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I think expanding the ability to down-vote to more people would help show the true attitude on HN. Right now I can only push things up or flag them and often ti

I think expanding the ability to down-vote to more people would help show the true attitude on HN. Right now I can only push things up or flag them and often times don't have the time or fortitude to start a comment thread arguing with an ignorant racist. Currently at 419 karma I don't have the ability to simply press a downvote and get that trash grayed out or pushed to the bottom of the page. A technical solution to a social problem rarely works but in this case I think it'd help. If what the OP implies is true, and it surely is to some degree, most of the people who have the ability to control visibility (downvote) would have achieved that ability through participation in the echo chamber. Achieving enough karma to downvote seems rather hard, if not impossible, if you're not subscribed to the prevailing groupthink. But maybe this is me, as always, trying to find an engineering solution to the problem.

krapp 12y ago
To me, the problem is that downvoting is contextually vague, while the effect on HN is visually explicit. It would be one thing entirely if downvoting just affected the page ranking, but having it also act as a visual cue that "this person's opinion is not worth your time, so don't worry - we've made it difficult for you to read it" only serves to exacerbate a groupthink mentality. I don't think more downvoting would solve the problem, it would only make more comments illegible. I've seen more than a couple of threads where an entire side of what I find to be an interesting (or at least worthwile) discussion is blotted out. It's annoying if you actually want to consider an entire thread and not just get spoon-fed the parts which correlate to consensus opinion. This is supposed to be a forum for intellectually thought-provoking or at least civil discussion, but the implementation of downvoting amounts to sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting down someone you don't agree with.

krapp 12y ago

To me, the problem is that downvoting is contextually vague, while the effect on HN is visually explicit. It would be one thing entirely if downvoting just affected the page ranking, but having it also act as a visual cue that "this person's opinion is not worth your time, so don't worry - we've made it difficult for you to read it" only serves to exacerbate a groupthink mentality. I don't think more downvoting would solve the problem, it would only make more comments illegible. I've seen more than a couple of threads where an entire side of what I find to be an interesting (or at least worthwile) discussion is blotted out. It's annoying if you actually want to consider an entire thread and not just get spoon-fed the parts which correlate to consensus opinion. This is supposed to be a forum for intellectually thought-provoking or at least civil discussion, but the implementation of downvoting amounts to sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting down someone you don't agree with.