutral or even positive or curious tone. Neutral or even positive or curious tone does not, ipso facto, make a comment not a negative contribution to discussion. Community moderation is not exclusively, or even primarily, intended for tone policing. > The policy, and maybe even mechanism for downvote and flag to be adjusted so that a number alone does not trample arguments. That's, like, literally the entire purpose of having downvoting. > Maybe "downvote/flag" comments, which if voted, will add downvote/flag count for parent arguments? Downvoting exists to reduce the signal/noise ratio. Making metadiscussion mandatory for downvoting is directly contrary to the purpose and makes it easier for the kind of comments downvoting exists to address to have the effect of sidetracking threads that downvoting exists to mitigate. It would defeat the purpose of the feature.