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I worry that when so many comments have negative votes, readers will be more inclined to downvote future comments. While I agree with you that it's really huma

• froo 17y ago
  "While I agree with you that it's really human nature, I still think it needs to be discouraged, if only to keep HN the kind of place where debate is encouraged." I agree with you, absolutely. I think we're mostly adults here and hearty debate should be encouraged. I think that if you really want to counteract the douchebag effect (the groupthink downvote pileon on thoughtful comments) then make who has downvoted you public to everyone but the downvotee - transparency would be one way to help combat it. Think about it for a second, if you have a legitimate gripe with someone's comment, then whether you downvote them or not shouldn't matter. Those comments are easy to single out. However, if you're piling on just because of groupthink, then why not let other's know. I'm sure someone could come up with an algorithm for working out who's being a dick with the downvoting consistently. I think there should be a clear distinction between legitimately disagreeing/downvoting someone's comment and being a dick, so why not try and expose the latter. We've seen in many, many cases that anonymity on the web has given rise to the kinds of behaviours that many of us dislike. Why not bring it back a little towards people being responsible for their actions.