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I have often wondered what HN would look like if comments had only "upvote" and "flag" options. The "flag" option would have to include a reason ("offensive",

• Kaizyn 15y ago
  Earlier on, PG experimented with an upvote only scheme and later discarded it. I don't recall if any public reason was given for why the experiment failed, but downvotes were found to be of sufficient value to be worth retaining.
• kisielk 15y ago
  That sounds like Slashdot's moderation system.
  • VMG 15y ago
    Except on slashdot you also have to state a reason for upvoting. The main problem with downvoting for me is that often people vote down out of disagreement, resulting in groupthink. In my opinion, downvotes should hide comments and punish commenters that don't contribute to the discussion. By making downvoting slightly harder, you could focus on the proper subset of comments that should be punished, like spam and insults. (and by the way fix the UI problem of two arrows that are much too close to each other)